To balance out the quotation count: “I do think there is a MOOCing mindset that is much less open than another..” And I would agree. My image of a cMOOC is me standing in the grocery check-out line and openly commenting on what the person in front of me just said to the clerk or anyone else. I don’t wait to be invited into the conversation but just walk right in. Some people get upset that my social skills don’t include the understanding of what constitutes a “private” conversation–a kind of closed openness that separates what in the world is “your business” from what is there in plain view but to go unobserved.

In my world if it is out there, it’s mine to note. Plus, I don’t intervene other than to add value (and often priceless insights) into the conversation lest it become lost in vacuous chatter. I will not be defeated by the pathos of the existential emptiness by virtue of adherence to the apparent need of others to be privately and distressingly uninteresting. People and the world itself improves with my presence and participation.

Since I’ve lost track of what I intended to say, we might best describe xMOOCs as devices unaided by my intervention. Does that help?