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MOOCs for Teachers: Coursera Offers Online Teacher Training Program

April 30, 2013 | 9:00 PM | By
UTCLibrary6

Flickr: UTCI Library

Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, have forced universities to reconsider their value in light of free high-quality education available online. Coursera, a private company founded by two Stanford professors has been at the forefront of that movement, actively courting new institutions of higher education to their portfolio and trying to monetize the effort by certifying courses for college credit. Now they’re expanding that model to K-12 teacher professional development.

The courses will be free to teachers, and for those who want a verified certificate, there will be a $50 fee. Coursera will verify that the teacher actually completed the course and participated fully along the way.

“In speaking to school administration leaders, I was hearing over and over that many districts today don’t have the resources to deliver good professional development,” said Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera. For teachers, Ng said offering professional development online gives them more choices and could save districts money.

“The important part is the interaction among the teachers which is something that’s very hard to replicate on a MOOC or any kind of online program.”

Coursera is partnering with schools of education at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt University. In addition, the company is expanding its network of trainers beyond universities to include cultural institutions like the Exploratorium and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

“It was the most natural thing in the world,” said Deb Howes, director of digital learning at MOMA. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Digital Tools, Teaching Strategies, Coursera, MOOC, professional development

Why Do Students Enroll in (But Don’t Complete) MOOC Courses?

April 5, 2013 | 8:00 AM | By
Udacity office in Silicon Valley, ground zero for MOOCs.

TB

Udacity office in Silicon Valley, ground zero for MOOCs.

Less than 10 percent of MOOC students, on average, complete a course. That’s the conclusion of Katy Jordan of Open University, who published her analysis, pulled together from available data of some Massively Open Online Courses, or MOOCs.

But do completion rates matter?

It’s not that course completion rates don’t inform observers about the nature of MOOCs, said Michelle Rhee-Weise, who follows higher-ed developments in online and blended learning as an education senior research fellow for the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation (formerly Innosight Institute). But with no negative academic consequences from dropping out, that information is less about the effectiveness of the courses themselves, and more about the reasons people might be enrolling, she said.

Among those reasons:

  1. 1.  Just because MOOCs give free access to higher education courses doesn’t mean their work is being ignored by the for-profit sector of an online learning industry estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Rhee-Weise said. That can make MOOCs a fruitful observation ground for those who are looking for ideas to infuse into their own online learning efforts.
  2. 2.  “If you just think about the openness of these platforms, there are people who just want to see what’s going on, see how others teach the same subjects they do, as well as competitors who might want to steal some ideas and use them in their own platforms,” said Rhee-Weise, who said she has enrolled in a handful of MOOCs for research purposes without intentions of completing them.
  3. 3.  There is a range of data that shows students enrolled in MOOCs and in other online post-secondary courses skew far older than the traditional on-campus college student. In online degree programs, that phenomenon often relates to professionals looking to change Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Teaching Strategies, Higher Education, MOOC

Study: Path Through College is Indirect and Stressful for Many Students

March 18, 2013 | 10:12 AM | By
MyEdu

MyEdu

Despite a deeply held belief that success in college is crucial for success in life, the traditional path students assume they’ll take is more an exception than the rule, according to a new report.

Though most students believe the college path — high school, college with chosen major, internship, job — will smoothly go from one phase to the next, the reality is quite different for many students. And as a result, stress and anxiety is causing them to make haphazard decisions about their education.

Switching majors, falling behind the academic schedule, and feeling disenfranchised by the conventional college system are becoming institutionalized student experiences, states the report [PDF] from MyEdu, an Austin, Texas-based company that offers online tools to help college students manage their academic lives and career opportunities.

The study, which takes into account the randomly selected responses of 1,047 students from MyEdu’s 300,000 profiles, shows that more than half of students have switched or considered switching their major during their academic career and that the overwhelming reason for this change was due to changing interests, and a lack of enjoyment in the first major selected. What’s more, 37% of respondents classified themselves as “nontraditional students.”

So how to fix it?

Though many believe access to online courses through one of the proliferating MOOCs, study author Jon Kolko suggested online learning represents the wrong application of the right technology. Instead, he says the same kinds of algorithms that contribute to a self-paced math course, for example, should instead be used to evaluate a student’s progress in traditional college courses. For example, he envisions MyEdu and its competitors (such as Koofers, Princeton Review, and HeyCampus) offering tools that can take a student’s performance and feedback from a general education course and suggest or rule out potential majors.

