The document summarizes Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), including their origins, evolution, types (cMOOCs and xMOOCs), platforms (Coursera, Udacity, edX), pedagogical foundations, university partnerships, experiments, outcomes, impacts, sustainability models, and questions for college leaders and faculty to consider before engaging with MOOCs.
1. Open Ed and MOOCs
Overview ~ Examples ~ Outcomes
Foothill College
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
12:30 – 1:30 pm
2. What is a MOOC?
• Massive
– Large scale, unlimited or very high enrollment (+50,000)
– Diversity of participants due to worldwide and nationwide availability
• Open
– Typically no cost to enroll and acknowledgement of completion
• Fees for academic credit with student identify authentication and proctored testing
– Student coursework may be shared for peer assessment
– Typically registration required to enable tracking
• Online
– Rich multimedia, interactivity and communications via Internet and mobile devices
• Course
– Structured learning content via video and text; some assign textbooks
– Objective assessments usually auto-graded, some peer-graded assessment
– Affiliated with a university and/or faculty member
– Usually for a set duration
– Typically teacher-led
3. Meaning of MOOC Keeps Evolving…
• 2008
– Term coined by Dave Cormier
• Free course through University of Manitoba:
"Connectivism and Connective Knowledge"
• Enrollment of 2,300
– cMOOC
• Original MOOCs were based on connectivist theory
• Emphasizes that learning and knowledge emerge from a network of connections
• 2011
– Stanford University offered 3 computer science courses free to general public via
Internet
• 100,000+ enrollments in each
• Sebastian Thrun’s course: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
• 2012
– Emergence of xMOOC
• Well-financed providers, associated with top universities
• Coursera
• Udacity
• edX
4. cMOOC vs. xMOOC
• cMOOC
– Way of learning in a networked world
• Connectivist model
• Participatory
• Distributed
• Supports lifelong networked learning
• An event around which people who care about a topic and get together and work
and talk about it in a structured way
• Way to connect in collaborate while developing skills and acquiring knowledge
• xMOOC
– Free courses offered by universities and colleges
– Classes taught online to large numbers of students
– Minimal involvement by professors
– Typically, students watch short video lectures and complete assignments that are graded
either by machines or by other students; discussion forums
7. Pedagogical Foundations
• Efficacy of online learning
– Online learning methods at least as effective as face-to-face learning
– Hybrid methods more effective than either method alone
• Importance of retrieval and testing for learning
– Use of interactive exercises and retrieval questions after each short video
• Mastery Learning
– Give immediate feedback
– Give students multiple opportunities to learn the content and demonstrate their knowledge
• Peer assessments
– Provide a valuable learning experience for the students doing the grading
– Crowd-sourcing, many ratings combined combine them to obtain a highly accurate score
• Active learning in the classroom (flipped classroom)
– Move lecture online to allow more classroom/in-person time for interactive engagement between faculty
and students, and between students and their peers
8. Coursera
62 Universities Have Partnered With Coursera
Berklee College of Music Pennsylvania State University University of California, San Francisco
Brown University Princeton University University of California, Santa Cruz
California Institute of Technology Rice University University of Colorado Boulder
California Institute of the Arts Rutgers University University of Copenhagen
Case Western Reserve University Sapienza University of Rome University of Florida
Columbia University Stanford University University of Geneva
Curtis Institute of Music Technical University of Denmark (DTU) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Duke University Technische Universität München (Technical University of London International Programmes
École Polytechnique University of Munich) University of Maryland, College Park
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Tecnológico de Monterrey University of Melbourne
Emory University The Chinese University of Hong Kong University of Michigan
Georgia Institute of Technology The Hong Kong University of Science and University of Minnesota
Hebrew University of Jerusalem Technology University of Pennsylvania
IE Business School The University of British Columbia University of Pittsburgh
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai The University of Edinburgh University of Rochester
Johns Hopkins University The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of Toronto
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München The University of Tokyo University of Virginia
National Taiwan University Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México University of Washington
National University of Singapore Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona University of Wisconsin–Madison
Northwestern University Universiteit Leiden Vanderbilt University
Ohio State University University of California, Irvine Wesleyan University
University of California, San Diego
11. Udacity
Learn by doing
Highly interactive, project-based exercises
The lecture is dead
Bite-sized videos make learning fun
Awesome instructors
Industry experts and passionate educators
Real world examples
