MOOCs are no panacea, but they can help improve learning (essay) Back in 2012, massive open online courses entered public consciousness accompanied by grand promises of revolution.
MOOC proponents, often backed by private venture capital, promised to make higher education more nimble and accessible than ever before. Three years in, at least, it hasn’t worked out that way. Our own assessment is that MOOC mania brought lots of hype, promising technology, some compelling if nascent science and broader recognition of a huge problem that no silver bullet can solve. Our own university began encouraging new experiments with online learning in 2012.
Two of us were at Stanford then, helping to produce massive open online courses based on recorded video lectures, multiple-choice questions and audience discussion, conveyed via the Internet to millions of people at no cost to them. Faculty members responded enthusiastically. No doubt about it, we contributed to MOOC mania. First, MOOCs are not college courses. The Big Idea That Can Revolutionize Higher Education: 'MOOC' - Laura McKenna. Massive open online courses combine the best of college -- exceptional instruction -- with the best of technology -- online interactive learning.
Is this the future of efficient, effective education? Reuters In the historic sweep of technology, higher education stands apart as a bastion of old-fashioned thinking. But in anticipation that the information revolution is coming for colleges, Ivy League colleges are competing to create online classes without the Ivy League price tag and without the Ivy League admission hurdles. Ci spazzerà via lo tsumani di Coursera? Propongo un RAP. E’ passato un anno dalla nascita di Coursera.
Basta andare sul sito o su Wikipedia per farsene un’idea. ROSSELLA DE VIVO - FORMAZIONE - MOOC. "MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE", LA NUOVA FRONTIERA DELL'E - LEARNING. SJSU MOOC Conference Keynote June 5. The MOOC Revolution That Wasn’t. Editor’s note: Dan Friedman is the co-founder of Thinkful.
Three years ago this week, Sebastian Thrun recorded his Stanford class on Artificial Intelligence, released it online to a staggering 180,000 students, and started a “revolution in higher education.” Soon after, Coursera, Udacity and others promised free access to valuable content, supposedly delivering a disruptive solution that would solve massive student debt and a struggling economy. Since then, over 8 million students have enrolled in their courses. This year, that revolution fizzled. Only half of those who signed up watched even one lecture, and only 4 percent stayed long enough to complete a course. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. As an online learner myself it’s hard to stay engaged: when I get home after a full day at work, the noble goal of learning new skills often is put aside with Netflix only a click away.
One-on-one mentorship was long ago found to be dramatically more effective than group instruction. Badges: A New Measure of Professional Development. Credentialing Badges: A New Measure of Professional Development Some higher ed institutions are experimenting with digital badges as a way to encourage and document learning among faculty and staff.
Badges are quickly becoming acceptable currency in the world of higher education. Purdue University, for example, known for developing and commercializing innovative applications such as Course Signals, has embraced badges with another Purdue Studio project: Passport, a system for creating, issuing and sharing digital badges for learning and assessment. Badges have also found a home with massive open online courses, enabling students to earn credentials for specific work even when they do not complete the entire course. And badges are not just for students. Typically, a digital image of a badge displays the name of the course and the date it was completed. Arizona State’s Mooc to offer enough credit to complete first year. University is pairing with edX in a move that has been described as ‘good for nobody’ A US university is to partner with a massive open online course provider to offer low-cost online courses that bear enough academic credit for students to complete their first year of undergraduate study.
Arizona State University is to work with edX, and from this autumn will offer a range of Moocs that will form part of what it is calling the Global Freshman Academy. By autumn next year, it is hoped that there will be enough courses available for students to complete their first year in full – although they will have to first pay $45 (£29) per course (which pays for identity verification but does rather limit the “openness” of the “Mooc”), and then what the university describes as “a small fee of no more than $200 per credit hour to get college credit”. This is roughly half the price of the university’s on-campus courses. The announcement received a mixed response online. Chris Parr Click to rate. Nel 2015, sarà MOOC-mania nelle aziende. Secondo il New York Times, il 2012 è stato l’anno dei MOOC per gli studi universitari.
E ora? Il buffo acronimo (che sta per Mass Open Online Courses) sembrava infatti destinato a cambiare il futuro degli studi universitari, un radicale mutamento di modello e una rivoluzione (il termine viene un po’ abusato ogni volta che c’è di mezzo la tecnologia) portati avanti da Coursera, la prima società attiva nel settore, fondata da due professori di Stanford, e di Khan Academy, organizzazione che offre dozzine di corsi online (soprattutto in campo scientifico) in partnership con 33 università. Risultato: oltre due milioni e mezzo di studenti in breve tempo e altri consorzi che subito replicano il modello, primo fra tutti l'edX fondato da Harvard, Berkeley e Mit. I MOOCs di fisica sperimentale.