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What is a MOOC? - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch mooc cormier video
shared by Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13
     
    In a time of information overload...
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How NOT to Design a MOOC: The Disaster at Coursera and How to Fix it | online learning ... - 0 views

onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/...-at-coursera-and-how-to-fix-it mooc coursera fail
shared by Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • there is no way to put a positive spin on my experience with the MOOC I’m enrolled in through Coursera, Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application
  • Group work can provide meaningful learning, in the right context with the support of a sound instructional strategy. The example here from the class, Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application demonstrates why a sound strategy is needed, and what happens when one is lacking. MOOCs require a unique instructional strategy, one that is different from small online courses. What exactly the strategy to follow is under discussion. It is through the courses, such as this one that institutions can learn what works and does not. I give the instructor credit for trying something new, and investing the time and energy she has done which is considerable.
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Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College | The Awl - 0 views

www.theawl.com/...idea-for-the-future-of-college mooc university crisis
shared by Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13
       
      Shirky has it completely wrong. People who have been shut out are not well prepared to function in moocs. They have to be able to manage formal learning autonomously in a less formal environment. Tall order.
  • The possibility MOOCs hold out is that the educational parts of education can be unbundled. MOOCs expand the audience for education to people ill-served or completely shut out from the current system
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Massively Open Online Course on Planning Online Courses Collapses | MetaFilter - 0 views

www.metafilter.com/...nning-Online-Courses-Collapses mooc
shared by Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • And in my opinion, completion rates aren't a very good measure of success. That's applying a rubric that makes more sense in traditional education than in a MOOC. In a way, it's kind of like asking what the completion rate is for Metafilter. The more interesting (albeit more difficult to measure) metric is how much comprehension a student acquires relative to the amount of time she invests. I think the next generation of MOOCs will be a lot more fluid, with "students" coming and going and spinning off into separate groups and regrouping on the fly. That is, they'll become less like a classroom and more like the internet.posted by roll truck roll at 21:56 on February 4 [+] [!]
  • That is, they'll become less like a classroom and more like the internet. That's an interesting suggestion, but it leads me to wonder why the whole MOOC thing in the first place? If the end-state is basically "the Internet," which we already have, what exactly is the value-add of the MOOC part? Why not just hang out on a specialist forum dedicated to whatever you're interested in, then? That's something we have already and it seems like an awful lot of effort to reinvent that particular wheel, if we really think that's how it'll shake out. And if the value add is in the certification and the testing, then really what you have are slightly less-sleazy versions of those for-profit universities that offer "degrees based on life experience", no?
  • I can tell you in that IT companies are already taking certifications of completions in these kinds of courses seriously. I'm taking one right now -- mandatory from my employer.posted by empath at 6:24 on February 5 [+] [!]
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • More recently, I tried the HCI Coursera and bailed after the first week because I didn't like the idea of peer assessment. I have been a marker on university courses, it's not a fun task.
  • Peer assessment is my main, really only, problem with MOOCs. Even if they are ostensibly run by Harvard/Stanford/MIT with course content signed off by Big Name Professors, your thousands of fellow students are not going to be mostly Harvard/Stanford/MIT upperclassmen or even, for intro classes, mostly the valedictorians of high schools
  • the comments you will wade through will be a Duke's Mixture of 1) metafilter-or-better, 2) Slate-Salon-Atlantic, 3) Reddit, 4) YooToob, 5) 4chan-somethingawful, 6) stormfront. How much of each? Skewed bellcurve, with the long fat tail on the dimwit end.
  • all graded by actual Harvard/Stanford/MIT TAs The last thing our academic systems need is more bullshit filler work for grad students.posted by maryr at 1:06 on February 7
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The False Promise of the Education Revolution - College, Reinvented - The Chronicle of ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...136305 mooc university crisis
shared by Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • 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,"
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Twitter / evgenymorozov: "MOOC's Law" holds that the ... - 0 views

twitter.com/...313035764864798720 mooc Morozov
shared by Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13
  • "MOOC's Law" holds that the amount of bullshit packaged as online coursework doubles approximately every two years.
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Twitter / gsiemens: This is why MOOCs have to be ... - 0 views

twitter.com/...308394006960812032 mooc fail siemens image
shared by Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
     