Always learn in context, plus get virtual "field trips"
Active community
Forums and meetups with curious, engaged peers to support learning
Academic and career advancement
Certificates of completion to show what you know
14. Experiments
• Cuyahoga Community College
– Funded by $50,000 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant
to develop a basic skills math MOOC
• San Jose State University
– edX: Blended or hybrid version engineering class
– Udacity: Jointly offer three $150 courses
15. MOOC Missteps by Coursera
• Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application
– 41,000 enrollment
– Georgia Institute of Technology
– Coursera cancelled class after one week in February 2013
• Due to student complaints about technical glitches and confusing instructions
• Microeconomics for Managers
– University of California at Irvine
– 37,000 enrollments
– Fewer than 2 percent have been actively engaged in discussions
– Instructor quit teaching half-way through 10 week session
• Bothered by “uninformed or superfluous responses to the questions posed in the
discussion forums hobbled the serious students in their learning”
• Frustrated over his attempts to get the students to obtain and read as much of the
textbook as possible
17. Sustainability & Business Models
• xMOOC partnerships
– Universities and colleges
– ACE
• Fees for student identify verification and proctored
testing
– “Signature Track” at Coursera
– Pearson VUE Testing
• Employer leads for job applicants
• Lead generation for colleges and universities
• Loss leader or freemium model
– MOOC2Degree: first for-credit course free
via Canvas Network
18. MOOC Outcomes
• Increased access to knowledge worldwide
• Attention to online learning
• Experimentation and missteps on grand scale
• Catalyst
– Dialogue about online pedagogy
– Challenging traditional lecture-based
and textbook-centric instruction
– Revitalizing credit-by-examination efforts
19. Impact on Higher Education
Pro and Con
• Moving toward competency-based models
• Credit-by-examination options
• Competition for faculty
• Democratizing access to college level courses
• Faculty development
• Student remediation
• Pedagogical innovation
20. Questions to Ask Before Partnering with MOOCs
• Terms of Use
• Quality criteria
• Student identity authentication and verification
• Infrastructure and delivery platform
• Tech support
• Branding
• Accessibility
• Intellectual property
21. Questions for College Leaders to Ask
Before Partnering with MOOCs
• What’s in it for my institution?
– Lead generation to increase enrollment
– Marketing
– Innovation
• What is our institutional capacity
to deliver a high-quality MOOC?
• Where do MOOCs fit into our
institution’s e-learning strategy?
22. Questions for Faculty to Ask
Before Teaching a MOOC
• What’s in it for me?
• How much and what type
of support will I receive?
• Criteria for determining sufficient quality?
• Intellectual property and licensing?
Notas do Editor
A lot of fuss has been made about MOOCs (massive `open online courses) over the past year but little has been shared about how community colleges can make the most of them. Generally, MOOCs are considered to be classes delivered online and available to thousands of students at a time, usually for free and for no credit. They incorporate principles from several learning theories, such as large group instruction, collaborative learning, and peer-to-peer learning. MOOCs such as edX, Udacity, and Coursera differ from typical online courses in other significant ways, however. Most notably, MOOCs have served as a catalyst for challenging traditional lecture-based and textbook-centric instruction and revitalizing credit-by-examination efforts.
Meaning of term – MOOC – keeps evolvingTerm coined by Dave Cormier in 2008MOOCs originated about 2008 within the open educational resources (or OER) movementMany of the original courses were based on connectivist theory, emphasizing that learning and knowledge emerge from a network of connectionsSebastian Thrun free computer science classes offered in 2011 through Stanford University.[3] As of 4 February 2013, Udacity has 20 active courses.[4] Thrun has stated he hopes half a million students will enroll, after an enrollment of 160,000 students in the predecessor course at Stanford, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence,[5] and 90,000 students had enrolled in the initial two classes as of March 2012.2012 became "the year of the MOOC" as several well-financed providers, associated with top universities, emerged, including Coursera, Udacity, and edXhttp://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/MOOC_Emergence_Disruption_and_Higher_Education.htmlDave Cormier University of Prince Edward Islandstevendownes to the national research council canadageorgesiemens then at the university of Toronto, now Athabasca Universityhttp://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/MOOC_MOOC.htmlThe March of the MOOCs: Monstrous Open Online CoursesJuly 23, 2012 | Filed in: Open EducationbyJesse Stommelhttp://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/MOOC_MOOC.html
Meaning keeps evolving as it is appropriated and co-optedTerm coined by Dave Cormier along with Stephen Downs and George SiemensMeaning keeps evolving as it is appropriated and co-optedduring a course called "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" that was presented to 25 tuition-paying students in Extended Education at the University of Manitoba in addition to 2,300 other students from the general public who took the online class free of charge.
