The first installment (last Friday) was interesting and from the summary I see it plans to cover some RPG aspects that others may well find useful. The units consist of video lectures with links to supporting material and a fairly simple quiz at the end of each unit. Assignments are optional, discussion is strongly encouraged and the installments come out every Friday for the next 8 weeks - the lectures remain available so you can "catch up" if you join late.
Initially I thought maybe only other line authors would be interested, but having completed the first Chapter I think a lot of RPG players would find it useful
May not seem applicable at first but in a way, Ars Magica with its Troupe style play and interweaving Magi / Companions / Grogs elements actually fits the multi-layered episode format of similar shoes.
Can someone explain the principles behind that kind of website? Do we need to pay? if you miss (I have missed it!) you can still watch it or you need to be at the time it is done?
"MOOC" sites like this one offer free courses from universities, although usually at a level below the university's actual courses (but not always!). You don't need to pay, although there are sometimes for-pay options. For example, the biggest site, Coursera, offers a for-pay "Signature Track" that verifies your identity, thus allowing employers to reliably check that you've completed the coursework.
You can usually join after the start-date, but the course is built so that it has weekly assignments and progress so that joining in late will mean you'll be behind the rest of the class, which can hurt in your ability to participate in the forums/discussions, and also that you will often be unable to complete the assignments on time so won't get a "Certificate of Accomplishment" saying you successfully finished the course. That said, in many courses the weekly assignments have a long deadline so you can catch up and officially finish the course, and at any rate the certificate of accomplishment is not official (except of things like Coursera's signature track) so it doesn't matter for anything.
The principles underlying these projects are... unclear. They're mostly borne out of a desire to explore this new venue for education, that can reach tens and hundreds of thusands of students per class, worldwide. Professors are often passionate about sharing their work with the public, and MOOCs allow them to do this on an unprecedented scale. Universities fund all of this both because they want to humor their professors (and share their desire to make their research have impact), and because it's good publicity and a foothold in what has great promise to become a mainstay of future education. The MOOC companies themselves often are trying this out as an enterprise in public education, complete with research in the science of education, and are banking on the principle that if you have a large customer base you'll find some way to make enough money out of it.
That's how I see it, at least.
As for this specific course - I am sorry to say that so far I find it to canvass general approaches to storytelling in various media, rather than providing concrete tools to create and improve stories and storytelling, which is what I mostly need. Can't blame the course for this - it is what it is - but I just don't find the kind of overview it provides very useful.
