About me

Hi, my name is Jean-François Colas.

I am a lifelong learner and researcher especially committed to the pedagogical support for open online learning, in particular for MOOCs.

I speak french, english, spanish and catalan.

Bienvenue, welcome, bienvenida, benvinguda @ Tutor MOOC!

To help making MOOCs an instrument of lifelong learning for all

My Mission…

I wish to contribute my 25 years of experiences—in creating and sharing knowledge in diverse countries and cultural contexts—to projects (one-on-one or collective) seeking to improve lifelong and multilingual access to online learning.

Tutor MOOC’s mission to help making MOOCs an instrument of lifelong learning for all arose from my vision of learning and from realizing several unfulfilled learning needs while specializing in various aspects of MOOCs (facilitation, multilinguism, active participation, collective intelligence, …; Colas et al., 2016).

I offer three support services to fulfill these needs:

MOOC Tutor as the heart of the project, to help learning how to learn in MOOC, supporting the first steps in this new learning environment.
But before learning in MOOCs, we need to know what they have to offer and how to create one’s own learning path based on them: this is what the MOOC Mentor services are all about, personalized support and awareness for all of the potential of MOOCs.
Not forgetting that a MOOC is essentially a social massive event, I do also offer support services for institutions who wish to offer a MOOC to their coworkers, audience and need a MOOC Facilitator for boosting participation and foster a culture of collective learning.

This mission is supported by the “Ideas Maduras” entrepreneurial program of Barcelona Activa.

My Vision

I envision learning as a personal self-determined experience shaped by the needs, preferences, and dispositions of individual learners in a space that allow for free exploration.

Learning how to learn in a digital space

People learn best when they engage into relevant learning experiences, that is when learning and living are not artificially separated. Although a digital environment may appear at first as not natural and not conducive for real-life experiences, the digital sphere is increasingly part of our daily life and ICT tools can provide for improved conditions for learning as they allow for improved interactions between learners and information. A digital space can provide the conditions for deep personal engagement and self-determined learning. A crucial skill to develop is thus to learn how to learn in a digital space, that is to gain autonomy in that space. Also as learning is eminently a social experience, it should at least in part occur in a collective environment.

A MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) represents a powerful learning environment that combines an exquisite design stimulating individual engagement with the material and a community allowing for interactions with peers. To express fully its potentialities and to help develop self-determined lifelong learners, learning in MOOC may initially necessitate pedagogical guidance and acquisition of special skills. For example participatory skills for intervention in forums and building a personal learning network. The guidance of a leader of learning (companion of learning process) could help initiate or stimulate interactions.

A personal, empathic connection between the leader of learning and the learner

The distributed individual learning environment of the MOOC is best fitted for the tutoring-like approach to learning that most appeals to me as a leader of learning. As I envision learning as a personal self-determined experience, I can easily relate to the personal needs of other learners like you wishing to gain autonomy in their learning. In this environment I can communicate, motivate you more deeply, and serve more naturally as a leading example to help you taking leadership in a self-determined space, to invest in yourself and become you too a lifelong learner!

For Dron and Anderson (Teaching crowds, 2014), “although it may occur in the context of a large group, a great deal of one-to-one communication underpins most forms of social learning. (…) The one-to-one tutoring dialogue represents an “ideal” form of guided learning, at least where there is a teacher who knows more than the learner and is able to apply methods and techniques to help that learner to learn.”

Check out our survey

MOOCs & Lifelong learning – Survey

Dear participant!

We kindly ask you to fill in this questionnaire. Your answers will help us understand what services can best support learning with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) as an instrument of lifelong education.

There are about 15 questions, it should not take you more than 5 to 10 minutes. A bar will show your progress at each step. We really appreciate your feedback no matter your current situation. We are interested in hearing from all the different experiences. All information provided by you will be confidential and treated anonymously.

Thank you very much for your help!

Jean-François Colas
Programa Ideas Maduras – Barcelona Activa – 2016

(Español: http://goo.gl/forms/LYIGoFH3K2; Français: http://goo.gl/forms/GlVr1zqbbH)