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Thieme Hennis

The Teaching and Learning Foundations of MOOCs - 24 views

  • The pedagogical benefits of these characteristics of MOOCs translated into: the effectiveness of online learning, retrieval learning, mastery learning, enhanced learning through peer and self-assessment, enhanced attention and focus due to “chunking” content into small packages and finally peer assistance, or out-of-band learning.
  • When it comes to peer and self-assessment, there is general agreement that it is an effective means of marking. Assignments that are peer or self-assessed agree closely to those marked by instructors and tutors.
  • Overall, the evidence is that there is no reason to believe that MOOCs provide any less a valid learning experience than face-to-face courses. In many ways, they are simply a restatement of online learning environments which are optimised for large class sizes and modes of learning suited to todays digital milieu. When used for students enrolled in a university degree, they are usually combined with on-campus learning opportunities in a “flipped-classroom” style of presentation which brings the advantages of both environments.
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  • What is exciting about the MOOC environment is that it will provide a rich opportunity to gather data that will tell us what does and doesn’t work and how students learn most effectively in as engaging an environment as can be provided. This will almost certainly mean that the current MOOC format will evolve rapidly over time as it is driven by this research supported by real data.
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    MOOC research - pedagogical notions, and scientific outcomes regarding the effectiveness of MOOCs
Tracy Tuten

The real economics of massive online courses (essay) | Inside Higher Ed - 2 views

  • Is there a model out there, or an institution/student mix that could effectively utilize MOOCs in such a way as to get around this flaw? It’s hard to tell. Recent articles on Inside Higher Ed have suggested that distance education providers (like the University of Maryland’s University College – UMUC) may opt to certify the MOOCs that come out of these elite schools and bake them into their own online programs. Others suggest that MOOCs could be certified by other schools and embedded in prior learning portfolios.
  • The fatal flaw that I referred to earlier is pretty apparent:  the very notions of "mass, open" and selectivity just don’t lend themselves to a workable model that benefits both institutions and students. Our higher education system needs MOOCs to provide credentials in order for students to find it worthwhile to invest the effort, yet colleges can’t afford to provide MOOC credentials without sacrificing prestige, giving up control of the quality of the students who take their courses and running the risk of eventually diluting the value of their education brand in the eyes of the labor market.
  • In other words, as economists tell us, students themselves are an important input to education. The fact that no school uses a lottery system to determine who gets in means that determining who gets in matters a great deal to these schools, because it helps them control quality and head off the adverse effects of unqualified students either dropping out or performing poorly in career positions. For individual institutions, obtaining high quality inputs works to optimize the school’s objective function, which is maximizing prestige.
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  • We also know that there are plenty of low- to no-cost learning options available to people on a daily basis, from books on nearly every academic topic at the local library and on-the-job experience, to the television programming on the National Geographic, History and Discovery channels. If learning can and does take place everywhere, there has to be a specific reason that people would be willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and several years of their life to get it from one particular source like a college. There is, of course, and again it’s the credential, because no matter how many years I spend diligently tuned to the History Channel, I’m simply not going to get a job as a high-school history teacher with “television watching” as the core of my resume, even if I both learned and retained far more information than I ever could have in a series of college history classes.
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    On why MOOCs are flawed
alexis alexander

What's the "problem" with MOOCs? « EdTechDev - 18 views

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    "What's the "problem" with MOOCs? In case the quotes didn't clue you in, this post doesn't argue against massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as the ones offered by Udacity, Coursera, and edX. I think they are very worthy ventures and will serve to progress our system of higher education. I do however agree with some criticisms of these courses, and that there is room for much more progress. I propose an alternative model for such massive open online learning experiences, or MOOLEs, that focuses on solving "problems," but first, here's a sampling of some of the criticisms of MOOCs."
smilex3md

'Watered Down' MOOC Bill Becomes Law In Florida | Inside Higher Ed - 10 views

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    Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill into law last week to encourage the state's K-12 and higher education systems to use massive open online courses, or MOOCs. The bill Scott signed allows MOOCs, under certain conditions, to be used to help teach K-12 students in four subjects and also orders Florida education officials to study and set rules that would allow students who have yet to enroll in college to earn transfer credits by taking MOOCs.
onepulledthread

