Ken Ronkowitz@ronkowitz Ronkowitz.com

Everybody Wants to MOOC the World

Academia and the MOOC

The New York Times said that 2012 was “the year of the MOOC”

EDUCAUSE said that they have “the potential to alter the relationship between learner and instructor and between academe and the wider community.”

Can a course where the participants and the course materials are distributed across the web and the courses are "open" and offered at no cost to a very large number of participants who do not receive institutional credit be a worthwhile venture for a college?

MOOC

MASSIVE

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neosnaps/2596044654/sizes/o/in/photostream/

OPEN

ONLINE

COURSE

“MOOC” is coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier & Bryan Alexander in response to an earlier open online course that had been designed and led by George Siemens and Stephen Downes."Connectivism and Connective Knowledge," had 25 tuition-paying students at the University of Manitoba in addition to 2300 other students from the public who took the online class free of charge for no credit.)

Some History

Pedagogically, much of the course activity, interaction and collaboration was expected to come from the participants.

2012 - Sebastian Thrun leaves his teaching position at Stanford University to start Udacity using the artificial intelligence course that he was teaching and had made freely available in 2011.

Coursera, a for-profit company that also came from Stanford roots has as of December 2012 2 million students from 196 countries who have enrolled in at least one course.

edX - a not-for-profit online education initiative using courses provided initially by MIT, Harvard, and the University of California, Berkeley.

History

First there were MOOCs…

• cMOOC

• xMOOC

• MOCC (Mid-sized Online Closed Course)

• BOOC (Big Online Open Course <500 )

• Hybrid MOOC (delivery and/or student body)

• For-profit providers (filling a vacuum)

• Accreditation…

Evolution

cMOOC versus xMOOC

networks

contentstasks

http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/2012/08/three-kinds-of-moocs/

http://ds106.us/history/

https://www.ai-class.com/

https://www.coursera.org/

connectivist

instructivist

It’s Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Duke…

Show me the money (and the credit)

Is anyone learning anything in these MOOCs?

Nice company (Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Duke…)

Potential new students and revenue

Developing new strategies for the design and teaching of online courses.

We have just started the debatePros and Cons

MOOC ProvidersFaculty Representatives

oAccreditation requires small class sizesoLarge lectures have been discredited as a teaching

tooloThe cost of undergraduate education has been

going down; the drivers for tax and tuition increases are administrative, athletic, and research costs

oAutomation might mean that the “Haves” attend residential colleges & the “Have-Nots” get online education & the “Have-Nothings” receive neither due to lack of technology and Internet access.

oPeer-to-peer assistance may work in elite universities but community college and state university students need professional assistance

•Cost = $1 per class per student

•A/B testing gain be done as fast as Amazon gives feedback to users

•Peer to peer assistance compensates for large class sizes

•Mentors can be provided @$

Reboot CaliforniaODG-COT Discussion

January 2013

Stakeholders & Roles

Faculty

Designers

Institution - Administration

Support• IT, Help Desk, Admissions, Online Learning

Students

And any blend of the above…

It is truly worldwide

Autonomie, diversité, liberté, interactivité

Ces conditions sont les conditions d'un dialogue constructif…

et sont donc les principes de conception d'un MOOC

La Condition Semantique

http://itforum.coe.uga.edu/paper92/paper92.html

Autonomy, diversity, openness, interactivity

These conditions are the conditions for a constructive dialogue…

And are thus the design principles for a MOOC

The Semantic Condition

http://itforum.coe.uga.edu/paper92/paper92.html

6,000 Courses for Lifelong Learners

myeducationpath.com/courses has 6000 coursesAnd is one of lesser known MOOC providersserendipity35.net/index.php?/archives/2744-MOOC-Providers.html

We want to further the conversation amongst educators…

A massive (well, Big) open (free) Online Course (actually, more of a conversation) on MOOCs in Academia

April 15 – May 12

Academia & the MOOC

Register at www.canvas.net

Ken Ronkowitz@ronkowitz Ronkowitz.com

Everybody Wants to MOOC the World

Academia and the MOOC