2. Massively Online Open Course
◦ Complete course, instructor-led, with recorded
lectures, posted readings, online exercises, chat
rooms, & graded tests – most lasting a full semester
◦ Open enrollment... Business models still evolving
Some hope to charge a nominal enrollment fee
Some have recommended pre-reqs but no
enforcement
Some offer a certificate of completion, but no credit
Diane Rhem Show, Jul 31st, 2012
3. MIT and a few other top tier colleges and
universities started sharing their curricula online
◦ Very first efforts were support for blended courses,
asynchronously providing curricula online
◦ Evolving to a support for other teachers &
general interest service
◦ Little support offered... You can download the syllabus,
lectures & some readings/exercises
You experience the course for yourself – no formative
feedback or evaluation of your learning
Trend of sharing content is growing
◦ Are MOOCs the next logical step?
Diane Rhem Show, Jul 31st, 2012
4. The term “MOOC” coined by
Dave Cormier (UPEI) & Bryan Alexander (NIT in Lib Ed)
describing a 2008 U Manitoba course
George Siemens (Athabasca U) & Stephen Downes
(NRC of Canada)
“Collectivism and Connected Knowledge”
25 tuition-paying students from University of Manitoba &
2,300 general public students who took the course for free
◦ Course content delivered with RSS feeds
◦ Learner discussions in MOODLE, blog posts, Second Life,
& synchronous online meetings
Downes, S. 2008.
5. MOOC popularity soared in 2011 at Stanford U
◦ Sebastian Thrun & Peter Norvig offered a course in
Artificial Intelligence
160,000 students in 190 countries
Wired magazine [Mar 20, 2012] called the course
“online Woodstock of the digital era”
No credit offered, but one student (with no undergrad
degree) got a LOR from Thrun & Norvig and landed a job
at Google
6. Fledgling “institutions” emerging
◦ Coursera
An Entrepreneurial company partnering with Higher Ed
Institutions ...see Coursera...
TED praises Coursera as one of the Ideas Worth
Spreading TED
◦ Udacity
Touts itself as a new kind of learning experience
...see Udacity...
Works with individual professors to host MOOCs
The Chronicle of Higher Education Blog post Aug 10, 2012
7. Not necessarily papers
◦ Grading at scale... How do you give students meaningful
formative feedback?
Multiple choice and short answers are easiest to do
Using computer-aided tools you can grade
programming assignments
modeling assignments of a physical system e.g., electronic
circuits / financial model / social system
Peer grading where students grade each others’ work
using instructor-provided rubrics
Open-ended essays
Business plan proposals
Diane Rhem Show, Jul 31st, 2012
8. Depends on the institution
◦ Top tier schools will continue to thrive
Their degrees are valued
Many students don’t get that kind of experience...
Most provide large, unstructured settings delivering
information to passive recipients (400 seat lecture halls)
Many online schools are little more than page-turners
charging high $$ for a credential
◦ MOOCS provide interactivity between instructor & student
as well as interactivity among students
Diane Rhem Show, Jul 31st, 2012
9. Colleges/Universities traditionally collect large fees
for their work
◦ They provide “credit” commensurate with effort and award
“degrees” to those who attain specified standards
Credit & Degrees from “Good schools” are valued, while credit &
degrees from “not so good schools” are derided
With MOOCS, colleges/universities are giving
knowledge away for free...
◦ No “credit” No “degree”
◦ Students get
Satisfaction of learning the material
Perhaps a certificate or a letter acknowledging your completion
and a grade
A few anecdotes where MOOCs deliver payoffs
Diane Rhem Show, Jul 31st, 2012
10. Blended learning is mushrooming
◦ Most schools embracing blended courses
◦ Economies of scale attractive to actuaries
◦ The best courses reserve data dump portions to online
allowing more course time to dialogue & inquiry
◦ Exploration by innovative teachers revealing new ways to
employ online to ...
teach facts
nurture intelligence &
evaluate progress & mastery
Diane Rhem Show, Jul 31st, 2012
11. Fired & Rehired: UVa President, Theresa A. Sullivan
◦ Fired by UVa BoV June 10th – Rehired after Gov. Bob McDonnell... vowed to
replace entire BoV if they didn't resolve the controversy “today” [USA Today Jun
26th].