Teach the Web (MOOC) - 3 views

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    Laura Hilliger blog zythepsary.com here discusses the mozilla Teach the web" MOOC to start may 2. content to include: Introduction to Webmaker is all about community, openness and collaboration. Remix and Contextualize is all about putting web literacy skills into other types of learning plans. Do and Share is about experimenting with collaborative, participatory learning spaces and using the online community to improve your practice. Within each topic are 3 subtopics - Those are the themes we'll be focusing on weekly. 9 themes, 9 week MOOC - nice how that worked out, don't cha think? For each theme, we'll be MAKING things to explore ideas because, you know, you learn lots when you make. We'll have a chance to look at each other's makes, give feedback, and hack on ideas throughout the 9 weeks. There will be several ways to follow along. Here's what we're thinking for communication channels: Sign up to the webmaker.org/teach list to participate Keep your eye on hivenyc.org/teachtheweb Submit your blog for aggregation Join G+ Webmaker Community Use #teachtheweb on Twitter Bookmark the Big Blue Button link for May 2nd, 23rd, and June 13th, 4pm UTC Check the calendar for Twitter chats and Big Blue Button sessions
Rafael Morales_Gamboa

The underlying inequality of MOOCs | OEB Newsportal - 26 views

  • There are a variety of mitigating factors that limit access to MOOCs, many of which are the same as those that also exclude disadvantaged groups from traditional educational models and stem from financial, geographical and educational disparity.
    • Rafael Morales_Gamboa
       
      Of course they are! Whoever is expecting MOOCs to solve the inequality problems created by thousands of years of human culture has a serious mental problem. 
  • often form a core part of MOOC resources
    • Rafael Morales_Gamboa
       
      Often does not mean it has to be that way. So it is an argument against a particularly common type of MOOC, but not the only (neither the best) one.
Randolph Hollingsworth

MOOCs and Beyond - eLearning Papers 33 released | eLearning - 11 views

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    "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."
Dimitris Tzouris

mooc.org - 17 views

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    mooc.org is an edX destination. We're working to help educational institutions, businesses and teachers easily build and host courses for the world to take. "
anonymous

For Stanford U. MOOC instructors, trial and error breeds success | Inside Higher Ed - 1 views

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    Finally seeing results with their MOOCS...
Thieme Hennis

MOOCs: The cutting announcement of the wrong revolution | betrokken wetenschap - 27 views

  • A critical assessment of mainstream of higher education reveals that universities spent most energy on delivery of knowledge. Application of knowledge is dominated by ‘near transfer’, which means that students learn to give practical examples of theoretical concepts. ‘Far transfer’ originates from the analysis and solving of real problems, without prior exposure to cues regarding relevant knowledge. It occurs in Schools that deploy problem- or project-based learning. Exchange of codified and practical knowledge is absent in general. It might take place during internships, but projects outside the university are better and moreover, they offer opportunity for integration with other learning processes.
  • A balanced and integrated approach of the three learning processes mentioned above is occurring in only few universities. Elsewhere, students learn (and forget) lots of knowledge, have only limited experience with the application of knowledge and are ignorant of the clash between codified and practical knowledge. Consequently, the majority of our universities are disavowing their main goal, the development of ‘readiness for society’. It is this verdict that justifies a revolution in higher education.
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    interesting comments about different types of transfer, and the role of MOOCs.
smilex3md

MOOCs need to go back to their roots. - 14 views

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    MOOCs Need to Go Back to Their Roots They were supposed to be educational communities, not hypertextbooks.
Randolph Hollingsworth

"Promises" of Online Higher Ed: Profits - Campaign for the Future of Higher Education |... - 12 views

