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Ted O'Neill

Half an Hour: MOOC Provider Panel: Coursera, Academic Partnerships, Instructure, edX - 1 views

  • Question: Matriculated students enjoy full support from their institution's library; how can the MOOC provide similar support to the many thousands of students enrolled in the MOOC, the majority of which are not enrolled at the institution that is offering the course. Maria: You must have been monitoring my Twitter stream. I’ve been really frustrated, I have no access to institutional libraries any more. There’s a real irony to an institutional system that teaches students to access the library and then kicks them out with no more access to it. There’s a role for these libraries. But I don’t see a way for them to do it for free.
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      This is a huge problem and not just for MOOCs. I am endlessly frustrated by my access to medical journals, but not education or linguistics journals through my uni.
  • Relly: I would say yes. I often bring up the example of the lecture videos, where there is a knee-jerk reaction that we want lecture videos that are really professional. But students want them to seem more real, to see the professor’s office, etc.
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      I just want the videos to be watchable. Poor audio and unlit video are not a good way to capture my attention.
Ted O'Neill

The False Promise of the Education Revolution - College, Reinvented - The Chronicle of ... - 1 views

  • The pundits and disrupters, many of whom enjoyed liberal-arts educations at elite colleges, herald a revolution in higher education that is not for people like them or their children, but for others: less-wealthy, less-prepared students who are increasingly cut off from the dream of a traditional college education.
  • David Stavens, a founder of the MOOC provider Udacity, as conceding that "there's a magic that goes on inside a university campus that, if you can afford to live inside that bubble, is wonderful."
  • "The whole MOOC thing is mass psychosis," a case of people "just throwing spaghetti against the wall" to see what sticks, says Peter J. Stokes, executive director for postsecondary innovation at Northeastern's College of Professional Studies. His job is to study the effectiveness of ideas that are emerging or already in practice.
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  • But "innovation is not about gadgets," says Mr. Stokes. "It's not about eureka moments. ... It's about continuous evaluation."
  • the gap between the country's rich and poor widened during the recession, choking off employment opportunities for many recent graduates.
  • Here's the cruel part: The students from the bottom tier are often the ones who need face-to-face instruction most of all.
  • "The idea that they can have better education and more access at lower cost through massive online courses is just preposterous," says Patricia A. McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University. Seventy percent of her students are eligible for Pell Grants, and 50 percent come from the broken District of Columbia school system.
  • But the reinvention conversation has had a "tech guy" fixation on mere content delivery, she says. "It reveals a lack of understanding of what it takes to make the student actually learn the content and do something with it."
  • "To champion something as trivial as MOOC's in place of established higher education is to ignore the day-care centers, the hospitals, the public health clinics, the teacher-training institutes, the athletic facilities, and all of the other ways that universities enhance communities, energize cities, spread wealth, and enlighten citizens,"
Ted O'Neill

Half an Hour: The Great Rebranding - 0 views

  • People who live and work exclusively within these institutions need to get out more. They need to see beyond an idea of education where the students come from cookie-cutter upper income homes and whose deepest problems are motivation, distraction and information overload. They need to get beyond facile debates about quality and enter the real-word debate around access.
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      The true believer revolutionary zeal. Will the revolution succeed?
  • Having one instructor for 20-50 people is expensive, and most of the world cannot afford that cost. That's *why* the institutions - from which the attendees of this conference were uniquely selected - charge thousands of dollars of tuition every year.
  • MOOCs were not designed to serve the missions of the elite colleges and universities. They were designed to undermine them, and make those missions obsolete.
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      Fight the good fight!
Ted O'Neill

Half an Hour: Backgrounds and Behaviors of MOOC Participants and Implications for Faculty - 1 views

  • There was a cluster of high-use countries and then a massive tail. Canada, Colombia, Greece, the UK, Poland – these were the high-use countries. Now students in these countries have a peer group of unprecedented size.
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      This is the power of MOOCs.
  • We had representatives in our course from 194 countries – they didn’t all interact in every part of the course, but imagine how the instructor felt
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      Ah, the star faculty member emerges on the stage.
  • We anecdotally observed that students are continuing to participate in the discussion forums nearly a year after the course has finished. So we can ask of LMSs whether we should be allowing students to participate after the course has been completed.
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      Yes, MOOCs open in time, not just content or access.
Ted O'Neill

Half an Hour: What Makes a MOOC Massive? - 0 views

  • In particular, my focus is on the development of a network structure, as opposed to a group structure, to manage the course. In a network structure there isn't any central focus, for example, a central discussion.
  • So what is essential to a course being a *massive* open online course, therefore, is that it is not based in a particular environment, isn't characterized by its use of a single platform, but rather by the capacity of the technology supporting the course to enable and engage conversations and activities across multiple platforms.
  • The big danger, to my mind, in a large online course is that through strong group-formation activities, it can become a small online course. This happens when a central clique or insider group is formed, or where you have inner circles and outer circles. The inner circle, for example, might expect and demand preferential access to and individual attention from the course facilitators.
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  • When the course functions as a small group, there is an expectation that everyone will agree on the course content, objectives, and domain of discussion. But, in fact, to be a massive course, it must needs respect a wide variety of individual objectives, perspectives on course materials, and opinions about relevant topics of discussion
  • I provide the figure of 150, Dunbar's Number, as the cut-off line. Now to be clear, this would refer to *active* participants, and not merely the number of people who signed up.
Ted O'Neill

MOOC Provider edX Partners with Community Colleges to Improve Workforce Readiness - Forbes - 0 views

  • 1) Due to budget constraints, community colleges often do not have access to excellent online content
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      So is this the answer? Or, is adequate funding the answer. Or, OER as David Wiley is doing with community colleges.
  • 2) community colleges are often “commuter schools” where part-time students travel to the campus for classes and then go home. In the latter scenario, there’s far less opportunity for students to interact with the content and each other.
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      I suppose online interaction is better than none at all, but the affordances of on campus interaction are not the same. Perpetuating the tiered university system.
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      Also, why are they not on campus? Because they are working. MOOCs take time.
Ted O'Neill

Donald Clark Plan B: MOOCs: Who's using MOOCs? 10 different target audiences - 0 views

  • For MOOCs, several target audiences have emerged: 1. Internal students on course – cost savings on volume courses 2. Internal students not on course – expanding student experience 3. Potential students national –major source of income 4. Potential students international – major source of income 5. Potential students High school – reputation and preparation 6. Parents – significant in student choice 7. Alumni – potential income and influencers 8. Lifelong learners – late and lifelong adult learners 9. Professionals – related to professions and work 10. Government – part of access strategy
    • Ted O'Neill
       
      Nice run down of the potential, definitely potential, business model for xMOOCs from large universities. Image promotion worth the cost? Will others be forced to compete in this way?
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