SPOC as the cousin of smartmobs (http://www.smartmobs.com/author/bryan/) and swarming (http://bwatwood.edublogs.org/2010/08/05/learning-swarms/)?… as per Bryan Alexander

Bryan Alexander forwarded the idea of swarming in education some 10 years go: synchronous online communication will break the brick-and-mortar classroom and must lead to offering a f2f class on a specific subject to “swarming” of interested students all around the globe around the specific subject. It was in an Educause article, which, of course, I cannot find now. The term comes from the 1999 riots in Seattle when protesters where calling each other on cells after the police hits them and were “swarming” to a different rally point.

Ah, there it is: http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/going-nomadic-mobile-learning-higher-education

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Plamen Miltenoff, Ph.D., MLIS

From: Ewing, M Keith
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2013 11:55 AM
Subject: First MOOCs, now SPOCs

“Harvard plans to boldly go with ‘Spocs’”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24166247

SPOC = Small Private Online Course

Well, not so small and private—still large, but not thousands.

“The smaller class size will allow “much more rigorous assessment and greater validation of identity and that will be more closely tied to what kind of certification might be possible,” he [Prof Robert Lue] says.”

Keith Ewing