Group items tagged

I tend to fall into this camp...the best MOOCs will be focused on learning and using best practices for online learning. Obviously, the size of MOOCs make that challenging...

"I soon wasn't watching all the videos, and I certainly wasn't doing the practice homework that no one would ever grade. Honestly, I felt more like an audience member than a student." It seems that we have gotten too reliant on stimulation and feed back. Our entire school system and university system is built around mentoring and motivating, where the teacher has the role of an encouraging trainer more than anything else. Have we lost our ability of independent learning, not for a carrot that a teacher holds out in front of us, but for ourselves? I find myself in the same boat as the author of "Essays on disappointing experience". I am not disappointed with the MOOC experience, but am surprised that it takes such high levels of discipline to sit down and do the assignments asked for in the MOOC. Maybe this is a problem of the well to do, that have on some level lost the connection between the insemination of knowledge and the real possibility of upward mobility? NPR had a fascinating report: How Much Can Children Teach Themselves ( see the link below) and again, the children in question grew up in a poor area of Southern India. (http://www.npr.org/2013/06/21/179015266/how-much-can-children-teach-themselves?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=share&utm_campaign=)

Some interesting notes, reflecting MOOC instructors' thoughts: -students shouldn't get credit at their school for passing a MOOC -MOOCs will lower college costs -teaching one takes time from other responsibilities

There's that grumpy 6% who have taught a MOOC and believe their institution will eventually offer credit for them, but don't feel students who succeed in them deserve it. What's going on there?

Heh! Darkness.

Davidson is planning to run a MOOC soon on the history of higher ed, and has promised to blog her progress in its development.  This is the first installment.

Very useful stuff, seeing one MOOC being made.

I like this idea that the MOOC may be something like the electronic version of the "trade book," in that it usefully exposes academic ideas to people outside academia. Combined with the idea in the Boyer reports that "public intellectual" work could be considered as "service" instead of research or teaching, and I think there's an interesting new way to consider MOOCs...

The recent wave of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has highlighted the potential for making educational offerings accessible at a global level. The attention MOOCs have received is well deserved, but it belies the fact that various forms of online education have existed for many years.

"the author examines lessons from massive open online courses (MOOCs) for small liberal arts colleges (LACs) in the United States. While some consider MOOCs a threat to LACs, they can also be seen as a provocation to spur small institutions to improve their offerings and assert their place in the higher education landscape. The paper examines how LACs might draw on the best tools, approaches, and structures emerging from the MOOC revolution in order to help students build lifelong learning habits."

Not everyone supports the faculty at San Jose MOOC criticism...

(Not sure whether this was posted to our group or not.)

<< NOTE: This is an ACTIVIST course, with MOOCs not just the platform but also the subject matter for our online conversations. For example, I am very excited about what we will all learn from a global forum directed at the question: "What is the history of defunding public education in YOUR country in YOUR lifetime?" >> The quote above struck me. Having read this course description makes me wonder, if MOOCs can not also be used a bit differently, to further open up the door to the international arena to our students on campus. I have recently been doing a lot of reading on transcultural literacy and competence, which focuses on being able to successfully navigate cultural differences between any culture and the own. Businesses today train their top executives to be transcultural, being able to work anywhere, and manage and lead in any country. I know foreign language curricula have not been very responsive in adjusting to this new need from firms. To full fill this demand, schools would have to push students to gain competence in multiple languages and cultures, on a more shallow level, instead of the mastery that is demanded in the current curricula in one language and culture. Since most institutions claim, that they promote global citizenship, maybe there is a way of assigning groups, and encouraging international and cross cultural communication between the students on campus, and those enrolled in the MOOC from where ever they might be located. I know that managing this, and keeping on top of the conversation partners could be a night mare, and that it doesn't entirely fit into the MOOC frame work, at least the way I understand it at the moment, but I'd love to hear what everyone else i thinking.

Interesting argument. We'll have to see where the money flows, since MOOCs began as academic, non-publishing projects. Maybe they should speak of publishing capturing MOOCs.

It could certainly increase the amount of people profiting from publishings.

I don't see any harm in this approach. These lower level courses are often taught by adjuncts! I think, too, that the process outlined for determining which courses are chosen does add a level of protection for those concerned about quality MOOCs. But honestly, in my own field (political science), I don't know anyone who would take ownership of a 101 course and defend it against being a MOOCified.

Many would, especially if they're invested in the tenure system. How will this bill do in the legislature's other house?

MOOC resource run by the cMOOC founders.

Cathy Davidson is one of the prominent voices out there right now taking a considered, balanced approach to MOOCs - I'm a little surprised she hasn't come into our conversations earlier. :) I especially like her point here, one this group has heard before, that it's alright to both be severely critical of MOOCs in their current form and be strongly interested in experimenting with them in the hopes of developing a much more robust future form.

Very interesting discussion including U Penn's pro-MOOC president and the head of edX.

"It's time that we all calmed down." Good post from Cathy Davidson. I attended the HASTAC conference she references. I also did not hear anything about MOOCs anywhere...

This is interesting....how MOOC data is being collected and studied. Also, another look at completion rates.

An article that gives Downes credit for the first oMOOC (original MOOC).

A report published Monday by Moody's Investors Service says that the spread of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, is "credit positive" for universities that offer them but "credit negative" for the majority of lesser-known institutions that lack a prominent brand name.

This is a thought-provoking article. More about learner-initiated learning than MOOCs.

Trent's a brilliant guy. Well worth the read.