MOOCs and Liberal Education

A little old, but I found this blog post by Jim Groom to be interesting for those of us at liberal arts colleges.

Yes indeed. This comment resonated for me: "What you are NOT doing is putting fat cat celebrity lecturer talking heads online. Far from it. You are doing quite the opposite… you are putting EVERYBODY online and letting them shine in ways that matter to them." Are other liberal arts institutions doing that?

Dated, but interesting insight into the economics of MOOCs.

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

Have you guys seen this? People (teachers) proposed MOOCs and now there is voting going on...the top 10 will be funded. Not sure how I didn't see this earlier... :)

Fascinating! Good to see the emphasis on learning. I wonder why nothing from China.

Hard for me to tell if this is a gripe or a real attempt by faculty to answer worthy questions.

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

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.

Very useful article. Note the way it opposes MOOCs to tenured faculty salaries.

Very useful article. Note the way it opposes MOOCs to tenured faculty salaries.

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.

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.

Interesting article about using MOOCs to identify likely teenagers for your campus.

Stephen Downes offers a nice, condensed take on MOOCs.

Another free, online academy.

Interesting, useful breakdown of how learners respond to different video styles.

Seconded. I especially appreciate the way the author highlights the need to really think through the process of developing video content (as opposed to simply recording an existing experience), and the way he seems to imply that a great deal of effort ("invest heavily") will probably be required for the planning stage(s). So true.

Dang - I wanted to do this research! I recently completed Davidson's MOOC and was once again struck how the video presence matters. In her case, very little editing...which I actually found distracting (varying audio levels, bad lighting, etc.). I understand the desire to not overly produce but I think we want a level of professionalism. Very useful...thanks Bryan for finding it.

Not a lot of specifics yet, but this cMOOC sounds like it could be great for a lot of us interested in MOOCs and LE.

It does sound good. I'm looking forward to how it develops.

Interesting....