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"Although massive open online courses (MOOCs) are seen to be, and are in fact designed to be, stand-alone online courses, their introduction to the higher education landscape has expanded the space of possibilities for blended course designs (those that combine online and face-to-face learning experiences). Instead of replacing courses at higher education institutions, could MOOCs enhance those courses? This paper reports one such exploration, in which a Stanford University Machine Learning MOOC was integrated into a graduate course in machine learning at Vanderbilt University during the Fall 2012 semester. The blended course design, which leveraged a MOOC course and platform for lecturing, grading, and discussion, enabled the Vanderbilt instructor to lead an overload course in a topic much desired by students. The study shows that while students regarded some elements of the course positively, they had concerns about the coupling of online and in-class components of this particular blended course design. Analysis of student and instructor reflections on the course suggests dimensions for characterizing blended course designs that incorporate MOOCs, either in whole or in part. Given the reported challenges in this case study of integrating a MOOC in its entirety in an on-campus course, the paper advocates for more complex forms of blended learning in which course materials are drawn from multiple MOOCs, as well as from other online sources."

The Blended Schools Network is hosting a massive open online course (MOOC). Starting on Monday, October 21, 2013 this course is designed for educators who wish to Learn the fundamentals of being a quality online teacher using a pre-built online course. Note: This course is designed for educators that have access to online course content via a course management system of their choosing (e.g. Blackboard, Canvas, Edmodo, Moodle etc.). If you do not have access to an online course the Blended Schools Network can provide you with a sample online course for use during the MOOC. This MOOC is an online course consisting of: Weekly online lesson content that can be completed at any time during the assigned week Weekly online collaboration activities that can be completed at any time during the assigned week Weekly online presentation and discussion sessions that can be attended live or viewed as a recording

This looked interesting - very interesting.....

In October 2011, the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges launched the Open Course Library, a collection of high-quality, low-cost educational materials to correspond with the 81 largest-enrollment courses in the state. The first 42 courses are available immediately, and the remaining 39 are slated for development in 2012 and release in 2013. In conjunction with the release of the first 42 courses, the Student PIRGs conducted this informal study to evaluate just how much the Open Course Library could reduce costs for students. Based on a survey of 22 of the program's 42 course authors, all of whom had agreed to adopt the materials in their own teaching, we have preliminary estimates for the impact of these courses.

"WGU Academy courses will be delivered in an online, competency-based format similar to the WGU learning model. Students will enroll in customized programs of two or more college-level courses that typically include a writing course and one or more courses in math, general education, or introductory-level classes focused on desired degree paths. In addition to college-level courses, WGU Academy offers the Program for Academic and Career Advancement (PACA). Modeled on a nationally recognized social and emotional learning course used by WGU for several years, the course provides group sessions, peer interaction, and one-to-one coaching to build confidence and college persistence."

Looking for something different from the current hysteria of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)? A digital storytelling course started by Jim Groom at the University of Mary Washington (UMW), ds106 was set loose as an open course in January 2011. Yet the UMW catalog does not include such a course. Its actual course designation is CPSC 106 (Computer Science)-a small but telling example of how ds106 plays with and questions the norm.

Lecturers in higher education often consider the incorporation of web technologies into their teaching practice. Partially structured and populated course site templates could aid them in getting started with creating and deploying webbased materials and activities to enrich the teaching and learning experience. Discussions among instructional technology support staff and lecturers reveal a paucity of robust specifications for possible course site features that could comprise a template. An attempted mapping from the teaching task as understood by the instructor to the envisaged course website properties proves elusive. We conclude that the idea of an initial state for a course site, embodied in a template, remains useful and should be developed not according to a formula but with careful attention to the context and existing pedagogical practice. Any course template provided for the use of lecturers should be enhanced with supporting instructions and examples of how it may be adapted for their particular purposes.

""Canvas Network allows institutions to define the structure of their courses and the approach to teaching that makes the most sense to them. Some institutions have chosen to pursue a massive open online course format (MOOC), and some have chosen to pursue a smaller online course format with more interaction. Often the courses are taught on the same platform the institution uses to teach tuition-based courses, which means students have a seamless experience as they progress through their academic journey.""

"The relatively low completion rates of learners have been a central critique as MOOCs grow in popularity. This focus on completion rates, however, implies a monolithic view of disengagement that fails to acknowledge alternative forms of participation in MOOCs. Identifying subpopulations of learners based on their longitudinal engagement with the course allows MOOC designers to target interventions and develop adaptive course features. We develop a simple, scalable, and informative classification method that identifies four prototypical engagement trajectories: Completing learners, who complete the majority of the assessments offered in the class; Auditing learners, who do assessments infrequently (if at all) and engage instead by watching video lectures; Disengaging learners, who do assessments at the beginning of the course but then have a marked decrease in engagement, generally in the first third of the class; and Sampling learners, who enter and exit the course quickly, watching a minimal number of videos at some point during the course."

Twenty-first-century learners have expectations that are not met within the current model of higher education. With the introduction of online learning, the anytime/anywhere mantra taken up by many postsecondary institutions was a first step to meeting learner needs for flexibility; however, the choice and determination of delivery mode still resides with the institution and course instructors. Recently, the massive open online course (MOOC) movement has been introduced as an undeniable force in higher education, and the authors argue that it is distracting leadership from focusing on alternative options for supporting the needs of learners who demand both personalization and real access to learning opportunities. The key element to the MOOC movement is its openness that enables student access to education. In this article, the authors present the multi-access learning framework that envelops the MOOC phenomenon and merges course access modes enabling student choice and agency. The authors report results from a pilot study on one type of multi-access course, where students were able to choose their mode of access. In this case, remote students accessed the course via webcam and joined their on-campus classmates and instructor who were together face-to-face. Implications for multi-access learning in relation to the MOOC movement are discussed.

