Serendipity35

The small MOOC that I was facilitating on the Canvas Network ended this past weekend.  I say small because we had 800+ participants and that's small for a MOOC (call it a BOOC - big - or SOOC - small?). I say facilitating because I don't consider it to be the same experience as when I "teach" even if I 'd like to think that when I teach I am also trying to facilitate more than push content at and into students. Actually, along with my designer colleague, Mary Zedeck from Seton Hall University, most of the work was in designing the content for the course. I even have a problem with saying it was a "course" because there were no assignments or grades or credit. I said up front that the C for this MOOC stood for Conversation.

The conversation ran for 4 weeks and was open to registration right up to the last day. You might ask what value that would have to join in a conversation when it was closing, but several people who signed in very late said they were glad that he content would still be available to them after the class ended. They plan to access the content as time permits. I see some value to that, although I would say at least half the value in "Academia and the MOOC" was in connecting with other participants (most of whom were employed in academic roles) in the forums. There were more links and comments to new readings in the discussions than were contained in the modules Mary and I designed. 

But I am hoping that the conversation continues. I will be posting for the next few weeks some of the takeaways from doing this converstion. I also created some areas outside Canvas for that discussion to continue. (I did not use these areas during the 4 weeks because I felt it would dilute the conversation in the course itself.) This also widens the audience and I hpe some readers of this blog will join in now.

John Graves, a "student" in the class, had created a Google+ Community https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/112243817982502760507 during our mini-semester and that is place for conversation and also the possibility of some followup literal conversations using Hangouts.

I created an open Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/464360010307595/ where we can easily continue to share links and ideas. I have done this for other courses I teach and they have a pretty good life beyond the semester. There is one on designing social media, one that was started with a group I worked with in a Stanford creativity MOOC, and one on issues in general about educational technology.

Although I don't find the conversations as dynamic in LinkIn as in other social network,  I also created an open group there http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Academia-MOOC-4993629  because there are people active there. We have always hoped that more "professional" conversations would emerge in LinkedIn, but that hasn't happened for me yet. I'm actually more likely to connect professionally with people via this blog, Facebook or Twitter.

We had very lively activity in twitter using our hashtag of #acadmooc during the month that the class ran and I hope that tag continues to gather posts about MOOCs and their impact on academia.  

Thanks to another participant, Ann @annindk, our tweetchat with MOOC pioneer Bryan Alexander is archived on Storify for those who missed it. A second chat that we did within Canvas (closed) with another MOOC pioneer, Stephen Downes, is open to read in several place including here on Serendipity35.

If you are not a real Twitter user, you can also follow that conversation via Tagboard without a twitter account.

Finally, there will be people from the class posting to their own social sites (blogs etc.) about the course. Hopefully, I will get notifications about them or stumble upon them in some Google searching. We discussed in the course (it is hard to drop that familiar term) how little good formal feedback on MOOCs we could find by students. There are a good number of demographics studies on who takes MOOCs, but not much qualitative information on the experience. Most of that does seem to be informal or available on student sites.  Ann Priestley, who was in my MOOC, let me know that she had posted on her blog about the course and I very interested in the positives and negatives about the experience. (I already commented on her post, so that conversation continues). 

All these groups are open, so join in and invite colleagues who have an interest in exploring MOOCs. 

UnCollege challenges the the notion that going to college is the only path to success.

About 70% of high school graduates go on to college, even though studies seem to show that a college degree no longer guarantees success.

• College lacks academic rigor.


• 22% of college grads under 25 are working jobs that do not require a degree


• A college degree = success?


• Creativity is the No. 1 “leadership competency.”


• 70% of learning comes from real-world experiences.


• Self-directed learners outperform traditional students (86th percentile to 50th).

So, UnCollege www.uncollege.org states its mission as being "To change the notion that university is the only path to success and to help people to thrive in an ever changing world in which it is virtually impossible for educational institutions to adapt."

Some of their core belief are ones that intentionally disrupt how we have thought about post-secondary education and success.

• Many people pay too much for university and learn too little.


• You can get an amazing education anywhere—but you’ll have to stop writing papers and start doing things.


• You need an excellent education to survive in a world where 50% of the population is under 30.


• Subjects taught in traditional universities are often contrived,
  theoretical, and irrelevant, promoting conformity and regurgitation
  rather than innovation and learning.


• You don’t have to decide what to do with your life at age 18.


• You can contribute to society without necessarily having a university degree.


• You cannot rely on university to give you a complete and relevant
  education when professors are often more interested in researching than
  teaching.


• If you want to gain the skills requisite for success, you must hack your education.

Some of their efforts include a Gap Year Program and Hackademic Camps.

Students taking MOOCs have always been interested in expanding the opportunities for getting some type of credit or recognition for completing courses. Coursera and others have been looking at working with ACE on credit equivalency because they recognize that there is a percentage of MOOC participants (certainly not all - and probably not a majority) who want to apply their learning to other institutions or employers.

This is also a path that providers (for-profits - and I include colleges in that group for MOOCs) want to go down as they create business plans to use MOOCs. 

And so, Coursera has announced Signature Track. This option will give students in some select classes the opportunity to earn a "Verified Certificate" for completing their Coursera course. It links your coursework to your identity and allows for identity verification (You can create a special profile to link your coursework to your photo ID and unique typing pattern.) It will also offer "Verified certificates" which are official recognition from universities and Coursera for your work done. You can also share your electronic course records with employers, educational institutions, or anyone else through a secure URL.

Some of the first courses to be selected for Signature Track (offered in January 2014) will be Introduction to Genetics and Evolution, Microeconomics Principles,Nutrition for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Computational Investing Part I, and Clinical Problem Solving.

On Coursera's blog, Peter Lange, Provost of Duke University says, “When we started offering our courses on Coursera, we aimed to extend the reach of our university’s intellectual strengths beyond our own halls, to a global classroom, now, we hope that these credentials, while they will not contribute directly toward a degree, will afford students around the world, of all ages, backgrounds and resources an opportunity to have a legitimate credential for their work in order to advance their career or fulfill themselves personally.”