Yesterday there was an interesting session on MOOCs. Hannes Klöpper, co-founder of iversity, made a good observation about the 4 distinct factors for the succes of MOOCs:
The last couple of weeks I was a bit busy with travelling and didn't have time to blog a lot about MOOCs. There are some interesting new articles and reports written about MOOCs. Here a selection:
Sir John Daniel - Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility
The paper describes the short history of MOOCs and sets them in the wider context of the evolution of educational technology and open/distance learning. While the hype about MOOCs presaging a revolution in higher education has focussed on their scale, the real revolution is that universities with scarcity at the heart of their business models are embracing openness.
Educause - What Campus Leaders Need to Know About MOOCs
A publication of Education about the hype in Education for 2012.
New York Times - The Year of the MOOC
The line between online and on campus is blurring
Edudemic - 40 Useful Tips For Anyone Taking A MOOC
Whether you’re looking to online education for personal reasons or to get ahead in your career, use these tips to help you get more out of open courses and use what you learn to market yourself, improve your performance, and stand out on the job.
Clay Shirky - Napster, Udacity, and the Academy
Great post on MOOCs from Clay Shirky
Wired Campus - Course-Management Companies Challenge MOOC Providers
Two software companies that sell course-management systems, Blackboard and Instructure, have entered the race to provide free online courses for the masses.
Inside Higher Ed - MOOCs for credit
Coursera, the largest provider of massive open online courses (MOOCs), has entered into a contract to license several of the courses it has built with its university partners to Antioch University, which would offer versions of the MOOCs for credit as part of a bachelor’s degree program.
Learning Solutions Magazine - Ten Tips: Keep Learners Motivated in Your Open Online Cloud Course or MOOC
Setting up an open online course (cloud course or MOOC) is one thing, but keeping the participants motivated can be quite a challenge if you never meet face-to-face. The dropout rate of online courses can be huge, and for collaborative courses this can be disastrous, as it will have an effect on the peer-to-peer learning dynamics.
The Conversation - Online learning glitch: MOOC flaws will be hard to resolve
there are still a few issues that the MOOCs haven’t solved, and I’m not certain they’re going to be able to do so without significantly revising their model.
The Guardian - Online learning: pedagogy, technology and opening up higher education
Debate discussion with interesting participants.
Michael Feldstein - Everybody Wants to MOOC the World
But hype aside, it’s worth asking what it means for the traditional LMS players to be marketing themselves as platforms for MOOCs and other open courses.
BBC - Can schools survive in the age of the web?
A growing number of online universities are redefining education. But what will that mean for traditional institutions?
Michael Feldstein - Is Coursera Facebook, Amazon, or Pets.com?
it’s an uncomfortable truth for educational folks that one of the principal innovations of the xMOOC is the store front
Mike Caulfield - Who is accountable at Coursera?
Coursera wants to be the Google of the education world. You can’t complain about your email if the email is free, right? And the same thing holds true with their courses.
Hester Jelgerhuis van SURF heeft een zeer uitgebreide blog geschreven over de verschillende doelgroepen van Open Educational Resources:
Over de gebruikers van open educational resources (OER) is nog niet zoveel bekend: wie zijn nu eigenlijk de consumenten van OER? Zijn dat docenten of studenten van de eigen instelling of daarbuiten, zijn het aankomende studenten of mensen die uit nieuwsgierigheid of interesse de materialen raadplegen?
Hester maakt hier een onderscheid in 4 doelgroepen: studenten, docenten, onderwijsinstellingen en overheiden. Zoals Hester aangeeft zijn er binnen deze groepen ook nog aparte segmenten te identificeren. Ook kunnen ze verschillende rollen aannemen:
Het artikel "Technology Changing How Students Learn" is alweer van bijna een maand geleden, maar het bevat wel interessante informatie. Volgens docenten verandert het leergedrag van studenten door technologie:
There is a widespread belief among teachers that students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.
Interessant vind ik ook het Wikipedia-problem:
students have grown so accustomed to getting quick answers with a few keystrokes that they are more likely to give up when an easy answer eludes them
Volgens de onderzoeken vinden 76% van de docenten dat studenten hier last van hebben. Ik herken dit gedrag wel bij studenten. Volgens mij is hier ook een belangrijke taak voor docenten. Als je opdrachten voor studenten maakt, probeer dan ook zelf hoe snel je het antwoord kan googlen.
In 2010 was ik niet zo positief over de Onderwijsdagen, vorig jaar was ik er niet bij (vanwege een congres en vakantie in Japan), maar dit jaar heeft de Onderwijsdagen mij blij verrast.
De twee dagen zijn voorbij gevlogen, ik heb veel goede presentaties gezien en veel mensen kunnen spreken. Er zijn volgens mij drie belangrijke redenen hiervoor:
Al met al heb ik het ervaren als een van de beste Onderwijsdagen van de afgelopen jaren. Zowel inhoudelijk als organisatie. Complementen aan Surf dat ze gedurfd hebben.
