As a participant in the How to Teach Online MOOC, I have to say that that I am enjoying myself immensely.  As an experienced online instructor of almost 14 years, I know that technological innovation flows like a river.  It never stops, and in my experience, one can never completely master it. 
   Many seminars and training sessions tend to focus on the newest and greatest tools to come on the scene or the mechanics of this or that LMS with little regard to the big questions of why do we want to teach online and what learning objectives we hope to achieve with the coolest new toy being introduced.  The emphasis on thinking about these and other important questions in the activities within TOMOOC has been refreshing and invigorating.
   There certainly has been no shortage of discussions of new methodologies and technologies.  The use of Flipboard, Audacity, Pinterest, Powtoons, Jing, Wordle, and many others by my instructors, colleagues, and fellow participants has been inspiring and instructional.  But the discussions on Why We Teach Online, The Human Touch, Best Practices, and Building Rapport have been direct to the heart of the matters at hand in designing and implementing an online class.  Even after 38 years of teaching and several advanced degrees in education and psychology I am thinking in new ways about my teaching habits and how I help others learn more about online teaching and learning as an online learning coordinator.

  Happily the typical misguided emphasis on the need to address students' learning styles has been absent.  Instead, discussions such as Olliver Dreon's on The What, the How, and the Why Student's Learn address the need to thoughtfully plan what we want students to do with the material we are learning and to design modules to reflect this need for multiple modes of engagement.  
  Without these important reflections and the resulting understanding of the need to artfully blend robust learning activities while engaging students in meaningful ways, we not only run the risk of failing to successfully translate our message from the traditional classroom to the much different environment of the virtual classroom, but we may actually be putting our institutions at risk if this reflection does not result in the creation of  a course with truly interactive features that go beyond the mere use of periodic and student-initiated emails.  Although the concept of "substantive interaction" has not been adequately defined as yet, It is a one of the features that differentiates a distance learning class from a correspondence class as defined by the U.S. Department of Education.  Institutions have begun to see the importance of this element of online learning not only as an accreditation issue, but the true essence of what newer technologies can  do for remote learning.