    Siemens' image of the drop off in participation misses the point. The completers were there all along. Start a mooc with a community fo completers and it doesn't have to ve so large. How? Start with an existing community or "horrors" charge a small one-time fee like Metafilter.
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California to Give Web Courses a Big Trial - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-web-courses-a-big-trial.html mooc pseudomooc california remedial udacity university crisis
shared by Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13 - No Cached
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      If they cannot pass elementary courses after their preparation in high school, what does that tell us about their preparation for university? Online courses require learners to already be autonomous and prepared to learn. That does not match well with students who need remedial work.
  • Ellen N. Junn, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the university in San Jose, said the California State University System faces a crisis because more than 50 percent of entering students cannot meet basic requirements. “They graduate from high school, but they cannot pass our elementary math and English placement tests,” she said.
  • Recently edX completed a pilot offering of its difficult circuits and electronics course at San Jose State to stunning results: while 40 percent of the students in the traditional version of the class got a grade of C or lower, only 9 percent in the blended edX class got such a low grade.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      Would love to see the actual data on these claims and the study methodology if any.
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The Professors Behind the MOOC Hype - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 2 views

chronicle.com/...137905 mooc university crisis university costs star professors time resource allocation
shared by Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Many professors teaching MOOCs had a similarly positive outlook: Asked whether they believe MOOCs "are worth the hype," 79 percent said yes.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      This needs to be defined. Worth in what way? Based upon what experience?
  • Many of those surveyed felt that these free online courses should be integrated into the traditional system of credit and degrees. Two-thirds believe MOOCs will drive down the cost of earning a degree from their home institutions, and an overwhelming majority believe that the free online courses will make college less expensive in general.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      Most MOOCs are for general survey type or intro classes. The cost of providing those classes is not the driver behind higher education costs.
  • John Owens was drawn to MOOCs because of their reach. He also did not want to be left behind.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      On the other hand, is there a cost to being an earlier adopter? Often.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • A number of the professors in the survey said they hoped to use MOOCs to increase their visibility, both among colleagues within their discipline (39 percent) and with the media and the general public (34 percent).
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      MOOC as the driver of star professors, stratifying faculty, not just students.
  • In May 2012, when the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that they would enter the MOOC fray with $60-million to start edX, they were emphatic that their agenda was to improve, not supplant, classroom education.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      However, there agenda may include supplanting other online offerings. Free from MIT or paid at University of Phoenix?
  • "Online education is not an enemy of residential education," said Susan Hockfield, president of MIT at the time, from a dais at a hotel in Cambridge, "but an inspiring and liberating ally."
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      For MIT/Harvard the on campus experience is the key. Further class/socioeconomic stratification?
  • Typically a professor spent over 100 hours on his MOOC before it even started, by recording online lecture videos and doing other preparation. Others laid that groundwork in a few dozen hours.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      Point this out to your employer if asked to MOOC.
  • Once the course was in session, professors typically spent eight to 10 hours per week on upkeep. Most professors managed not to be inundated with messages from their MOOC students—they typically got five e-mails per week
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      I don't find this at all credible. I've seen more than this in some moocs. I get more email than that each week from 125 on-campus students.
  • In all, the extra work took a toll. Most respondents said teaching a MOOC distracted them from their normal on-campus duties.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      What do employers think of that?
  • "It's out of 'my own' time, which is quite limited," Mr. Owens reported. "So, yes, other areas of my job suffered."
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      Pretty candid admission. Is he still employed? Will this affect tenure?
  • In lieu of credit toward a degree, most professors offer certificates to students who complete massive online courses. Three-quarters of the professors surveyed said they offered some sort of document certifying that a student had completed a MOOC. It remains unclear, however, how seriously those certificates are being taken by employers. College degrees are still seen as the coin of the realm.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      "College degrees are still seen as the coin of the realm." and universities will make sure it stays that way if they can.
  • Most professors who responded to The Chronicle's survey said they believed that MOOCs would drive down the cost of college; 85 percent said the free courses would make traditional degrees at least marginally less expensive, and half of that group said it would lower the cost "significantly."
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 14 Apr 13
       
