Pennebaker, Gosling: New generation of online classes benefits students - Houston Chron... - 1 views
-
marshallduke on 22 Jun 16This article has a follow up major piece in the June 24 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. I cannot send that one to you because it is "locked." However, this piece describes what two very famous psychologists, Gosling and Pennebaker, are doing at UT Austin with online psychology classes. They describe here a synchronous massive online course in which (as now described in the Chronicle, they have 1500! students registered. Twenty four students are invited to attend F2F classes twice per week and the rest are online live. This SMOC, as they term it, allows faculty to interact live with an audience while teaching but affords huge enrollments. This seems to me to be a way of maintaining the "feel" of F2F while benefiting from the usefulness of technology. This is a very interesting development and, with these two psychologists being so well known, teachers of large lecture classes will take notice. I would love to explore the idea further!
-
Yu Li on 23 Jun 16This is pretty amazing! I wondered to what extent this was also a flipped class - did students do their readings and watch lectures before coming to class, and in the synchronous sessions, mostly focus on solving problems through group discussion? It seems to require a lot of technological and instructional support: TV studio, laptops, apps, and tutors serving as group advisors, but the better learning outcome may make it all worth it! Of course, at 500 students a class, it could save cost in a big way, too. So, are we all prepared to face the camera? :)