Week 5: A new classification for MOOCs by Gráinne Conole. Gráinne Conole is Professor of learning innovation at the University of Leicester. Her research interests include the use, integration and evaluation of Information and Communication Technologies and e-learning and the impact of technologies on organisational change.
She regularly blogs on www.e4innovation.com and is @gconole on Twitter. She has successfully secured funding from the EU, HEFCE, ESRC, JISC and commercial sponsors). She was awarded an HEA National Teaching Fellowship in 2012. This post argues that the current discourse around the concept of xMOOCs (primarily based around interaction with content and essentially adopting a behaviourist learning approach), and cMOOCs (which focus on harnessing the power of social media and interaction with peers, adopting a connectivist learning approach), is an inadequate way of describing the variety of MOOCs and the ways in which learners engage with them.
What are MOOCs actually aiming at? Discussing MOOCs and quality, Downes argues that: Harvard and MIT try to build a higher education in the cloud. Harvard and MIT are among a group of universities planning to spend tens of millions of dollars on "massively open online courses (MOOCs)," a new type of higher education teaching that can include thousands of students in a single lecture. The two institutions have already launched an online platform called edX to offer these courses. (Stanford has been a leader in online education as well, and its Class2Go platform has seen edX integration.) But whether MOOCs are actually the future of education still seems to be a point of confusion and concern among professors. In a large profile of educators and administrations involved in the educational shift, The New Yorker explores whether pedagogy at a higher level is more about the weekly lectures that MOOCs emulate or about placing students in an intellectual environment with face-to-face connections.
MOOCs and the Future of Higher Education. MOOCs: 50+ years of open education for massive audiences. MOOCs: 50+ years of open education for massive audiences. Should education be seen as a free good? How about MOOCs. I have been pondering on this important question since the inception of OERs in the early 2000s. In this post , Andre Dua says: it’s equally important that education not be seen as a free good, because it will always take big investments to attract and retain the talent needed to develop world-class courses and materials.
Unless new online platforms are associated with meaningful revenue streams—from textbooks, tutoring, proctored exams, per-degree fees, or creative alternatives not yet imagined—the model will prove self-defeating. MOOCs have been viewed as freebies to a certain extent. Here I am posting part of it for sharing: I am in favor of open, free education. Here is a nice update on MOOCs. Like this: Like Loading... Coursera integra 10 nuevas universidades y prueba el “blended learning” Noticias nuevamente llegan desde Coursera, y está vez con un anuncio lleno de matices. No solo ha sumando nuevos colaboradores a su plataforma de MOOCs con la integración de 10 universidades estatales de EE.UU, sino que está apostando por dar un paso más allá, con esta modalidad de aprendizaje online.
La idea es que no solamente estas nuevas universidades contribuyan con sus propios MOOCs, sino que lleven a cabo una especie de prueba piloto: implementar los cursos online que se imparten a través de Coursera a sus propias aulas. Esto dará la posibilidad de hacer un seguimiento de cerca de este aprendizaje combinado, así como mostrar los pro y contra de este modelo al que denominan “blended learning”. Esta es una tendencia que ha sido adoptada por diferentes instituciones en EE.UU, lo cual ha generado polémica y tema de debate. Vía: Blog Coursera. MOOCs and Beyond - eLearning Papers 33 released. Issue number 33 of eLearning Papers focuses on the challenges and future of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a trend in education that has skyrocketed since 2008.
Guest edited by Dr Yishay Mor , Senior Lecturer at the Open University's Institute of Educational Technology (UK), and Tapio Koskinen , Director of the eLearning Papers Editorial Board, MOOCs and Beyond seeks to both generate debate and present a variety of perspectives about this new popular learning model. The emergence of MOOCs poses a set of challenges to the educational community. This new special issue of eLearning Papers aims to shed light on the way these online courses affect both education institutions and learners, and tries to find answers to some of the questions confronted by teachers and researchers.
