Group items tagged

"MOOCs will get better quickly. There are important reasons for some universities to do this. Soon there may routinely be as much or more learning in MOOCs. The response, however, should not be for everyone to start offering MOOCs." Enter the MBC - the Massively Better Classroom. A terrific analysis and collection of links by Jose Bowen.

I'm intrigued by Bowen's idea of courses which offer "a playlist of 25 different types of explanations in different languages using different approaches to a single concept" to support different learning preferences. Despite the title, this idea could apply to MOOCs, tuition-based online courses, and face-to-face "blended" courses. (The assertion that the pedagogical innovation will come from MOOC-land and not established campuses is also intriguing, and troubling...)

The author of this opinion urges caution in the rush to MOOC-ify higher education. He touts the benefits of (another version? of a MOOC called) a hybrid online-field course. I think this type of course is tailored for field-based disciplines such as his own (marine biology), but I am sure this could be modified for non-field science disciplines. I am almost positive, though, that such a hybrid course would fail to live up to the largest, most-inclusive (in terms of numbers of students enrolled) meaning of a MOOC.

Essay by a professor at Vanderbilt who adapted his face-to-face classes to take advantage of MOOCs on the same subject. He calls this making his course a "wrapper", I've called it "using the MOOC as a textbook." See in particular the last paragraph, regarding the "scholarly-like community with my fellow educators."

MOOCs are in the news -- not surprising. I decided to pass along two articles from yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education; this is the first. The title basically tells the story, but underlying the main point are two sub-points. First, the ho-hum nature of the GSU attitude: "the Georgia State University Senate had little difficulty in finding a way to provide credit for MOOCs." I wonder about that. Second, the offhand announcement of what could significantly ratchet up departmental work loads: "academic departments (will) determine if (students completing MOOCs) have the required understanding of the material."

This essay specifically discusses the MOOC concept in the context of a small liberal arts college. I have personally heard many of the points raised in this essay in conversations here on the Kenyon campus.

The MOOC conversation is dominated by examples of digitizing the large lecture hall. This is a deviation from the historical roots of the MOOC, and in this Chronicle article a very different kind of open educational activity is proposed.

This is the second of two MOOC-related stories in the Chronicle yesterday. I am "taking" a MOOC at the moment, which is taught by a professor at Duke University. I do get the feeling that he is treating me (and all the students in the MOOC) with respect, but I can imagine a situation in which this may not be the case. The conveners of the meeting that drafted this "Bill of Rights" clearly want to send the message that online educators should have the best interests of their students FIRST and foremost in their minds. I stress FIRST here because the drafters of the document want to avoid having MOOC students become a commodity that can be sold such as with social media participants (e.g., Facebook).

An interesting study out of Stanford. While drawn from experience with MOOCs, I think many of these principles are relevant to flipped classrooms at a small college as well. I was surprised by recommendations #3 and #4 (regarding "personal" vs. "professional" production values); I had expected high production values to be more important for classes with no face-to-face contact.

An interesting study out of Stanford. While drawn from experience with MOOCs, I think many of these principles are relevant to flipped classrooms at a small college as well. I was surprised by recommendations #3 and #4 (regarding "personal" vs. "professional" production values); I had expected high production values to be more important for classes with no face-to-face contact.

Clay Shirkey, author of "Here Comes Everybody," examines the challenge posed to U.S. higher education by massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Shirkey is the author of "Here Comes Everybody," a book he says is about "what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures." In this article, he describes the same dynamic at work in the disruptive potential of MOOCs to all but the most elite institutions of higher education in America. 

Some early lessons from MOOCs including benefits in the flipped classroom.

If any liberal arts college was likely to step into the MOOC world, it would be one offering cross-listed courses with MIT, one of the founders of the MOOC provider EdX. This will be one to keep an eye on for small, elite liberal arts colleges like Kenyon. 

This is about as honest an assessment of MOOCs as I've seen. Read between the lines and you'll see the promise and potential failings of this grand educational experiment.

Thoughts of a professor who is taking a MOOC. (Sorry this is a bit dated, but the Chronicle message was caught in my Spam filter.)

An interesting balanced look - dare I call it a "middle path"? - at how to move toward wise, effective use of technology in the classroom.

This is a pretty good online course for introducing academics to relevant issues in copyright law. The lectures are given by experts in the field, and are appropriately accessible and detailed. It's now available "on demand"; I'm curious to see how people experience that differently than the earlier synchronous (multi-week) iteration.

This Chronicle blogger concedes that "modularity" will not work at residential colleges -- at least not for all courses. Personally I think this reductionist trend is going too far. Students choose a major discipline. Students (often) choose a sub-discipline. Students choose which courses to take among all the possibilities. Students choose from among professors teaching those courses. The post takes this down to the level of the 10-minute video (or lecture). Really? What can one learn in ten minutes that stands alone so much that ALL the related knowledge can be ignored. Here's an example. A student watches a 10-minute video on coral reefs and learns that reefs are in danger due to rising ocean temperatures. Fine. But what is the reason? Does the threat to coral stem from the fact that they build their skeletons out of calcium carbonate? From the fact that modern corals are aragonitic and not calcitic? Does the symbiotic nature of corals and zooxanthellic algae play a role? Is there something else involved here? A combination of factors? Factoids? Do we really want our future generations making decisions about important matters based on what they remember from a 10-minute lecture or video?

Multiple interesting discussions in this episode of the Digital Campus podcast. The first 2 discussions are particularly wiorthwhile. They open with a discussion of the ways U.S. government rules on retaining electronic records will impact the teaching of history, and follow with a discussion of the Open Syllabus Project, which analyzes millions of syllabi collected from the web.

The title of this one pretty much sums up the content completely. There is a link to some good vs. bad examples of PowerPoint slides, but they are pretty self-evident. The guidelines discussed in this article are worth exploring even if you are not developing a MOOC or a smaller online course -- for example, if you just want to flip a class or two.