5 Free Educational Technology MOOCs for the New Year. MOOCs, or Massively Open Online Courses are the next generation of online courses. Completely free, MOOCs are hosted by universities who guide learners through a wide range of different subjects. MOOCs allow you to interact with other individuals to talk about the course, and some universities often give a certificate of participation at the end of the course. In the New Year, there are some great courses that you can choose from to improve your online teaching and educational technology skills. Here are the best of the bunch: 1.
This Canvas MOOC, hosted by the University of Hull looks at using Minecraft in education, and helps teachers gamify learning experiences using the popular game. 2. Blended learning has been a popular way of moving instruction from the traditional chalk and talk style teaching, to a more reflexive, discursive way of teaching. 3. 4. 5. TPD Approved Course List. How (Not) to Design a MOOC: Course Design Scenarios From 4 xMOOCs. This post examines four MOOCs completed as a student then de-briefed from a course design perspective—I share insights into what worked and what didn’t for the purpose of helping educators create better online learning experiences.
I recently completed two MOOCs on the edX platform that are part of a mini-series on education policy. The courses are great examples of how higher education institutions misuse the MOOC format by using traditional teaching methods that end up falling flat. I debrief the two MOOCs from a course design perspective and share why they were sub par, uninspiring. I also describe two other MOOCs that provided exemplary learning experiences.
The two pairs of MOOCs provide instructive examples of contrasting course design approaches. This post follows “How to Make Bad Discussion Questions Better: Using a Case Study of an edX MOOC” the first MOOC of the mini-series “Saving Schools: History, Politics, and Policy in U.S. Education”. Rigor: Course rigor was low. How (Not) to Design a MOOC: Course Design Scenarios From Four xMOOCs. How to choose your next (Or first?) MOOC. As MOOCs began to proliferate it was clear that services would emerge which would make it easier to find those of interest to potential learners. MOOC providers are now making data about their courses available through RSS feeds and APIs so it’s possible to harvest those and develop tools to allow people to find and review courses more easily.
But what if you want to build in MOOC study as part of your professional development? You might need your manager to allow you to take time off or your company to pay for the certification. Last week I met with two brothers from South Africa, now based in London, who are developing a system to enable just that: Michael and Greg Howe from GroupMOOC. I was acting as a mentor for the Open Education Challenge – a European incubation programme offering mentoring, coaching and investment to some of the most innovative education start-ups worldwide. GroupMOOC is well-designed and useful. How to Build a Better MOOC. The Real Revolution in Online Education Isn't MOOCs.
Data is confirming what we already know: recruiting is an imprecise activity, and degrees don’t communicate much about a candidate’s potential and fit. Employers need to know what a student knows and can do. Something is clearly wrong when only 11% of business leaders — compared to 96% of chief academic officers — believe that graduates have the requisite skills for the workforce. It’s therefore unlikely that business leaders are following closely what’s going on in higher education. Even the latest hoopla around massive open online courses (MOOCs) amounts to more of the same: academics designing courses that correspond with their own interests rather than the needs of the workforce, but now doing it online.
But there is a new wave of online competency-based learning providers that has absolutely nothing to do with offering free, massive, or open courses. It’s called online competency-based education, and it’s going to revolutionize the workforce. Competencies themselves are nothing new. Fill Your New Kindle, iPad, iPhone, etc with Free eBooks, Movies, Audio Books, Online Courses #edtech. Are Professors Abandoning Technology? By Harry Keller Editor, Science Education According to US News & World Report, “[P]rofessors say they don’t have enough help to use this technology effectively, haven’t seen results from it, and fear that the cost savings administrators keep insisting that technology will bring could mean their own careers are on the line.”
Just take a moment to break this sentence down and understand what’s being asserted here. Professors don’t have enough help to use the technology. This comment implies that the technologies under consideration do not have an easily used interface. Good technology should not require any but the most rudimentary training that you can receive from, for example, watching a video. Professors haven’t seen results from it. Professors fear losing their jobs to technology.
Later on, the article states, “One of the most common complaints from faculty is that much of this technology creates more work, not less….” Such technologies should not even be considered in education. Create Effective Mobile Training Courses With These 8 Simple Tips. Learning when and where learners want is one of the most significant benefits of eLearning, and the best way to achieve this is by offering them mobile training courses. But how can you quickly create effective mobile training courses without spending a great deal of time or money on the process? In this article you'll find a number of tips that can help you to quickly create effective mobile training courses. Mobile device usage is on the rise, as is mobile training courses. This means that eLearning professionals in the corporate sector are transitioning to mobile training course design and development. Create a detailed mobile learning course outline. By using these straightforward tips, you can quickly create effective mobile training courses that meet their learning goals and give your audience the opportunity to access invaluable information when and where they need it the most.
Do you want to develop your mobile training strategy and you don’t know where to start from? The Critical Importance of Building Social Elements into Your Online Courses. While Online Learning has created opportunity for many students who would otherwise find it highly impractical to pursue their education further, one of the down sides of this type of learning is limited social interaction. Social networking constructs can play a powerful role in helping to fill the social gap that exists where regular face-to-face interaction is absent. Building a sense of community and increasing social presence can be an excellent aid keeping distance learners engaged and encourage their success. The Building Community and Interaction Online page on GWU’s University Teaching & Learning Center Page gets us thinking about the value of a sense of community in the online learning environment (The George Washington University): “Online education can be so much more than the self-paced, “correspondence course” that you might first envision.
Central to this idea is the need to create a community of learners in your online course. Enabling Social Learning Empirical Evidence. 10 Free Courses for Professionals You Can Take Online. A number of leading universities offer free courses for professionals to hone their skills. Universities offer a wide variety of courses in different disciplines such as business management, mathematics, life sciences, humanities and more. You can learn a new skill that will complement your profession for no cost. Many of these courses have video lessons with self-assessment quizzes. Here is a list of the 10 most useful free online courses for working professionals. 1.
This free course provides an introduction into the fundamentals of computer programming. 2. The course covers the basic principles of clinical psychology for children and young people. 3. You will understand the fundamentals of marketing with focus on three modules namely: customer centricity, branding strategies and new market entry. 4. You will learn several fundamental exploratory techniques used for summarizing data. 5. Social Entrepreneurship is required to solve many of world’s current problems. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.