This issue includes 4 In-Depth articles and 6 From the Field ones: In-depth articles From the field articles. California: Do MOOCs Deserve Credit? Distance Learning | Feature California: Do MOOCs Deserve Credit? In February, California Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg introduced a bill that would open the door for massive open online courses (MOOCs), such as Coursera and Udacity, to offer courses for credit to public college and university students in the state. Since its introduction, Senate Bill 520 (SB 520) has generated significant controversy, and a petition by the Berkeley Faculty Association opposing the bill has collected more than 1,500 signatures. The ProblemThe goal of SB 520 is to help more students squeeze through the bottleneck of gateway courses required for their programs, a problem that is particularly bad at California Community Colleges (CCC), where 85 percent of courses in fall 2012 had wait lists, according to information from Senator Steinberg's office.
Deconstructing my (dis)engagement with MOOCs part 2. Following from my early post, I’ve attempted to use the classifiers outlined in the #lak13 paper on disengagement in MOOCs, in the context of my experiences. Obviously I’ve modified things a bit as what I’m doing is more of a self reflection of my personal context -so I’ve made the labels past tense. I’m also doing a presentation next week at the University of Southampton on the learner perspective of MOOCs and thought that these classifications would be a good way to talk about my experiences. Firstly here are the MOOCs I’ve signed up for over ( the ? Years are when I was aware but not active in MOOCs) MOOCs I've took! Now with the course engagement labels My MOOC engagement with labels And finally aligned to trajectory labels My MOOC participation using trajectory labels A big caveat, not completing, disengaging and dropping out does not mean I didn’t learn from each he experience and context of each course.
More to come next week including the full presentation. Taxonomy of 8 types of MOOC. We're not payin' because this guy... ...this guy's a fuckin' mooc. But I didn't say nothin'. And we don't pay moocs. A mook? I'm a mooc? Yeah. What's a mooc? I don't know. You can't call me a mooc. I can't? No! Scorcese's Mean Streets (1973) What are MOOCs? “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed” said William Gibson, that is certainly true of MOOCs. Taxonomy based on pedagogy To this end, it is important to define a taxonomy of MOOCs not from the institutional but the pedagogic perspective, by their learning functionality, not by their origins. TransferMOOCs madeMOOCs synchMOOCs asynchMOOCs adaptiveMOOCs groupMOOCs connectivistMOOCS miniMOOCSs 1. transferMOOCs Transfer MOOCs literally take existing courses and decant them into a MOOC platform, on the pedagogic assumption that they are teacher-led and many rely on a ‘name’ of the institution or academic to attract learners. 2. madeMOOCs 3. synchMOOCs 4. asynchMOOCs 5. adaptiveMOOCs 6. groupMOOCs 7. connectivistMOOCS 8. miniMOOCSs.
5 Potential Ways MOOCs Will Evolve. In order to understand where MOOCs are heading (at least taking a stab at guessing their future), it’s important to know what the stated goals are. In case you’re still new to MOOCs, here’s a helpful rundown of the guiding principles behind MOOCs : Aggregation. The whole point of a connectivist MOOC is to provide a starting point for a massive amount of content to be produced in different places online, which is later aggregated as a newsletter or a web page accessible to participants on a regular basis. This is in contrast to traditional courses, where the content is prepared ahead of time. The second principle is remixing, that is, associating materials created within the course with each other and with materials elsewhere.
Re-purposing of aggregated and remixed materials to suit the goals of each participant. An earlier list (2005) of Connectivist principles from Siemens also informs the pedagogy behind MOOCs: Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions. How EdX Plans to Earn, and Share, Revenue From Free Online Courses - Technology. By Steve Kolowich How can a nonprofit organization that gives away courses bring in enough revenue to at least cover its costs? That's the dilemma facing edX, a project led by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that is bringing in a growing number of high-profile university partners to offer massive open online courses, or MOOCs.
Two other major providers of MOOCs, Coursera and Udacity, are for-profit companies. While edX has cast itself as the more contemplative, academically oriented player in the field, it remains under pressure to generate revenue. "Even though we are a nonprofit, we have to become self-sustaining," said Anant Agarwal, president of edX. And developing MOOCs, especially ones that aspire to emulate the quality and rigor of traditional courses at top universities, is expensive. Harvard and MIT made an initial investment of $30-million each last year to start the edX effort.
According to Mr. Revenue Still a Puzzle. Peter Norvig: el aula de 100 000 estudiantes. A Quick Guide To The History Of MOOCs. This Is How Students Use School Websites 8.45K Views 0 Likes It's important to have a proper appearance online. So why are there so many unhelpful school websites out there? This infographic shares what students want. Why TED Talks Have Become So Popular 5.67K Views 0 Likes TED talks are useful and free ways to bring high-level thinking and through-provoking ideas into the classroom and your home.
