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Mary Bernklau's List: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

    • What is a MOOC?

       

      The simplest answer is to watch online MOOCs from Udacity, Coursera or EdX. The common format is a course of 7 weeks. A standard 2 hours lecture becomes in the online format a set of 5 to 10 videos of 10-12 minutes each. Students initially see the teacher introduce the topic, but soon thereafter the focus shifts on what the teacher writes. Instead of blackboards tablet computers are used, on which the professor writes on an empty or pre-filled screen, while speaking. Manual annotation of contents avoids the drowsy effect of Powerpoint.
        Some videos feature embedded quizzes: the video stops, students reply and the video continues. 

       

      The second major component of MOOCs is assignments. Students have to upload assignments every week, which in some of the most popular MOOCs can be very challenging. MOOCs are demanding for students: participants have to devote at least half a day per week to keep the pace of weekly assignments. Assignments are evaluated and graded automatically when possible, for instance, when students have to complete pieces of programming code. As an alternative, the evaluation is crowd-sourced to the students themselves, asking them to grade their peers. Experience shows that peer grading is quite reliable if the teacher provides the participants with clear evaluation criteria.

       

      The third component of MOOCs is a forum, which adds a social dimension. Students massively post questions in the forums. They vote for questions they consider important, so that other students and even the teachers answer these questions with high priority. The possibility to vote about the posts also automatically takes care of quality insurance since off-topic posts are voted down.

    • How are MOOCs different from YouTube or Wikipedia?

       

      The granularity of MOOCs is different from approaches such as Wikipedia or Khan Academy: on these
        platforms a single concept or idea constitutes a unit of content, while in MOOC the authors structure a large number of concepts, techniques and theories into a consistent whole in order to achieve a well-defined learning objective. The difference to other online learning platforms such as YouTube or iTunes-University is that a MOOC includes the whole learning experience, not only videos of recorded lectures: exercises or assignments play a central role as complement to the videos. A single MOOC corresponds to a course at a university: currently, there is no program or degree offered that is based on MOOCs, but this may change rapidly.  

    • If you are reading this, you are probably curious about Massive Open Online Courses, also known as MOOCs, a form of distance learning that some say is changing education as we know it.

       

      If you search Google for massive open online courses, you will get a massive number of results: more than two billion articles among Wikipedia, blogs, newspapers, discussion forums, databases . . . . All this content can be overwhelming, especially if you just want to have an overview of how MOOCs function.

       

      Even if you are already familiar with MOOCs, we hope this article will help you to better understand the main concepts behind the trend of open courses. There have been some excellent “What is a MOOC” articles already, including the now-classic video by Dave Cormier, who, along with Bryan Alexander, is credited with originally coining and defining the term. But, as Cormier points out himself, the video was created 18 months before the existence of Coursera and Udacity, which have grown to millions of users and hundreds of classes, not to mention that dozens of other platforms and independent classes have also been launched.

       

      So, in the fast-changing field of online education, a useful explanation of MOOCs for a newcomer needs some updating. As editor of this site, Robert has been working with writers, teachers and students from around the world, and Juliana has been writing her thesis for a degree in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. One thing we’ve both learned along the way is that the definition of the term is changing constantly.

      • Talking around the definition??

    • What is a MOOC?

       

      There are many barriers that might prevent you from taking a class. Maybe your application to school was rejected. Maybe you can’t afford it. Or maybe you attend school, but are always waitlisted for the best classes taught by the smartest, best-looking professors with the coolest accents.

       

      But MOOCs, which stands for Massive Open Online Colleges, aim to remove these barriers by delivering educational experiences to virtually anyone who wants to take a course, with no limit on attendance. Hence “massively open.” This is accomplished by making all course materials (lectures, readings, discussions) “online.” (See where we’re going?) Of course within that overarching definition, there’s a lot of variation and different approaches. But at its core, a MOOC is any online course or curricula with a very low barrier-of-entry that is accesible to virtually anyone in the world.

      • To help create a better understanding of what MOOCs are, I’ve put together my top-five list of MOOC “nots.”

         

        1. MOOCs are not online courses

         

        But they sure look a lot like online courses! By definition, MOOCs are free, light on instructor supervision, with students not receiving individual attention from teachers. However, MOOCs continue to be considered as online courses for several reasons:

         
           
        • Most MOOCs, so far, are derived from credit-bearing courses at the undergraduate level;
        •  
        • Most MOOCs are so well designed that the learning pathway is clear for most students; and,
        •  
        • Much attention is being paid to the granting of credit for MOOCs so MOOCs might serve in place of online courses for some students.
        •  
         

        Unfortunately, these factors add up to unrealistic expectations for MOOCs as well as misleading predictions about their impact.

         

        2. MOOCs will not replace teaching

         

        Instead, they can enhance teaching and provide access to learners around the world. MOOCs are created, not instructed, by professors and instructors. Highly motivated students may be able to master the material of MOOCs just as they might learn from books on their own. So far, the majority of MOOC students have been sophisticated consumers of higher education — those already possessing a degree. This is not typical in higher education because we know most students prefer the guidance of an instructor.

         

        3. MOOCs are really not “open”

         

        MOOCs, even in their purest form, lack many important aspects of full openness. For instance, a MOOC typically can’t be downloaded as a complete course and certainly can’t be used by institutions without a separate license. This also applies to individual parts of a course. The learning assets that make up a MOOC generally cannot be reused or modified for specific purposes.

         

        4. MOOCs won’t be “massive” forever

         

        The rapid expansion of MOOCs and MOOC providers, particularly those associated with higher education institutions, will divide the market even as the market grows. MOOCs will move from general education and undergraduate courses to special courses for defined audiences. While some of those audiences will be very large, the range of choice within any particular market will increase and diversify among subjects, providers and formats. Higher education administrators should adjust to the fact that the purpose of MOOCs will shift from institutional visibility to institutional service.

         

        5. MOOCs will not disrupt higher education

         

        However, they will threaten the status quo. In fact, MOOCs are more likely to help institutions and faculty improve learning by providing feedback on effective learning objects and practices, student learning outcomes and teaching methods.  MOOCs will accelerate learning innovation and provide new horizons for learning research.

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