Moocs, and the man leading the UK's charge. Twenty months ago, Simon Nelson was shown a picture of a Highland cow, known in Gaelic as a kyloe. It was the Open University's code name for a secret project which, according to some accounts, will revolutionise higher education, making it available to millions across the world at zero cost. Today, Nelson, whose previous job at the BBC involved launching iPlayer, heads FutureLearn, a company that, 11 months after it opened for business, has 450,000 learners studying courses from 40 leading universities, 10 of them overseas including two in China.
The subjects range from dentistry to Shakespeare, archaeology to cancer, the Higgs boson to 15th-century England. Many more students and courses will follow, Nelson says. "We have just built the foundations. FutureLearn is the first big British venture into Moocs (hence the OU's cow, geddit?) The sceptics are almost as numerous as the enthusiasts. Nelson doesn't accept most of the criticisms but also distances himself from some of the hype. MOOC Development Advice from Instructors that Have ‘Been-There-Done-That’
The Pedagogy of MOOCs | Paul Stacey. The Pedagogy of MOOCs May 11, 2013, 12:08 pm Filed under: Creative Commons, Innovation, MOOC, Open Educational Resources (OER) | Tags: Coursera, DS106, edX, Learning and Knowledge Analytics, NovoEd, OpenupEd, pedagogy, PLENK, Social Media & Open Education, Udacity There is a great deal of energy, enthusiasm, and change happening in today’s education sector. Existing and new education providers are leveraging the Internet, ICT infrastructure, digital content, open licensing, social networking, and interaction to create new forms of education. Open Educational Resources (OER) (including open textbooks), Open Access, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have all gained traction as significant drivers of education innovation. MOOCs in particular are stimulating widespread discussion around the potential to reach and serve hundreds of thousands of learners who would otherwise not have access to education.
Like all of you I’ve been tracking MOOC’s with great interest. Be as open as possible. Citing » Study Skills Extra. HighWire Free Online Full-text Articles.