Curso sobre Inteligecia Artificial. Advance Your Education With Free College Courses Online - Udacity. Daphne Koller: Lo que estamos aprendiendo de la educación en línea. Your Courses | Coursera. Universities Abroad Join MOOC Course Projects. Coursera commits to admitting only elite universities. If you wonder why your university hasn’t linked up with Coursera, the massively popular provider of free online classes, it may help to know the company is contractually obliged to turn away the vast majority of American universities.
The Silicon Valley-based company said to be revolutionizing higher education says in a contract obtained by Inside Higher Ed that it will “only” offer classes from elite institutions – the members of the Association of American Universities or “top five” universities in countries outside of North America – unless Coursera’s advisory board agrees to waive the requirement. The little-known contractual language appears in agreements Coursera signed with the 62 universities it partners with, including in a recently signed contract with the University of California at Santa Cruz, one of a handful of non-AAU universities on Coursera. The provision obligates the company, on paper at least, to give AAU members de facto preference. EdX has its own elitism. Una docena de MOOC o cursos online gratuitos para completar tu formación.
Todo parace indicar que 2013 será el año del despegue definitivo dentro del ámbito de la formación online, de los MOOC (cursos online abiertos masivos). Ya os hablé de estos cursos basados en contenidos online, principalmente de educación superior, que se imparten en varias plataformas gratuitas de e-learning y formación online, como Coursera. Desde que comenzase este fenómeno con el primer curso MOOC de la Universidad de Stanford sobre inteligencia artificial, en el que se matricularon 160.000 alumnos de 190 países, estos cursos se han convertido en un recurso muy interesante para completar nuestra formación.
Máxime en tiempos de crisis como los que nos toca afrontar y donde la formación seguirá siendo una de las pocas maneras de tener más opciones de acceder al mercado laboral o de reciclarnos. Además en el ámbito empresarial, los datos arrojan que la demanda de ‘e-learning’ aumenta en las empresas de manera sistemática. 1. Gamificación 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Coursera forced to call off a MOOC amid complaints about the course. Maybe it was inevitable that one of the new massive open online courses would crash. After all, MOOCs are being launched with considerable speed, not to mention hype.
But MOOC advocates might have preferred the collapse of a course other than the one that was suspended this weekend, one week into instruction: "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application. " Technology and design problems are largely to blame for the course's problems. And many students are angry that a course about online education -- let alone one offered by the Georgia Institute of Technology -- wouldn't have figured out the tech issues in advance, or been able to respond quickly once they became evident. Many of the problems related to the course's use of Google Docs to sign up for group discussions. Among the comments on blogs and Twitter: "Wowzers, 40,000 students signed up for considering google spreadsheets limit of 50 simultaneous editors ... not a good choice!
" MOOCs and Higher Education’s Non-Consumers. If Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are going to truly disrupt the higher education marketplace then non-consumers will need to play a critical role. Justin Reich outlines three categories of people currently underserved in the market and finds that given the diversity of interests involved, designing for all these populations might prove to be quite difficult.
A critical component to Clay Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation is the idea of the “non-consumer.” In most of the historical examples of disruption described by Christensen, disruptive innovators build products that served non-consumers, people underserved by the marketplace, and used these populations as a base for reshaping new markets for new products and services. Sony Walkmans, for instance, emerged in a marketplace for audio equipment dominated by people who bought HiFi systems.
(In writing this sentence, I am flooded by memories of dancing in my pajamas in my parents’ library to Thriller on vinyl.) Lessons Learned from MOOC´s experience. Researchers explore who is taking MOOCs and why so many drop out. The Professors Behind the MOOC Hype - Technology. U. of California faculty union says MOOCs undermine professors' intellectual property. Synthesising MOOC completion rates | MoocMoocher. What To Know About The Accreditation Of MOOCs And Online Learning. Stanford, Harvard Scholars Dissect Big Data. Learning Sciences and Learning Analytics: Time for a Marriage.
Dr. Keith Devlin: Can Massive Open Online Courses Make Up for an Outdated K-12 Education System?