Vandaag was de eerste dag van de Onderwijsdagen 2012. Voor het eerst vonden deze niet plaats in Utrecht, maar in het WTC in Rotterdam. Natuurlijk wist de NS hiervan en veroorzaakte ze meteen een storing tussen Utrecht en Rotterdam.
Op het programma stonden vandaag 5 presentaties van de TU Delft. Je zou bijna denken overkill ;-)
Als eerste mocht de directeur onderwijs en secretaris van de universiteit Anka Mulder het congres openen met haar keynote. Hieronder haar presentatie, waarin zei een duidelijk beeld schets wat instellingen te wachten staat op het gebied van Open en Online Onderwijs.
Vervolgens gingen Sofia Dopper en Gillian Saunders-Smits in op de stappen die de TU Delft op dit moment maken op het gebied van Online Onderwijs met de start van 3 online masters.
Zoals zij aangaven hebben wij absoluut nog niet alle antwoorden, maar wij hebben wel besloten dat we het gaan doen! Hieronder de presentatie:
Na de lunch presenteerde mijn collega Meta Keijzer-de Ruijter over een E-merge project dat zich richt op leermaterialen om docenten te ondersteunen bij digitaal toetsen. Natuurlijk doen ze dit open en wel via het wikiwijs-platform. Opvallen was dat veel vragen die ze kreeg gingen over wikiwijs en niet specifiek over het project. Gelukkig was Robert Schuwer in de zaal om deze vragen te beantwoorden. Hieronder de presentatie:
Parallel aan deze sessie presenteerde Ellen Zillig-Straatman over de resultaten van het MAIS-project. Hierbij was ik zelf niet aanwezig.
In deze sessie gaf Gillian Saunders-Smit in op peer review in de praktijk. Peer review is het beoordelen van elkaars werk door gelijken. Samen met Parantion ontwikkelde de TU Delft een digitale tool voor het afnemen van peer review binnen het programma Scorion. De tool is gelinkt aan onze Blackboard-omgeving.
Ter geruststelling op de tweede dag van het congres staat er maar 1 TU Delft-presentatie op het programma, die van mijzelf. Samen met Marja Verstelle en Wilfred Rubens zijn wij in gegaan op wat onze drie instellingen de afgelopen jaren hebben gedaan met OpenCourseWare en waar we nu mee door gaan.
Onze presentatie staat ook op slideshare.
Interesting article by Brandon Butler from the Association of Research Libraries about the legal and policy issues for research libraries when you start with a MOOC:
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) raise significant legal and policy questions for research libraries, which are often asked to support the development of MOOC courses. These questions involve information policy concerns that are central to research libraries, including the proper application of fair use, the transition to open access as the
default mode of scholarly publishing, and the provision of equal access to learning materials for students with and without disabilities. Where possible, research libraries should engage in conversations around MOOCs and promote their core values. By doing so, they will also promote the continuing vitality of libraries as partners in the
educational mission.
His conlusions are very clear:
It should be clear from the preceding discussion that libraries have a significant stake in the way their parent and partner institutions approach the MOOC phenomenon. In addition to the strategic concerns already described—keeping fair use on the table, protecting and extending open access policies, ensuring accessibility—research libraries have a more general stake where MOOCs are concerned, which is the continuing relevance of libraries and library collections to university teaching.
Download the article here: http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/issuebrief-mooc-22oct12.pdf
Yesterday was the official announcement of a new initiative of the OpenCourseWare Consortium and OpenStudy:
The OCW Consortium has partnered with OpenStudy to offer learners a Certificate of Participation through use of members’ OCW. Learners join an online study group formed around open courses, register so their learning can be tracked, and start studying the subject using OCW. As learners interact with others and master the content, they begin to increase their SmartScore, which is an individualized, data-driven evaluation of teamwork, problem solving and engagement – the kinds of skills employers most often look for, but have a hard time measuring from traditional education records. Once learners achieve a certain SmartScore for the course, they are eligible to print a Certificate of Participation from OpenStudy and the OCW Consortium. Courses for this pilot are from TU Delft, The University of Notre Dame, The University of California, Irvine, and The Universidad Politécnica Madrid.
For the TU Delft we have two courses available for this:
The courses are free, but you may earn a Certificate of Participation from the OpenCourseWare Consortium to recognize your efforts. This Certificate will document (i) your participation in the course, (ii) your progress through the course and (iii) three important skills that employers want to see documented: teamwork, engagement and problem solving skills. Whether you are a high school or college student or working adult looking to advance, earn this Certificate of Participation to get an edge:
I have heard that the first students already have signed up for some of the courses. We see this as an experiment to offer extra services to our users.
ps. It is not a MOOC
Last monday it was exactly 5 years ago that we launced our OpenCourseWare website. Last Thursday we celebrated this with a 'borrel' for all the people that were involved in those 5 years. Below the presentation of me about the first 5 years and Anka about our next steps:
Today (Wednesday) I'm presenting about these 5 years and what we will in the next couple of years at the OpenEd Conference in Vancouver. My presentation is already on slideshare and embedded here:
In my presentation From OCW to Online Education I mention 5 big mistakes on online education:
Because the presentation was not recording, a lot of people were interested if I could explain these mistakes in more detail. So here we go: