The World According to MOOC's
MOOC
stands for “Massive Open Online Course.”
The
best known supplier of MOOC
courses today is Coursera:
https://www.coursera.org/
. The courses are mostly synchronous meaning they start and stop at
specific dates but the information is archived for those who have
enrolled in them after the courses close. They seem to be very
up-to-date and originate from major universities such as the
University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan and Stanford.
More of them are being rolled out daily. As of today – September
17, 2012 – there are 124 choices.
Here's more
information about the emerging World of MOOC's from Coursera's own
website introduction:
About Coursera [Started at Stanford]
We
are a social entrepreneurship company [founded
by computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from
Stanford University]
that partners with the top universities in the world to offer
courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future
where the top universities are educating not only thousands of
students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to
teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.
Through
this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education
that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to
empower people with education that will improve their lives, the
lives of their families, and the communities they live in.
Our Courses
Classes
offered on Coursera are designed to help you master the material.
When you take one of our classes, you will watch lectures taught by
world-class professors, learn at your own pace, test your knowledge,
and reinforce concepts through interactive exercises. When you join
one of our classes, you'll also join a global community of thousands
of students learning alongside you. We know that your life is busy,
and that you have many commitments on your time. Thus, our courses
are designed based on sound pedagogical foundations, to help you
master new concepts quickly and effectively. Key ideas include
mastery learning, to make sure that you have multiple attempts to
demonstrate your new knowledge; using interactivity, to ensure
student engagement and to assist long-term retention; and providing
frequent feedback, so that you can monitor your own progress, and
know when you've really mastered the material.
We
offer courses in a wide range of topics spanning the Humanities,
Medicine, Biology, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Business, Computer
Science, and many others. Whether you're looking to improve your
resume, advance your career, or just learn more and expand your
knowledge, we hope there will be multiple courses that you find
interesting.
More
Background on MOOC's:
Here's
the link to a very informative recent commentary on MOOC's from “The
Chronicle of Higher Education”
www.chronicle.com/article/Into-the-Future-With-MOOCs/134080/
.
More to come:
The huge game-changer question
for us all is, “Do MOOC's provide more opportunities than
challenges to the evolution of qualitative, global higher education?”
Stay tuned there will be much
more on this subject in later installments.
John Freed, Ph.D.
Brandman University
POST NOTE: Leigh Ann Wilson added this link about the MOOC demographics: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/12/edx-explores-demographics-most-persistent-mooc-students .
NPR Update on Coursera from Sept. 30, 2012:
Very interesting follow-up on the first round of Coursera courses.
John Freed, Ph.D
freed@brandman.edu
freed@brandman.edu
Associate Professor of Humanities/Liberal Studies
Brandman University
a member of the Chapman University System
a member of the Chapman University System
Thank you, John. You ask an excellent question, but I think it's too early to tell. I guess a lot depends on how you define "opportunities" and "challenges." My initial response was, "Yes, for the MOOC student, MOOCs definitely provide more educational opportunities than challenges." But then, what kind of opportunities? Will completing MOOCs lead to some sort of official recognition of achievement --a graduation, a degree, or a certificate? How will future employers look upon a MOOC completion (or MOOC degree) on a resume? But is employment the only way to measure the worth of an education?
ReplyDeleteCorrect me if I'm wrong, but these questions don't seem to have answers right now, as far as MOOCs are concerned. And because of that, I would say that more traditional programs of higher education are not threatened at the moment...which isn't to say that they could be.
But, really, I think MOOCs and more traditional programs are not mutually exclusive, and can work together to present more educational opportunities that result in the evolution of qualitative, global higher education. How that can or will be done remains to be seen, of course, and will require innovation from both parties.
(Btw, I couldn't get the link at the end to work --leads to me an Outlook log in page?).