cMOOC – constructivist, building networksxMOOC – content curated, sent to individual student, not about building connections or networks
In the fall of 2011 Stanford University launched 3 courses, each of which had an enrollment of about 100,000.[14] Following the publicity and high enrollment numbers of these course, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng launched Coursera. By leveraging technology already developed at Stanford, Coursera was able to launch two courses – machine learning by Andrew Ng and databases by Jennifer Widom, which were the first two of Stanford's MOOC classes to go live. Coursera subsequently announced partnerships with several other universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, and The University of Michigan.Concerned about the commercialization of online education, MIT launched the MITx not-for-profit later in the fall, an effort to develop a free and open online platform. The inaugural course, 6.002x, launched in March 2012. Harvard joined the initiative, renamed edX, that spring, and University of California, Berkeley joined in the summer. The edX initiative now also includes the University of Texas System, Wellesley College and the Georgetown University.In November, 2012, the first high school MOOC was launched by the University of Miami Global Academy, UM's online high school. The course became available for high school students preparing for the SAT Subject Test in Biology, providing access for students from any high school. About the same time Wedubox, first big MOOC in Spanish, started with the beta course including 1,000 professors.[15]As MOOCs have evolved, there appear to be two distinct types: those that emphasize the Connectivist philosophy, and those that resemble more traditional and well-financed courses, such as those offered by Coursera and edX. To distinguish between the two, Stephen Downes proposed the terms "cMOOC" and "xMOOC".[16] The evolution of MOOCs has also seen innovation in instructional materials. An emerging trend in MOOCs is the use of nontraditional textbooks such as graphic novels to improve students' knowledge retention.[17]As of February, 2013 dozens of universities had affiliated with MOOCs including many international institutionshttp://venture-lab.org/Venture Lab is one of the primary platforms used by Stanford University to offer free online courses. Venture Lab's philosophy is to make online courses more fun and engaging by making them more experiential, interactive, and collaborative. On our platform, you will not only have access to lectures by Stanford professors, but you will also be able to form teams with people around the world and work on projects that have an impact. Our first class on technology entrepreneurship attracted around 40,000 students from over a hundred and fifty countries. We are thrilled to offer more courses across a wide range of academic disciplines, and we invite you to join Venture Lab today!
https://www.coursera.org/about/pedagogy
https://www.edx.orgmission is to transform learning and to give a world-class education to everyone, everywhere, regardless of gender, income or social statusnot-for-profit enterprise of its founding partners Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyfeatures learning designed specifically for interactive study via the web research how students learn and how technology can transform learning–both on-campus and worldwide
no required textbooks for Udacity courses, and the course content does not follow any textbook.Udacity classes are always available once they have launched. all classes are open enrollment, which enables you to take the course on your own timeUdacity hereby grants you a license in and to the Educational Content under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ and successor locations for such license) (the "CC License"), provided that, in each case, the Educational Content is specifically marked as being subject to the CC LicenseParticipation in Online Courses From time to time, Udacity may offer you the opportunity to participate in an online course on or through the Website. If you desire to participate in a course, you will be asked to provide us with certain information necessary to conduct such a course. This information may include, among other things, your name and email address. Udacity, or its third party service providers, may, for instance, collect certain information from you in conjunction with assignments, exams and other assessments related to the online course. For example, as part of a proctored exam for a course, Udacity (or its third party service providers) may collect certain information from you in order to (a) verify or authenticate your identity or submissions made by you, such as a signature for a test or assignment log, a photograph or recording of you (e.g., using a webcam) or information included on a photo identification card or document, or (b) monitor your performance during an exam to confirm that you are abiding by the applicable test rules or requirements (e.g., confirming that you are not using prohibited resources). Udacity may also collect information from you or about your performance or accomplishments related to the course, such as quiz/ exam scores, grades, teacher evaluations and other evaluations of your performance or accomplishments. Participation in Online Courses We use the Personally Identifiable Information that we collect from you when you participate in an online course through the Website for managing and processing purposes, including but not limited to tracking attendance, progress and completion of an online course. As part of our management and processing of the online course, we will use certain Personally Identifiable Information to administer exams and other assessments for the online course. For example, as part of a proctored exam for the course, Udacity may use certain information collected from you in order to verify your identity, or to monitor your performance during the exam to confirm that you are abiding by the applicable testing rules or requirements. We may share Personally Identifiable Information that we collect from you when you participate in an online course with the particular educational partner (e.g., such as a university) that developed or offered the online course and the instructor(s) who taught, managed or otherwise oversaw the course. For example, if you are taking a course through a university, we may share Personally Identifiable Information about you and your performance with the university to report on your progress in the course. Personally Identifiable Information shared with our educational partners will be subject to the privacy policies and procedures of such partners. Also, we may archive this information and/or use it for future communications with you. https://www.udacity.com/
