Katharine C: inaugural meeting of AWG's MOOC

Over the last 18 months, Mireille has been inspired to undertake online learning courses - one on
Six Sigma methodology, a data-driven methodology for business/manufacturing process improvement,  from the University of Sligo in Ireland, and one on bio-ethics from Harvard University.  Mireille shared her journey with the group of us - Orla, Mary-Catherine, Cathy, Genette, Mariannick and Katharine C, and how this experience has opened up a new world of potential lifelong learning through free online courses - MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).

The group had assembled to discuss how members of AWG can become MOOCers - the idea being that individually we choose an online course (from the thousands available - most of them free, although some courses apply an administration fee for a certificate of completion,  which is optional 
(one of Harvard's course fee certificates, for example,  is $88).

l to r:  Katharine, Mariannick, Mireille, Orla, Cathy, Mary-Catherine

The group met in AWG's light and airy office, and it was agreed that the group will meet there monthly on saturday mornings from 10 through noon, to share their experiences of individual online courses (MOOCs) in order to encourage one another,  to discuss curricula offered, to examine the pros/cons of the courses (which normally run for 8 weeks each), and to keep one another motivated in our individual course choices.  (A bit like Weight Watchers, except I expect we'll skip the weighing-in).  Course choices are enormous and vary from the practical (e.g. digital photography), to the career-enhancing (law, global health, business), to liberal arts (the art of photographic advertising or modern American poetry) to the artistic (quilt-making).

For more information on this exciting new AWG program, contact any of the group above.  We are grateful to Mireille for introducing this idea to AWG - but Mireille pointed out that she is one of the group, she's not the leader and we won't be taking a top-down approach on this from her - we are
collectively going to make this a fruitful endeavour for all those participating, and we encourage many members of AWG to join in.