Group items tagged

"the kit, Sagan argues, isn't merely a tool of science - rather, it contains invaluable tools of healthy skepticism that apply just as elegantly, and just as necessarily, to everyday life. By adopting the kit, we can all shield ourselves against clueless guile and deliberate manipulation."

These are important questions, and I'm glad I have colleagues helping me try to answer them. But my initial response to these concerns is to respond with a question of my own: Instead of comparing a Coursera course to a traditional college class, what if we compare it to a textbook? This is the question that often pivots discussions of Coursera from skepticism to curiosity.

"But it turns out that -- when asked privately -- most presidents don't seem sure at all that MOOCs are going to transform student learning, or reduce costs to students -- two of the claims made by MOOC enthusiasts and an increasing number of politicians and pundits."

In the end, skeptics like me have to admit that many technological breakthroughs are actually improvements over the old ways of doing things. Even if we're not particularly savvy ourselves, we must acknowledge that some of our colleagues use technology with great success, and that their efforts do much to further our collective enterprise. We must educate ourselves about the advantages of various technologies and have the courage to adopt what seems beneficial. Who knows? We might even get ourselves a smartphone for Christmas.

"The large majority of faculty who have taught online courses (79%) say the experience has helped them develop skills and practices that have improved their teaching in the classroom as well as online."

Under the supervision of the instructor - there's the rub. I don't mean a kind of aloof, checking-your-Facebook-while-students-work kind of "supervision" but rather the kind of interactive engagement that a coach might have with his or her players while they practice. The coach doesn't do the exercises for the players, but neither does s/he stand off to the side and let them flail around the entire time. There is interaction between the coach and the player, between different players, and between different groups of players. And through that interaction, questions get answered, others get raised - and things get learned, if it's done right.

"The massive open online course craze may have subsided, but the debate about the role of online courses in higher education persists. Even as more faculty members experiment with online education, they continue to fear that the record-high number of students taking those classes are receiving an inferior experience to what can be delivered in the classroom, Inside Higher Ed's new Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology suggests."

"we cannot be dependent on Facebook's benevolence for protection in a world where so much of our daily activities are codified into data and collected by third parties. Indeed, we should be skeptical of Facebook's own efforts to use artificial intelligence to monitor user data for what it deems dangerous content. To continue down this path is to passively accept a surveillance society and sacrifice the liberty that enables a democracy to flourish."

"From the first week of school, the six year olds in my classroom begin to create an online presence in the form of a digital portfolio.  We use a blogging platform to do this, and include artifacts that show their progress in writing, reading, math, social studies and science."

This is what I LOVE about this article: "Students relish the feedback a comment gives, whether it is from a classmate, a parent, or someone they have never met. The audience becomes part of the student's learning." Now, I still have privacy concerns, but from reading her comments to others who were skeptical she says that she has not received inappriopriate comments in the 8 years she has been doing this. OK- Matt, my eyes are opening...a little bit. ;)