The Portus MOOC and Southampton Alumni

I am very keen that the Portus MOOC engages with University of Southampton alumni. In part I hope that this is a way to say thank you for their input to the University, both as students and more recently, by providing a free way for them to continue learning with us. But I also see these alumni as bringing a different perspective to the MOOC cohort. I don’t have any statistics regarding alumni contributions to the Web Science and Oceans MOOCs but I would welcome the kind of input that, for example, a Southampton computer science student who studied cultural heritage imaging here might bring, or perhaps a marine geophysics student who worked on archaeological examples. Similarly input from our former archaeology, history or classics students would be exciting.

I’m certainly not suggesting that Southampton alumni will have more to offer than any other MOOC participant – the beauty of it is the range of participants’ experience and interests of course – but I could imagine them providing additional value for everyone. So, please do contact us via any means to let us know if you are an alumnus taking part. During the MOOC you will in any case have the chance to study alongside alumni of the Portus Field School.

Similarly, I am interested in the MOOC as a means of creating a whole new alumni community. You will all have been students on a University of Southampton MOOC and I would love to explore ways to keep in contact after the MOOC and what follow up activities could take place. For example, you might be interested in taking part in the Portus Field School itself. Not long now until launch day…