Moocs - Alberta grad students, Feb 2013

Terry Anderson,Professor,Centre for Distance Education

Feb. 2013

Ed Tech, Moocs and Beyond

Openness

• A sociological, psychological, legal and technological movement.

Definitions of Open on the Web (From Google)

• affording unobstructed entrance and exit; not shut or closed;

• affording free passage or access; • open to or in view of all;• accessible to all; • assailable: not defended or capable of being defended• loose: (of textures) full of small openings or gaps; • start to operate or function• not brought to a conclusion; • not sealed or having been unsealed

Education was Based on Old Models of Scarcity

P. Banbury 2009

Ed Tech Today

• Blended Classroom– Blending best of classroom and online

• Online Course– Access , Time and Place shifting

• Flipped Classroom– Content acquisition alone, at home– Learning objects, Khann Academy, Itune University– Classroom for collabortion

But What about MOOCs??

Moocs

• Massive: - Scaleable,

• Open – Free as in tuition for students, not as in editing, reproduction,

• Online – may support F2F MeetUps

• Course – Bounded by topic and time frame

MOOC Features

• Defined Curriculum?• “Big Data” Mining• Substitute student-content and perhaps student-

student for student-teacher inetrcation • Maybe asynchronous, synchronous, mixed• Paced or self-paced• Upsell of auxiliary products• Emerging credential options

• “Given our commitment to offer courses from a broad range of disciplines, we have invested substantial effort in developing the technology of peer assessments, “

• 2,700,000 registrants since 2011• Courses: 197 in 18 subjects• Social interaction: Online forums and

study groups, meet-ups organized by students in about 1,400 cities

• Venture capital, for profitNew York Times

• Smaller number fo courses, mostly Science and Tech

• Continuous Enrollment• Academic integrity: Proctored final exams at

Pearson testing centers, for $89.• Partnering with U of Alberta, machine learning• Venture Capital, for Profit

New York Times

• Profile: Nonprofit run out of M.I.T. and Harvard; with the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Texas system.

• 8 courses• Social interaction: Rudimentary; only one course, given by the Harvard

School of Public Health in quantitative methods, has regional get-togethers.

• Pacing: Courses have start and end dates. Registration closes two weeks after start date. Students may miss a week but lose points if they don’t make a deadline for turning in an assignment.

• What you get: Two certificates available, one designating an honor code, one a proctored exam. Both bear the edX and campus name — for example, MITx, HarvardX, BerkeleyX, UTAustinX.

• Foundation Funded, not for profit• Research Agenda

New York Times

MOOC Completion Rates??

• Coursera Course Computational Investing, January 6, 2013 by Tucker Balch ,

• 53,265 enrolled • Completed the course: – 4.8% of those who enrolled– 18% of those who took a quiz.– 39% of those who submitted the first project.

• “The students who drop out early do not add substantially to the cost of delivering the course. The most expensive students are the ones who stick around long enough to take the final, and those are the ones most likely to pay for a certificate”. Daphne Koller, Founder Coursera

The Interaction Equivalency Theorem by Anderson (2003)

• Thesis 1. Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student–student; student–content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.

• Thesis 2. High levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, although these experiences may not be as cost- or time effective as less interactive learning sequences.

　　　　　　See http://equivalencytheorem.info/ 17

Conclusions

• Open Content• MOOCS as one more, low cost, source of

student-content interaction• Open Communities?? Open Credit?• Web Presence, Contributions Artifacts, E-

portfolios, • Social networking with and beyond Facebook?

• Slides on SlideShare:• https://landing.athabascau.ca

• terrya@athabascau.ca• Terrya.edublogs.org

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