  • the burning questions focus squarely and exclusively on what will make money for particular companies
  • use their powerful brand reputations to get ahead of rapid technological changes that could destabilize their residential business models over the long-run
  • good credit news for elite institutions
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    on the revolutionary aspect of MOOCs to break down traditional barriers to higher ed as regularly stated by CEOs Koller and Thrun: "This rhetoric is perhaps the most glittery yet in the public discourse about online higher education. But it is also a diversion shifting attention away from the logic of profit-making. For parents, students, and the general public who focus primarily on what education means for people's futures, for social mobility, for a healthy economy and a robust democracy, a dip into the insider talk of MOOCs, their investors, and industry analysts is both instructive and disorienting."
Maureen Greenbaum

The Future of College? - The Atlantic - 29 views

  • proprietary online platform developed to apply pedagogical practices that have been studied and vetted by one of the world’s foremost psychologists, a former Harvard dean named Stephen M. Kosslyn, who joined Minerva in 2012.
  • inductive reasoning
  • Minerva class extended no refuge for the timid, nor privilege for the garrulous. Within seconds, every student had to provide an answer, and Bonabeau displayed our choices so that we could be called upon to defend them.
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  • subjecting us to pop quizzes, cold calls, and pedagogical tactics that during an in-the-flesh seminar would have taken precious minutes of class time to arrange.
  • felt decidedly unlike a normal classroom. For one thing, it was exhausting: a continuous period of forced engagement, with no relief in the form of time when my attention could flag
  • One educational psychologist, Ludy Benjamin, likens lectures to Velveeta cheese—something lots of people consume but no one considers either delicious or nourishing.)
  • because I had to answer a quiz question or articulate a position. I was forced, in effect, to learn
  • adically remake one of the most sclerotic sectors of the U.S. economy, one so shielded from the need for improvement that its biggest innovation in the past 30 years has been to double its costs and hire more administrators at higher salaries.
  • past half millennium, the technology of learning has hardly budge
  • fellow edu-nauts
  • Lectures are banned
  • attending class on Apple laptops
  • Lectures, Kosslyn says, are cost-effective but pedagogically unsound. “A great way to teach, but a terrible way to learn.”
  • Minerva boast is that it will strip the university experience down to the aspects that are shown to contribute directly to student learning. Lectures, gone. Tenure, gone. Gothic architecture, football, ivy crawling up the walls—gone, gone, gone.
  • “Your cash cow is the lecture, and the lecture is over,” he told a gathering of deans. “The lecture model ... will be obliterated.”
  • One imagines tumbleweeds rolling through abandoned quads and wrecking balls smashing through the windows of classrooms left empty by students who have plugged into new online platforms.
  • when you have a noncurated academic experience, you effectively don’t get educated.
  • Liberal-arts education is about developing the intellectual capacity of the individual, and learning to be a productive member of society. And you cannot do that without a curriculum.”
  • “The freshman year [as taught at traditional schools] should not exist,” Nelson says, suggesting that MOOCs can teach the basics. “Do your freshman year at home.”) Instead, Minerva’s first-year classes are designed to inculcate what Nelson calls “habits of mind” and “foundational concepts,” which are the basis for all sound systematic thought. In a science class, for example, students should develop a deep understanding of the need for controlled experiments. In a humanities class, they need to learn the classical techniques of rhetoric and develop basic persuasive skills. The curriculum then builds from that foundation.
  • What, he asks, does it mean to be educated?
  • methods will be tested against scientifically determined best practices
  • Subsidies, Nelson says, encourage universities to enroll even students who aren’t likely to thrive, and to raise tuition, since federal money is pegged to costs.
  • We have numerous sound, reproducible experiments that tell us how people learn, and what teachers can do to improve learning.” Some of the studies are ancient, by the standards of scientific research—and yet their lessons are almost wholly ignored.
  • memory of material is enhanced by “deep” cognitive tasks
  • he found the man’s view of education, in a word, faith-based
  • ask a student to explain a concept she has been studying, the very act of articulating it seems to lodge it in her memory. Forcing students to guess the answer to a problem, and to discuss their answers in small groups, seems to make them understand the problem better—even if they guess wrong.
  • e traditional concept of “cognitive styles”—visual versus aural learners, those who learn by doing versus those who learn by studying—is muddled and wrong.
  • pedagogical best practices Kosslyn has identified have been programmed into the Minerva platform so that they are easy for professors to apply. They are not only easy, in fact, but also compulsory, and professors will be trained intensively in how to use the platform.
  • Professors are able to sort students instantly, and by many metrics, for small-group work—
  • a pop quiz at the beginning of a class and (if the students are warned in advance) another one at a random moment later in the class greatly increases the durability of what is learned.
  • he could have alerted colleagues to best practices, but they most likely would have ignored them. “The classroom time is theirs, and it is sacrosanct,
  • Lectures, Kosslyn says, are pedagogically unsound,
  • I couldn’t wait for Minerva’s wrecking ball to demolish the ivory tower.
  • The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”
  • Minerva’s model, Nelson says, will flourish in part because it will exploit free online content, rather than trying to compete with it, as traditional universities do.
  • The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”
  • certain functions of universities have simply become less relevant as information has become more ubiquitous
  • Minerva challenges the field to return to first principles.
  • MOOCs will continue to get better, until eventually no one will pay Duke or Johns Hopkins for the possibility of a good lecture, when Coursera offers a reliably great one, with hundreds of thousands of five-star ratings, for free.
  • It took deep concentration,” he said. “It’s not some lecture class where you can just click ‘record’ on your tape.”
  • part of the process of education happens not just through good pedagogy but by having students in places where they see the scholars working and plying their trades.”
  • “hydraulic metaphor” of education—the idea that the main task of education is to increase the flow of knowledge into the student—an “old fallacy.”
  • I remembered what I was like as a teenager headed off to college, so ignorant of what college was and what it could be, and so reliant on the college itself to provide what I’d need in order to get a good education.
  • it is designed to convey not just information, as most MOOCs seem to, but whole mental tool kits that help students become morethoughtful citizens.
  • for all the high-minded talk of liberal education— of lighting fires and raising thoughtful citizens—is really just a credential, or an entry point to an old-boys network that gets you your first job and your first lunch with the machers at your alumni club.
  • Its seminar platform will challenge professors to stop thinking they’re using technology just because they lecture with PowerPoint.
  • professors and students increasingly separated geographically, mediated through technology that alters the nature of the student-teacher relationship
  • The idea that college will in two decades look exactly as it does today increasingly sounds like the forlorn, fingers-crossed hope of a higher-education dinosaur that retirement comes before extinction.
H DeWaard

