MOOCs

From today's  The New York Times, a basic introduction to MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Course -- the kind of article you'd give to your elderly aunt. 

A Surge in Growth for a New Kind of Online Course

By ALAN FINDER

ONLINE course work has been a staple of American higher education for at least a decade. But over the last few years, a new, more ambitious variant known as a MOOC — massive open online course — has challenged traditional assumptions of what an online course can be. MOOCs have exploded in that short time, redefining who can enroll in college courses, as well as where, when and even why people take online classes.

Available globally to hundreds of thousands of people at a time, these classes depend on highly sophisticated digital technology, yet they could not be simpler to use. Signing up takes less time than creating an iTunes account. You can create a user name and password and start exploring the rapidly expanding course offerings.

The major Web sites already provide dozens of courses, as diverse as basic calculus and European intellectual history. It is both new and experimental, and as much as MOOCs have evolved since beginning in recent years, enthusiasts expect many more changes. From an early focus on technical and scientific courses, for instance, offerings now include the humanities and social sciences.

While there are some significant differences among the major MOOC Web sites, they share several main elements. Courses are available to anyone with access to the Internet. They are free, and students receive a certificate of completion at the end. With rare exceptions, you cannot earn college credit for taking one of these courses, at least for now.

“For a decade, people have been asking, ‘How does the Internet change higher education,’ ” said Edward B. Rock, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is the institution’s senior adviser on open course initiatives. “This is the beginning. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.”
Navigating the world of MOOCs begins with three major Web sites.

Article continues at link.

MOOCs

MOOC = Massively Open Online Course, ". . . a model of educational delivery that is, to varying degrees, massive, with theoretically no limit to enrollment; open, allowing anyone to participate, usually at no cost; online, with learning activities typically taking place over the web; and a course, structured around a set of learning goals in a defined area of study." 

The above is from a new issue in the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's very useful "7 Things You Should Know About. . ." -- "7 Things You Should Know About MOOCs II." 

The 7 Things You Should Know About... series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

What are the seven things about MOOCs? 

1. What is it? (See above.) 
2. How does it work? 
3. Who's doing it? 
4. Why is it significant? 
5. What are the downsides? 
6. Where is it going? 
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning? 

NMC Horizon Report 2013

The publication of this report is an important event every year. It's a must-read for anyone even remotely connected to education and IT.

NMC = New Media Consortium. The NMC Horizon Report is a product of a collaboration between NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. 

From the executive summary of the full report: 

Welcome to the NMC Horizon Report, a series of publications designed to help education leaders, policy makers, and faculty understand new and emerging technologies, and their potential impact on teaching, learning, and research. This specific volume, the NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition, is framed specifically around the unique needs and circumstances of higher education institutions, and looks at that landscape with a global lens over the next five years.

The internationally recognized NMC Horizon Report series and regional NMC Technology Outlooks are part of the NMC Horizon Project, a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in education around the globe. Since 2005, this particular edition has been produced via a collaborative effort with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, and examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry within the higher education environment.

To create the report, an international body of experts in education, technology, and other fields was convened as an advisory board. The group engaged in discussions around a set of research questions intended to surface significant trends and challenges and to identify a wide array of potential technologies for the report. This dialog was enriched by an extensive range of resources, current research, and practice that drew on the expertise of both the NMC community and the communities of the members of the advisory board. These interactions among the advisory board are the focus of the NMC Horizon Report research, and this report details the areas in which these experts were in strong agreement.

The report opens with a discussion of the trends and challenges identified by the advisory board as most important for the next five years. The main section highlights six promising technological areas and their practical, real-world applications in higher education settings. Each section is introduced with an overview that defines the topic, followed by a discussion of the particular relevance of the topic to teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher education. Next, several concrete examples are provided that demonstrate how the technology is being used. Finally, each section closes with an annotated list of suggested readings that expand on the discussion in the report. 

I encourage you to read the full report -- or at least its executive summary (five pages) and the preview. 

• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less 
  • Massively Open Online Courses
  • Tablet Computing
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
  • Big Data and Learning Analytics
  • Game-Based Learning
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
  • 3D Printing
  • Wearable Technology

Update on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 04:37PM by williamgarrity

Here's an extended review of the report in Campus Technology -- "6 Technologies That Will Impact Higher Ed."

7 Things About Collaborative Learning Spaces

EDUCAUSE is the association for higher education computing. The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) is ". . .  a community of higher education institutions and organizations committed to the advancement of learning through the innovative application of technology."

ELI's "7 Things About. . ." series ". . . provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues." 

The latest "7 Things About. . ." is 

"7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT COLLABORATIVE LEARNING SPACES"

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Contributions by: Robert J. Beichner (North Carolina State University), Joseph Cevetello (University of Southern California)

Alternative classroom designs have emerged that support collaborative learning and shift the focus away from lecture-based formats. Collaborative learning spaces generally involve new construction or the wholesale renovation of existing rooms, and they typically feature the ability to reconfigure seating to accommodate a variety of teaching methods. Such spaces enable alternative pedagogies that allow for more inquiry and investigative work, and they empower students to explore course content and ideas in an environment that has multiple points from which learning may emerge.

Online Learning

This New York Times piece by Tamar Lewin is a good overview of developments in online learning -- MOOCs (massive open online courses); companies including Coursera, Udemy, edX, Udacity. 

"Students Rush to Web Classes, but Profits May Be Much Later" -- 

In August, four months after Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng started the online education company Coursera, its free college courses had drawn in a million users, a faster launching than either Facebook or Twitter.

The co-founders, computer science professors at Stanford University, watched with amazement as enrollment passed two million last month, with 70,000 new students a week signing up for over 200 courses, including Human-Computer Interaction, Songwriting and Gamification, taught by faculty members at the company’s partners, 33 elite universities.

In less than a year, Coursera has attracted $22 million in venture capital and has created so much buzz that some universities sound a bit defensive about not leaping onto the bandwagon.

Other approaches to online courses are emerging as well. Universities nationwide are increasing their online offerings, hoping to attract students around the world. New ventures like Udemy help individual professors put their courses online. Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have each provided $30 million to create edX. Another Stanford spinoff, Udacity, has attracted more than a million students to its menu of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, along with $15 million in financing.