      Were any of them economics professors? "Lower cost significantly" by replacing a few income generating courses with free replacements? Fantasy.
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Coursera and edX add universities and hope to expand global reach | Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...s-and-hope-expand-global-reach mooc edX creative commons
shared by Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Agarwal also said Netherlands-based Delft University of Technology would be the first MOOC course to release its content under a Creative Commons license, a copyright license that encourages rather than discourages use of otherwise protected materials.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
       
      One small step in the right direction. They say "open always beats closed." I hope so.
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MOOCs and Digital Diploma Mills: Forgetting Our History | iterating toward openness - 1 views

opencontent.org/...2704 mooc Coursera Terms of Service business model
shared by Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Now play that record backwards, as the first generation of MOOCs (cMOOCs) – that allowed anyone from anywhere to participate however they liked in experiences built from openly licensed course materials – gives way to a new generation of walled gardens that call themselves “open” but require registration, use copyrighted materials, and take investment capital. They even prohibit students from using their services in the most useful ways: “You may not take any Online Course offered by Coursera or use any Statement of Accomplishment as part of any tuition-based or for-credit certification or program for any college, university, or other academic institution without the express written permission from Coursera” (Coursera Terms of Use). David Noble saw something like this coming. I’m not sure he was wrong.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
       
      The Coursera Terms of Service explicitly break the first O of MOOC. This is the bait and switch and if it works will result in the hollowing out of higher education
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California Universities Aggressively Expand Online Courses, Finds Failure Rates Drop | ... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...urses-finds-failure-rates-drop mooc university crisis business model edX SJSU
shared by Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • As California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom said on a press call for the edX announcement, “The old educational financing model frankly is no longer sustainable.”
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
       
      Does Newsome really think that? California's educational finance model was just fine until relatively recently. This is a political choice. Does anyone really believe that there is enough untapped productivity gain available in education through MOOCs? Fantasy.
  • based on an unusually promising pilot course
  • Even edX President, Anant Agarwal, urged caution with the results. “I would not take this number to the bank,” he told me.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But, one-off experiments can often seem much more promising than reality, once they are brought to scale.
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MOOC Provider edX Partners with Community Colleges to Improve Workforce Readiness - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...to-improve-workforce-readiness mooc university crisis business model
shared by Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • 1) Due to budget constraints, community colleges often do not have access to excellent online content
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
       
      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
      Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
       
      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
      Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
       
      Also, why are they not on campus? Because they are working. MOOCs take time.
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College's rejection of edX highlights potential drawbacks of massive online course... - 0 views

gigaom.com/...acks-of-massive-online-courses mooc antimooc Amherst star faculty edX
shared by Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Citing an internal report on edX, Inside Higher Ed said the school worried MOOCs could: Perpetuate an “information dispensing” model of teaching, which preferences lectures and exams over seminars and teacher-graded papers Take tuition dollars from middle-tier and lower-tier schools Lead to the centralization of higher education in the U.S. Exacerbate the star faculty system
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DS106: The Open Online Community of Digital Storytellers by Jim Groom - Kickstarter - 0 views

www.kickstarter.com/...e-community-of-digital-storyte mooc business model Jim Groom DS106 kickstarter
shared by Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Pledge $500 or more 0 backers DS106 in a Box - All of the above, plus a complete software setup for your own online course framework with hosting for 1 year at the domain of your choice and 5 hours of consulting. Estimated delivery: Jun 2012
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
       
      Interesting idea. Graduates of the mooc serve as consultants to a newly starting mooc? Bit of a possible pyramid scheme, but could work. Surprised nobody took this one. Post-hype, this might have had takers in 2013.
  • Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
     
    Successfully funded mooc resource. 
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Professor Hopes to Support Free Course With Kickstarter, the 'Crowd Funding' Site - Wir... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...35864
shared by Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • —SmartHistory: Raised $11,513 for a Web site created by two art historians. —Punk Mathematics: Raised 28,701 for a book of mathematical stories. —Open Educational Resources for Typography: Raised $13,088 to develop teaching materials for courses on typography. —Trade School: Raised $9,133 to run a program that turns storefronts into temporary trade schools. —Brooklyn Brainery: Raised $9,629 to set up a collaborative school whose courses would cost $25 for four weeks.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 21 Apr 13
       
      Not MOOCs but successful edu and edtech efforts funded by Kickstarter. Textbooks etc and easy target.
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