MOOCs and Liberal Education

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

"to the wealthy nation's desire to educate cheaper with less faculty" is certainly one possibility.

OpenupEd: a multinational, multilingual European MOOC enterprise: "Courses range from mathematics to economics, e-skills to e-commerce, climate change to cultural heritage, corporate social responsibility to the modern Middle East, and language learning to writing fiction. Each partner is offering courses via its own ..."

History of higher ed...

Millions of students have signed up for massive open online courses, and hundreds of universities are offering some form of Web-based curriculum. Most students aren't paying much for these classes, if they're paying anything at all. So where is all that knowledge-and all the cash-coming from?

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

Duke faculty reject partnerhsip with other universities to provide online courses. Not really a MOOC but I think all these larger online collaborative efforts are getting the same attention. I think I was most surprised by the last paragraphs...this "controversy" was over 1 proposed class (initially, then 2) offered by a faculty member...

The line which struck me was a quote from the faculty letter in the student newspaper: (students will be) "enjoying neither the advantages of self-paced learning nor the responsiveness of a professor." The temporal aspects of the MOOC are increasingly troubling me. I'd argue that most of the xMOOCs, at least, are not so much "self-paced" as "self-scheduled work within externally set pacing." I'd like to see that addressed in future iterations of these courses. There's a college that has already done this with their online offerings - UCF? Rio Salado? - where canned courses start every week if they make enrollment.

Our own Tracy Mitrano poses a good question.

"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...

Good provocation by Derek (always worth following). Again, the old Two Cultures divide returns.

I thought this comment was of interest to Liberal Arts Colleges: Justin Sipher, VP of libraries and information technology at St. Lawrence University, said the liberal arts colleges who have so far been lukewarm to the MOOC phenomenon might be making a mistake by "sheltering students from an experience of lifelong learning" that they ought to be exposed to. Even if an institution is concerned about diluting its brand with online offerings, students probably ought to be required to learn how to learn in an online course "just like you must learn a lot of other things as part of a liberal arts education," he said.

Justin's a fine CIO thinker.

Only a matter of time...

That's a big move. It also might be one more reason for liberal arts colleges not to engage with MOOCs, if they see teacher ed as removed from core mission.

Daniel provides strategic direction and content for AI's electronic publication Higher Ed Impact, including market research and interviews with leading subject matter experts on critical issues. Since the publication's launch in 2009, Daniel has written more than 200 articles on strategic issues ranging from student recruitment and retention to development and capital planning.

Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University wrote the following letter to make a direct appeal to Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor whose MOOC on "Justice" they were being encouraged to use as part of the San Jose State curriculum. (See a related article.)

A liberal arts technologist crunches numbers on the MOOC he just passed.