KEYQUOTE "In my opinion, the teacher’s primary role in the online environment is to facilitate discussion among the students. He or she truly becomes the “guide on the side,” and in my experience, I’ve learned that many teachers don’t know how to do this well. They are accustomed to the “sage on the stage” mode of teaching through lectures, in class discussions, and tests, over which they have total control. In the MOOC, the facilitators aggregated the conversations on a daily basis via a mass email, took a few really good posts (in their opinion), and advanced the conversation by asking more questions and pointing the discussions in relevant directions. Their choice of good posts included both the pro and the con of topics of connectivism and connected learning. Periodically the participants would see a post by the teachers responding to a student’s post — always on Moodle since that was the basic platform for the course. - Christopher Allen