Serendipity35

Justin Reich on Education Weekly has been blogging about what the last two years of MOOC research seems to tell us about how to improve the design of courses. Here is my bulleted list version:

1. MOOC students are diverse, but trend towards auto-didacts

2. MOOC students value flexibility, but benefit when they engage frequently

3. The best predictor of persistence and completion is intention, though every activity predicts every other activity

4. MOOC students (tell us they) leave because they get busy with other things, but we may be able to help them stay on track

5. Students learn more from doing than watching

6. Lots of student learning activities are happening beyond our observation: including note-taking, socializing, and using other references

Improving student learning outcomes will require measuring learning, experimenting with different approaches, and baking research into courses from the beginning

REich is doing a separate post for each with data and commentary that is worth reading. For example, in his fifth post, Students learn more from doing than watching he writes that if we have a choice to take two different approaches to building a method to produce MOOCs, which path seems to produce better results?

A. Make a big investment in video production (editors, videographers etc.) and use basic assessment and discussion features available through the MOOC platform.

B. Focus on developing interactive activities with instructors doing simple screencasts or lectures.

You'd have to agree with Reich that if you have limited resources (money and people) "B' is the way to go. But even if you have the resources, there is evidence that you should go with "B."

A group from Carnegie Mellon University published a paper "Learning is not a Spectator Sport: Doing is Better than Watching for Learning in a MOOC" in which they compared students who did activities in a MOOC with students who watched videos. They found that students who did activities outperformed those who did not, even those who watched lots of videos. Despite the heavy investment and emphasis on video in many MOOCs, students need to do things in order to learn.

Do you have a big, "Duh. We knew that" reaction to that conclusion? Maybe, but plenty of MOOCs and just plain old online courses are enamored with bigtime video productions for online learning.

 

Not that we need more acronyms in education, but le COOC, acronyme de Corporate Open Online Course, is another one to addd to the list of variations on the MOOC model. It is also a further move into the non-academic application of the MOOC learning model.

A l'heure de la réforme de la formation professionnelle, l'accent est plus que jamais mis sur des formations opérationnelles et certifiantes. Un avantage certain pour ce que l'on appelle les COOC. Mais d'abord…qu'est-ce qu'un COOC ?

see  http://www.journaldunet.com/management/formation/1155958-formation-cooc-entreprises/

 

A new "virtual art school" called Kadenze has already teamed up with programs at 18 institutions to create a digital platform designed for arts courses.

According to a company co-founder, Perry R. Cook (an emeritus professor at Princeton, one of the schools involved), the platform will be “multimedia rich” and allow students to create online portfolios, upload music files and scanned art, watch videos, and participate in discussion forums.

Their website describes Kadenze as "the future of creative education" as it "brings together educators, artists, and engineers from leading universities across the globe to provide world-class education in the fields of art and creative technology."

Kadenze will initially offer about 20 courses on subjects including music, art history, and technology and art.

Their "business model" is one that has been evolving the past two years for many MOOC providers. Similar to the free and premium model used by many app and software as service (SAS) providers, it offers free access and also additional access or features for paid users. You can enroll in courses and watch videos for free. Paying $7 a month allows you to submit assignments and receive grades and feedback. Additional fees of  $300, $600, or $900 will be charged for courses that are offered for credit.

At the end of the school year in the U.S., students who are taking accelerated advanced placement courses (ones designed to be similar in content to general education courses in colleges) take the Advanced Placement (AP) exams. These exams are important factors for admissions to most elite universities. Those terms are registered trademarks of the College Board, but high schools create their own AP classes. There has long been a market for test prep materials and courses for those exams,  and teachers who do tutoring outside the classroom often focus on those courses.

Now, edX is offering more than 40 high school and Advanced Placement® preparation courses. This massive open online course (MOOC) provider and online learning platform hosts online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide audience, some at no charge. EdX was founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in 2012 during the peak of MOOC frenzy. More than 60 schools, nonprofits, corporations, and international organizations offer or plan to offer courses on the edX website and edX has more than 500 different courses online.

Their offerings let students around the world prepare for college and also for AP exams. They can also be used to supplement AP coursework by student or teachers.

The edX model is to allow you to take any course free, or pay for a Verified Certificate to share with teachers or college admissions. 

The College Board was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, these offerings. This is not an offering that other test prep companies or individuals might welcome. But it is a logical, and I think welcome, application of the MOOC model. It is another move forward in the [r]evolution of offering large (if not massive) open (if not always fully open) online courses to learners.