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"Can You Really Teach a MOOC in a Refugee Camp? - Wired Campus - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education August 1, 2014 by Steve Kolowich Two men living in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya, would watch lecture videos and take online quizzes at a nearby United Nations compound. (InZone) One narrative that has driven widespread interest in free online courses known as MOOCs is that they can help educate the world. But critics like to emphasize that the courses mostly draw students who already hold traditional degrees. So when Coursera, the largest provider of MOOCs, published a blog post about how a professor had used one of its online courses to teach refugees near the Kenya-Somalia border, it sounded to some like a satire of Silicon Valley's naïve techno-optimism: Hundreds of thousands of devastated Africans stranded in a war zone? MOOCs to the rescue! Details of the experiment paint a more nuanced picture, one that highlights the challenges MOOC providers face in trying to change the lives of downtrodden people. Barbara Moser-Mercer, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Geneva, ran the refugee experiment and wrote Coursera's optimistic blog post about it. But in an interview with The Chronicle, as well as a more formal article she wrote about the experiment for a European conference on MOOCs, the professor expanded on the logistical issues that come with trying to make sophisticated online courses work in deprived settings."

"March 20, 2013, 4:55 am By Steve Kolowich The State University of New York's Board of Trustees on Tuesday endorsed an ambitious vision for how SUNY might use prior-learning assessment, competency-based programs, and massive open online courses to help students finish their degrees in less time, for less money. The plan calls for "new and expanded online programs" that "include options for time-shortened degree completion." In particular, the board proposed a huge expansion the prior-learning assessment programs offered by SUNY's Empire State College. The system will also push its top faculty members to build MOOCs designed so that certain students who do well in the courses might be eligible for SUNY credit. Ultimately, the system wants to add 100,000 enrollments within three years, according to a news release."

"April 3, 2013, 12:43 pm By Karen Head ...The preparation of a MOOC, unlike that of a traditional course, requires working with videographers, instructional designers, IT specialists, and platform specialists. For many MOOCs this means that an instructor and a teaching assistant must fill most of those support roles. In fact, one of my colleagues who taught a MOOC actually built a recording studio in the basement of his home. Even with our team of 19, we still needed several other people to provide support. We now also have an internal project manager to coordinate our videography needs. I'm very thankful to have these people helping us. ..."

January 9, 2013 by Jeffrey R. Young "...Setting the Price The company also revealed more details about how it would award certificates and how much it would charge for them. Students who want a verified certificate will have to decide early in the course and pay upfront. Paying that fee will put students on what the company is calling the "Signature Track." The company and colleges are still struggling to decide what to charge for the certificates, though in its latest announcement Coursera said the price would run $30 to $100. "It's a huge decision: You're essentially setting a market," said Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, in an interview this week with The Chronicle. "No one has ever priced this before." Officials also stressed that they would offer financial aid to students who demonstrated that they could not afford the fees but could benefit from the verified certificates. Ms. Koller said Coursera would continue to offer free unofficial certificates to students who passed some of its courses. So why would someone pay for the verified certificates? Peter Lange, provost at Duke University, which plans to offer one of the courses in the new pilot, said each free certificate would have a clear disclaimer on it: "It says something to the effect of, We cannot vouch that the person who got this document took the course or did the work." The new Signature Track could mean serious revenue for Coursera, and for the 33 partner colleges that will get a cut of it. Exactly how the colleges will divide that revenue is still being worked out, it seems. Mr. Lange said the question was on the agenda at the next monthly meeting of Duke's Advisory Committee on Online Education." So, when Coursera staff offered free Statements of Accomplishment as "Recognition" to the volunteers of the Global Translator community, they did so in full awareness of their lack of value and of the mentioned disclaimer