what is a DOCC?

A DOCC is a Distributed Open Collaborative Course.  It represents a feminist retooling of the popular genre of networked learning called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that have been adopted by many higher education institutions in the US. A MOOC is typically created by one or two instructors as a course to be offered to a massive number of students by a brand-name institution, or through a third-party mediating institution, such as Coursera, Udacity, or EdX.

Who Created the DOCC?

Participants in FemTechNet collaborated to develop this alternative genre of a networked learning course that exemplifies feminist principles and pedagogical methods that support decentralized and collaborative forms of learning. A DOCC is built on the understanding that expertise is distributed throughout networks, among participants situated in diverse institutional contexts, within diverse material, geographic, and national settings, and who embody and perform diverse identities (as teachers, as students, as media-makers, as activists, as trainers, as members of various public groups, for example).

Key principles of a DOCC:

    • Recognizes and engages expertise DISTRIBUTED throughout a network;
    • Affirms that there are many ways and methods of LEARNING;
    • Embodies COLLABORATIVE peer-to-peer communication modes and learning activities;
    • Respects DIVERSITY, SPECIFICITY, and DIFFERENCES among people and in bandwidth across networks;
    • Encourages the collaborative creation of an HISTORICAL archive;

Enacts a collaborative EXPERIMENT in the use of online pedagogies.