“I don’t think computers are that good for learning, but they’re really good for this administrative side of things,” said Kolko, MyEdu’s vice president of design, who is planning on using feedback Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Big Ideas, Culture, Digital Tools, Higher Education, MOOC

Higher Ed Trends: MOOCs, Tablets, Gamification, and Wearable Tech

February 7, 2013 | 11:26 AM | By

CAL

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

As tech tools continue to proliferate with new launches and new products, it’s difficult to predict what will stick and what won’t. A recently released report by the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) tries to sift through the fads and find the few that will have a real impact on education in the next few years.

What’s worth noting? Sometimes what seemed impossible only a few years ago has already become a new trend. The 2013 NMC Horizon’s Report on Higher Education, which brings together international experts in education and technology, attempts to take the pulse of emerging technologies in higher education and predict where the field will move in the near, middle and far term.

The report points to MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, as the big change agent in the higher ed landscape, but it also reaches a little further, bringing 3D printing and wearable technology into the mix.

KEY FACTORS

The panel considered some key factors influencing whether technologies take hold, identifying a move towards “open” content and the ability to share, manipulate, and mold. Even more critical for institutions of higher education is the rise of MOOCs. As more elite institutions align themselves Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Big Ideas, Digital Tools, Teaching Strategies, big data, gamification, Higher Education, learning analytics, MOOC, NMC Horizon Report

Faces of the New Higher Ed: Learning By Working

January 16, 2013 | 12:03 PM | By

Enstitute

Going to college used to be the prescribed path to success, but today, students are considering different options. The cost of a college education is soaring and many students are graduating with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. One response to the high cost of secondary education are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by companies like Coursera or edX that offer free online courses taught by well-known professors, but the jury is still out on how employers will view qualifications from MOOCs.

Students are now considering whether work experience should come even before college education. What if applicants already had a solid footing in the industries they hope to enter? That’s the mission of Enstitute, a New York City-based non-profit that’s promoting the idea of learning by doing.

Co-founder Kane Sarhan developed Enstitute based on his personal experiences in college and in apprenticeships. He was a high achiever in university, but never felt very connected to what he studied until he started getting real-world experience through internships. Suddenly, the marketing terms used in class became relevant and there was a reason to understand them. His apprenticeships helped him get real-world job experience that he parlayed into a first job with more responsibility and higher pay than some of his peers who had graduated from top universities.

“We sat down with about a dozen HR departments before we started the program and they said the traditional indicators that they use for recruiting are starting to fail.”

His friends started coming to him asking for advice and he tried to help them out by connecting them to entrepreneurs in his circle. The hunger for those connections, for real skills and practical experience, was so strong that Sarhan decided to institutionalize the apprenticeship experience.

“We sat down with about a dozen HR departments before we started the program and they said the traditional indicators that they use for recruiting are starting to fail,” Sarhan said. Hiring Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching Strategies, Enstitute, Higher Education, MOOC, Sebastian Thrun, Udacity

What You Need to Know About MOOCs

January 10, 2013 | 10:24 AM | By

Watch How Free Online Courses Are Changing Traditional Education on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

For those still trying to piece together all the different definitions and scenarios of a MOOC (massive open online courses), this PBS Newshour segment presents a comprehensive overview of the evolution of this phenomenon.

From the financial angle, MOOC startups are still trying to figure out how to make money. Udacity is getting revenue from several companies like Google to provide specialized courses. Coursera is charging potential employers for providing names of high-scoring students.

Sebastian Thrun of Udacity, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng of Coursera, students, and other professors who question the wisdom of these classes weigh in.

Student Tracy Lippincott’s perspective on teacher-student connection:
“The thing that I really miss is actually personal contact with the professor. I like to be able to get personalized advice from the person who’s in charge, and maybe just a little of like a thumbs-up, you know, just a little bit of positive reinforcement.”

Sebastian Thrun on his view of lecturing:
“It’s not my lecturing that changes the student, but it’s the student exercise. So our courses feel very much like video games, where you’re being bombarded with exercise after exercise after Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Digital Tools, Teaching Strategies, Coursera, Daphne Koller, MOOC, Sebastian Thrun, Stanford, Udacity