"Last fall, Vanderbilt computer science professor Doug Fisher "flipped" his graduate-level course on machine learning. Instead of having his students read their textbook before class or watch lecture videos that he created, as is typical for a "flipped" classroom, Doug asked his students to prepare for class by taking another professor's course, a massive open online course (MOOC) offered by Stanford computer science professor Andrew Ng on the Coursera platform. Doug's students watched Professor Ng's lecture videos and completed quizzes and other assignments within the MOOC, then came to class to discuss that material with Doug along with additional readings that went beyond the MOOC material. When Andrew Ng's course ended, Doug's students spent the remaining weeks of the semester engaged in projects that required them to apply what they had learned throughout the course."

"What do students want in the learning activities for their online STEM courses? They'd prefer more real-life problems to solve and instructional resources such as simulations, case studies, videos and demonstrations. They'd also like the chance to meet and collaborate with other students as well as teaching assistants online. Finally, they'd appreciate clear and consistent information from instructors about instructions, assignments, assessments, due dates, course pages and office hours. What do students currently get? The most common course activities are the completion of major projects or assignments, reading, visiting websites, taking quizzes or exams, and viewing slideshows. The most interaction they report experiencing comes from reading course news and announcements and receiving e-mails from the instructor."

Facillitators Guide to on line Learning

Thank you for sharing this-I am starting to look very closely at how education leaders make technology decisions and this resource looks very helpful.

"This Facilitator's Guide is based on What Education Leaders Should Know about Virtual Education, an online course designed by the Center on Instruction and the New England Comprehensive Center. The Facilitator's Guide demonstrates step-by-step how to build the course on a learning management system (LMS) and provides instructions on all phases of course implementation. "

"Teaching and learning may rest on processes invisible to the naked eye; but lessons and courses are spatiotemporal things: activities with extension and duration, leaving traces, demanding behaviors. And in order to get a hold of teaching and learning, at some point we need to move from the abstractions to the concrete activities. Teaching a course or a lesson, and taking a course or a lesson: these are concrete physical activities. And project management gives us a good analogy for what the dimension of learning which is not theoretical but is absolutely necessary."

"ProQuest SIPX, provider of the most complete digital course materials solutions in higher education, has signed a three-year deal with Arizona State University (ASU), the largest public university in the U.S. with over 90,000 students. ASU will integrate the SIPX Central service-a scalable, self-service configuration that enables anyone at the school to set up course readings-into the campus' Blackboard learning management system. The technology is unique, sophisticated, yet user-friendly and helps get more library resources and open access content into the hands of instructors. The service will reduce the cost of course materials for students and simplify sharing of the course readings between instructors and students."

"Although the movement in course materials in colleges and universities is clearly from print towards digital, the survey data suggest it will be a slow process. Asked when they thought the majority of their course materials would be primarily digital, fully a fourth of the surveyed faculty indicated "never," while another 9 percent said by fall 2022, and 17 percent indicated by fall 2020. In contrast, fully a sixth (16 percent) reported that majority of their current course materials were digital as of fall 2015, and a third (34 percent) anticipated primarily digital course materials by fall 2018. "

This 12 week course, starting September 10, 2012 will explore openness in education - its roots, its growing influence, and economic and systemic impact. We have adopted an open online format (massive open online courses, sometimes referred to as MOOCs...though we expect this course won't hit that "massive" target achieved by initiatives like Coursera and EDx. For a quick introduction to connectivist courses and how they work, please view the videos below.

Today California (CA) Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (author of the CA open textbook legislation) announced that SB 520 will be amended to provide open, online college courses for credit. In short, the bill will allow CA students, enrolled in CA public colleges and universities, to take online courses from a pool of 50 high enrollment, introductory courses, offered by 3rd parties, in which CA students cannot currently gain access from their public CA university or community college.

"In terms of culture, I could not be more excited about the Community Teaching Assistant (CTA) program as led by Norian Caporale-Berkowitz. CTAs are selected from the outstanding students from previous courses who have both mastered the material solidly and shown a natural inclination to teach their fellow students. They volunteer to be in the next session of the class and help in creating the culture of the next round and to be close to the next round of the students and help them through the materials in the course. What is especially cool is that we have a special forum for the CTAs and Teaching staff for the course where we discuss and solve problems and they help make sure that things are brought to my attention quickly that are important. I still am in the class discussions and do most of the content creation for the class - but I also have a group that can review my new materials before I release them and catch problems. I spend about an equal amount of time in the course forums and TA forum."

San Jose State has already achieved remarkable results with online materials from edX, a nonprofit online provider, in its circuits course, a longstanding hurdle for would-be engineers. Usually, two of every five students earn a grade below C and must retake the course or change career plans. So last spring, Ellen Junn, the provost, visited Anant Agarwal, an M.I.T. professor who taught a free online version of the circuits class, to ask whether San Jose State could become a living lab for his course, the first offering from edX, an online collaboration of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Has the online course creation market gone stale already? Launched on Tuesday, newcomer Versal hopes to breathe life and possibilities into what they see as a very limited set of tools that currently exist. Their course-building platform offers a set of pre-made gadgets that allow teachers to build interactive courses on their platform through a what-you-see-is-what-you-get drag and drop interface. To add interactivity beyond basic pictures, texts and embedded quizzes, Versal uses gadgets to create interactive graphs, simulations, and models. With these gadgets, teachers can build models or simulations that the students use to experience and manipulate the content they are learning."