◦ ... While Ms. Sullivan has "done many things well," [BoV Chair Dragas]
implied the board was “left wanting.” [Dragas] specifically cited need for a
leader who would be open to changes in curriculum-delivery methods,
including online learning. [The Chronicle of Higher Education June 10th]
◦ Of the three issues behind the attempted firing:
Sullivan had suggested overhauling the curriculum to lavish far more
attention on upper-division classes and to convert many lower-division
courses to a “hybrid” model
Her reasoning: Many students arrive already having taken many
introductory courses as Advanced Placement or International
Baccalaureate-level classes in high school. [Washington Post June 19th]
UVa is one of the schools now offering more blended courses
and MOOCs
13. This knowledge is FREE
◦ Immediately available – admission guaranteed
Just a few mouse-clicks and you’re in,
No such thing as “have you taken the PREREQs?”
◦ Portends “just-in-time, on-demand learning”
Develop professionally, supplement your knowledge base & satisfy your curiosities
Overcome Don Rumsfeld’s dilemma ...... “we don’t know what we don’t know”
◦ Highly reputable sources
Top universities, instructors recognized in their fields
Don’t expect an “easy’ button
◦ Credibility of universities & reputations of professors at stake...
They will not want to deliver less than quality work!
◦ Although PREREQs don’t exist, they do...
...don’t expect to be bottle-fed! You may need to know something to
succeed in Differential Equations or Artificial Intelligence Programming
Be patient... Courses you want may still be on the drawing boards
14. Cryptography
◦ Dan Boneh, Professor at Stanford U
◦ Learn about the inner workings of cryptographic primitives
and how to apply this knowledge in real-world applications!
Starts August 27th , 6 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/crypto
Gamification
◦ Kevin Werbach, Professor at UPenn
◦ Gamification is the application of game elements and
digital game design techniques to non-game problems,
such as business and social impact challenges. This course
will teach you the mechanisms of gamification, why it has
such tremendous potential, and how to use it effectively.
Starts August 27th , 6 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/gamification
15. Web Intelligence and Big Data
◦ Gautam Shroff, Indian Inst. of Tech., Delhi & Indraprastha
Inst. of Info. Tech, Delhi.
◦ This course is about building `web-intelligence'
applications exploiting big data sources arising from social
media, mobile devices and sensors, using new big-data
platforms based on the 'map-reduce' parallel programming
paradigm.
Starts August 27th , 10 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/bigdata
Model Thinking
◦ Scott E. Page, U Michigan
◦ In this class, you will learn how to think with models and
use them to make sense of the complex world around us
(economics & finances, humanities & social sciences)
Starts August 27th , 10 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/modelthinking
16. Introduction to Astronomy
◦ Ronen Plesser, Duke U
◦ An introduction to astronomy through a broad survey of
what we know about the universe and how we know it
Starts Nov 27th, 9 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/introastro
Statistics One
◦ Andrew Conway, Princeton U
◦ Statistics One is designed to be a friendly introduction to
very simple, very basic, fundamental concepts in statistics.
Starts Sep 3rd , 6 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/stats1
17. Modern & Contemporary American Poetry
◦ Al Filreis, U Penn
◦ This course is a fast-paced introduction to modern and
contemporary U.S. poetry, from Dickinson and Whitman to
the present. Participants (who need no prior experience
with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are
supposedly "difficult."
Starts Sep 10th , 10 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/modernpoetry
A History of the World since 1300
◦ Jeremy Adelman, Princeton U
◦ This course will examine the ways in which the world has
grown more integrated yet more divided over the past 700
years.
Starts Sep 17th , 12 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/wh1300
18. Learn to Program: The Fundamentals
◦ Jennifer Campbell & Paul Gries, U Toronto
◦ Behind every mouse click and touch-screen tap, there is a
computer program that makes things happen. This course
introduces the fundamental building blocks of
programming and teaches you how to write fun and useful
programs using the Python language.
Starts Sep 10th , 10 weeks https://www.coursera.org/#course/programming1
Intro to Physics (ph100)
◦ Andy Brown, Freelance MIT grad & Jonathan Burket, UVa
◦ Study physics abroad in Europe -- virtually! Learn the
basics of physics on location in Italy, the Netherlands and
the UK, by answering some of the discipline's major
questions from over the last 2000 years.
At your pace; 7 weeks http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/ph100/CourseRev/1