UdemyA for-profit platform that lets anyone set up a course.The company encourages its instructors to charge a small fee, with the revenue split between instructor and company. Authors themselves, more than a few of them with no academic affiliation, teach many of the courses.http://www.open.edu/openlearn/
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/21/coursera-and-edx-add-universities-and-hope-expand-global-reach#ixzz2NObkFPzGInside Higher Ed
http://nickcowie.com/copyright/ photo credit: nick cowie41,000 students over the weekend saying in its entirety: “We want all students to have the highest quality learning experience. For this reason, we are temporarily suspending the ‘Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application’ course in order to make improvements. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. We will inform you when the course will be reoffered.”The course may have been doomed from the start. One might question whether online education, currently in its infancy, has identifiable “fundamentals” particular to its platform. Qualities necessary for good teaching — including passion for and knowledge of the subject matter, responsiveness to student needs and so on — are not distinctive to online instruction.Fundamentals aside, when it came to “planning and application” the course failed on both counts. The trouble started when the instructor, Fatimah Wirth of Georgia Tech, asked her students to divide into groups using Google documents. This simple task grows complicated when you have 41,000 students. Multiple authors began to delete rows and columns, erasing information other students posted. Wirth quickly had an online mutiny on her hands. Videos she sent the class in an attempt to clarify her instructions engendered more confusion. Though the course description promised students would learn “online learning pedagogy, online course design … online assessments, managing an online class, [and] web toolsProfessor Leaves a MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over TeachingFebruary 18, 2013, 4:56 amBy Steve KolowichStudents regularly drop out of massive open online courses before they come to term. For a professor to drop out is less common.But that is what happened on Saturday in “Microeconomics for Managers,” a MOOC offered by the University of California at Irvine through Coursera. Richard A. McKenzie, an emeritus professor of enterprise and society at the university’s business school, sent a note to his students announcing that he would no longer be teaching the course, which was about to enter its fifth week.“Because of disagreements over how to best conduct this course, I’ve agreed to disengage from it, with regret,” Mr. McKenzie wrote.Mr. McKenzie’s departure marks the second debacle for Coursera this month. Another of the company’s courses, “Fundamentals of Online Education,” was suspended indefinitely after technical and design issues made it too dysfunctional to continue. That course has not restarted.Mr. McKenzie’s microeconomics course, however, will continue—just without him. “The very able course managers have everything they need to post the remaining lectures, course assignments, and discussion problems, week by week, as scheduled,” the professor wrote. “However, I will not be involved.”Daphne Koller, one of Coursera’s founders, said by e-mail that Mr. McKenzie had not been “removed” from his role and that Coursera officials had not been in contact with the professor in recent weeks—suggesting that whatever “disagreements” led to Mr. McKenzie’s resignation had occurred at Irvine.Gary Matkin, the dean for distance education at Irvine, said the problem had stemmed from Mr. McKenzie’s reluctance to loosen his grip on students who he thought were not learning well in the course.“In Professor McKenzie’s view, for instance, uninformed or superfluous responses to the questions posed in the discussion forums hobbled the serious students in their learning,” said Mr. Matkin in an e-mail.Irvine officials, however, “felt that the course was very strong and well designed,” he said, “and that it would, indeed, meet the learning objectives of the large audience, including both those interested only in dipping into the subject and those who were seriously committed” to completing the course.Ms. Koller said that teaching a MOOC “can, indeed, be a challenge to deal with for someone used to the much more uniform population of a typical university setting.”At least 37,000 people had registered for the course, according to Mr. McKenzie, although the professor noted in a post on the course’s “announcements” page that “fewer than 2 percent have been actively engaged in discussions.”Mr. McKenzie did not immediately respond to an e-mail from The Chronicle requesting comment.But posts from the professor on the course’s “announcements” page suggest that Mr. McKenzie had spent a great deal of time attempting to respond to student feedback—an effort chronicled in the many addendums on “housekeeping issues” appended to his notes on course content.The professor apparently had faced criticism from students who objected to his decision to assign a textbook that was not available free. Mr. McKenzie also had heard complaints about how much work he assigned.“I will not give on standards,” wrote Mr. McKenzie in one post, “and you also should not want me to, or else the value of any ‘certification’ won’t be worth the digits it is written with.”http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professor-leaves-a-mooc-in-mid-course-in-dispute-over-teaching/42381
Reviews of xMOOCs at CourseTalk - http://coursetalk.org/
MOOC2degree A consortium of seven US universities under the coordination of Academic Partnerships are already on board and intend to use MOOCs as a shop window for their regular programs. The MOOCs will be free, open to all and will actually give you credits if you sign up for the full degree program. Whether students who do not register to continue will be able to keep their credits is not clear to me but the business case here is perfectly clear and justified if it can help the university recruit more students.
Learning as Performance: MOOC Pedagogy and On-ground Classes”,http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/MOOC_Emergence_Disruption_and_Higher_Education.html