Far from bust: five ways MOOCs are helping people get on in life - World leading higher... - 21 views

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    Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) - free, short courses made available to everybody online - were expected to herald the end of higher education as we knew it when they began. But the hype soon died away and critics bemoaned the fact that learners quickly lost enthusiasm and dropped out in large numbers.
H DeWaard

Peer Pressure Will Help You Finish That MOOC | EdSurge News - 11 views

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    using group structures in MOOCs to encourage completion - co-workers, book club 2.0 or virtual collaborators - success higher when teams can meet in person, teams average size is 4.2; start working with people you know; be creative with virtual collaboration; customizable design for personal projects
Rafael Morales_Gamboa

The Evolving MOOC (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu - 13 views

  • All content can be learned directly through the online courseware, but learning by students benefits from guidance by a teacher and conversations with peers
  • we aim to bring a valuable curricular resource to more students without removing the important role of face-to-face engagement.
    • Rafael Morales_Gamboa
       
      It is important to mention here that there is evidence that many people who takes MOOCs arrange meetings with others in the course that live near enough, in order to discuss the matter, help each other, and generally improve their learning experience. Face to face interaction does not have to be preestablished by the MOOC designer/provider, nor it have to take place in classrooms.
  • we decided to create curricula for teachers to bring to their classrooms using MOOC technology
Glenn Hervieux

What is a MOOC? - 2 views

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    Nice explanation of MOOCs. This is a new wave in online learning and professional development. It emphasizes the power of networked learning, as well.
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