I’ve just enrolled on the free ‘Content Strategy for Professionals‘ MOOC that begins on Jan 13th, 2014 and runs for six weeks. This one will be presented by Northwestern University faculty via the Coursera platform.

(The MOOC acronym stands for ‘Massive Open Online Course’. It’s still early in the game but I suspect that next gen MOOCs plus Artificial Intelliegence (AI) driven virtual instructors will start to disrupt the current educational paradigm big time… though turning a profit may be more troublesome and create some implementation diversions along the way to a ‘learning nirvana’.)

This content strategy MOOC appeals to me because it’s a chance to learn from academics. Most of my ‘content marketing’ instruction has come from marketers out there doing the business. Which is good, of course, but I also want to get a strategic view of where content marketing may be headed over the next 5 years or so.

MOOCs are getting attention because they are (still) free and they enable people worldwide to study online and offline whenever it’s convenient. I can watch and download videos, tackle assignments and interact with other students online via the Coursera forum. In addition, some students also choose to setup independent FaceBook groups, Google+ hangouts etc for collaborative learning purposes.

The ‘downside’ is that interaction with lecturers is impossible as videos are pre-recorded and enrolled students (in their thousands, and tens of thousands) are spread across multiple timezones. So, to some extent, the learning modality is by necessity asynchronous and (often) solitary. For independent, self-motivated learners these limitations are not insurmountable (witness the external groups popping up, and in multiple languages too. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.)

As I’m enrolled under my own name, feel free to ‘say’ hello. I’m also a member of the LinkedIn group for this MOOC.

And with 2014 cast as the ‘year of the horse’ in the Japanese zodiacal calendar, now’s the time to saddle up this content strategy thoroughbred.

Author: Mark McClure - A freelance b2b case study and white paper writer to the computer networking industry. Based in Tokyo, Japan. Mark McClure Google + Profile About Mark