First impressions about EDCMOOC (with some criticism)

"E-Learning and digital cultures" is third course on Coursera for me. In October I've completed "Listening to World Music" and "Fantasy and Science Fiction", both with getting an certificate. Already at start I have a feeling, that this course is different. The main difference is, that there are no video lectures, like in most other courses. This is more like seminar than just listening to a teacher. You just have some stuff, like video or articles, and need to work out own opinion about this problematic. It's nice, I like trhis approach.

But is also shows some problems, which I see in MOOC organisation on Coursera, more clear. First I will say a couple of words about my own point of view. First, I study literature. Second, I don't like watching video (Actually, it's just feature of my perception - watching video makes me tired faster as other people, and often takes much time to understand, what is it about). Third, my internet connection is not very fast, and sometimes slow. So, I am very text-oriented.

In "Fantasy and Science Fiction" it wasn't a problem, because it was a course about texts. Sometimes I even downloaded lecture transcripts to read them on my e-book of watching.  In "Listening to World Music" it was a bit more difficult. Sometimes I wondered - it's a course about music, why should we watch so much videos? And this course, EDC MOOC, seems to be even more oriented on visual form of information. Yes, videos and pictures are important part of digital culture. But the text in one or another form is also important. For example, in Week 1 we are asked to tell something about a film about distopia and technology. Why mot about a book?

The second problem is how the material is organised. In previous courses I could download lectures and other stuff and save it on my PC for personal use. To rewatch later or just to watch (beacuse I prefer to watch offline). I can keep this archive for further studying etc. But here it's much more difficult - what will stay after this course? Thousands tweets and blog posts, and some articles in my e-book? I don't think that scattering all stuff made by students into many pieces on many different resourses is good idea.m It is good for advertising of the course, to let more people know about it, but not for real studying. Even if there is "made by you" subforum and news feed, I would prefer if most discussions were kept on discussion forums - I think will be more productive. For example, I will write the post and post a link to it in discussion forum. Somebody will comment in the forum, somebody in blogspot... to have comments in different places is just wasting time for me.

There are also som reasons why I don't like the use of YouTube and social networks. First, YouTube isn't available equally in all countries. I remember, that in World music course it was sometimes a problem - for some students from China who were forced to search other ways to watch videos they needed to watch. There can be also problems with particular videos in particular countries. Second, I cannot download video to my PC. Will it exist when I would like to rewatch it two years later? Nobody knows. I understand, that there copyright issues and some other problems, but it would be very nice to have something like an archive with all materials you need - videos, lectures, articles - all downloadable.

In general, my approach to using in internet is as follows: I don't like to keep all stuff in one place, like Facebook account. I prefer to store my pictures in DeviantArt, poems and prose at litsovet.ru, have discussions with friends in Skype or Jabber, listen music on 8tracks.com etc. I use Facbook mostly to login to other sites, sometimes to comment and rarely to post something. I tried to make a feed for all stuff mande my me, in Twitter or in G+, but it took too much time and useless.

I think, such things like watching something on YouTube, participating in GoogleHangout and other such things should be addicional parts of the course, not it's core. Even if it is a course about Digital cultures. Because such approach makes it difficult for people with slow internet or some other restrictions.