Disrupting Higher Education: Leveraging digital tools to create a more personalized educationEric Grimson

MIT

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Can a 1,000 year-old industry change?

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Universities

ESTABLISHED 1088 AD From Wikipedia

Bologna, Italy

Lecture, Circa 1308 AD

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Courtesy Eric Klopfer

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Should higher education change?

Other industries have seen that:

• Focus on consumer needs is critical

• Need to think mobile

• Need to think global

• Boundaries are blurring

• Online retail blurring boundary between brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce sites, and auction sites

• Unbundling is disrupting industries

• Apple unbundled music albums into 99-cent songs, users re-aggregate into their own playlists

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Our “consumers” are also changing

• More focused on having impact on a problem, than acquiring disciplinary depth

• Need unbundled, flexible paths through curriculum

• Eager to learn in real-world, often global, contexts

• Comfortable creating online and virtual communities

• Mobile and wired

• Information accessible anywhere, anytime, on any device

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Rate of change is accelerating

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A disruptive response

• Online delivery of material

• Online automated, immediate checking of work

• Online interactions with simulators

• Online discussion communities

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Why disrupt ourselves?What are our goals as educators?

• Want to ensure that our students acquire and retain knowledge effectively

• Want to ensure that our students learn how to apply that knowledge effectively

• So if online tools do this more effectively, shouldn’t we adopt and adapt them? 9

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MIT’s goals for leveraging disruptionExpand access to education for students worldwide through online learning,

While reinventing campus education through blended models

And learn about learning

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The anatomy of a MOOC or SPOC: Examples of intertwined online elements

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Lecture video sequences

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Lecture videos – many modes of capture

• Tablet handwriting

• Classroom video

• Office video:

• a conversation

• Overhead camera and paper

• Lectern-based lectures

• High value productions

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Intersperse with tablet segments

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Providing immediate feedbackInterspersed “finger exercises”

• Reinforces concepts at time of acquisition

• Link to other material

• Mine data to find gaps in knowledge

Range of tools for automated assessment

Opportunity to direct learner to discussion forums

Opportunity to direct learner to interactive simulations 15

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Link material with interactive simulations

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Autograded Exercises Provide Instant Feedback

Multiple choice

Numerical questions

Symbolic equations

Algebra

Program code

Marking elements on images

Changing chemical formulas

Short answer

Peer critiquing and assessment

New tools being added 17

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Assessment of Open Ended Responses

•A computer algorithm scores student submission

•Machine Learning (ML) creates a model using many course staff graded responses

•Model is used to automatically grade students

• For many problems, similar to course staff grading each student individually, but with much less effort

• Piloted in the Fall of 2012 by edX

•Has potential to be continuously refined as new submissions are incorporated

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Chemistry Pilot Example Questions

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Experimental Results on Long Essay Grading using AI Assessment (ML)

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Instructor versus machine

Instructor versus another instructor

Essay sets

Perc

en

t er

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Hewlett dataset

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Area of circles represents the number of grades that fell in the corresponding bin

Pilot ML Accuracy

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Residential experiences with online tools: SPOCs and other methods

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Campus adoption at MIT

• Nearly 90% of our students have used OpenEdXthrough one or more of their classes during the past year.

• In several large required classes, at least half of all assignments were online and autograded.

• Over 50 classes in 10 different departments last semester alone.

• Roughly 1000 (out of 4500) students log in to MIT’s internal online education site every day. 23

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Our experience on campus

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Solid State Chemistry

• Lectures live, but available online

• Problem sets automatically assessed with immediate feedback; can retake until mastered

• Exams delivered similarly

Typical “fifth week flag” rate is 50-70 student (out of 500)

With immediate feedback, multiple attempts at problems, only 3

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Does instant feedback really matter?

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Examples

Flipped classroom in required introductory physics class, chemistry class

Introductory EECS course: almost all contact in lab settings, using automated tutor

MechE, EECS subjects using modules, breaking terms into smaller pieces, with more flexibility for students

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The impact: Unbundling curriculum and pedagogy

Focus modules on outcomes –what a student knows or can do as result of learning experience

• Break traditional courses into collections of smaller modules based on core concepts

• Allow student flexibility in designing personal degree experience

Online delivery enables tailoring of material to support modules

Autograding supports competency based assessment using modules

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If learning happens anywhere at any time, what are roles of physical and temporal boundaries of campus?

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“An MIT education is more than just knowledge acquisition, it is also about acquiring skills in communication, cooperation, leadership, mediation, interaction, innovation, creation.”

Blending should allow students to couple flexibility in learning material with focused interactions with peers and instructors, especially around real-world contexts

Blending online technologies with on-campus experiences

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The 6.01 experimentLarge introductory EECS subject• One lecture per week• 1.5 hour software lab• 3 hour design lab

Students work in pairs

Labs staffed by faculty, graduate TA’s, many UG LA’s

Assessments online with instant feedback, plus staff “check-offs”

Extensive use of online discussion forum, to complement face-to-face

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Classroom

• From room with a blackboard

• To laptop with a network connection

• To the cloud and an online forum –blended with in-person hands-on activities

Evolution of learning spaces

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Broader impact on the campus

What does the classroom of the future include?

• Is “chalk and talk” still relevant?

• What is the role of small, interactive spaces?

• Is connectivity and interaction media increasingly important? 32

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Broader impact on the campus

What does the dormitory of the future include?

• Should it include spaces for exploration, for collaboration, for remote access?

• Should it include learning spaces?

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New kinds of learning spacesIn a setting where online delivery is prevalent, how does one encourage interaction and collaboration?

• Academic villages

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New kinds of learning spaces

In a setting where online delivery is prevalent, how does one encourage hands on learning?

•Maker spaces and sandboxes

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Courtesy Media Lab

Courtesy Edgerton CenterCourtesy Edgerton Center

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Extending the reach of education

• Micro-degrees

• Focused continuing education

• X series certificates

• Professional education

• Big data

• Entrepreneurship

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Disrupting Higher Education: Leveraging digital tools to create a more personalized educationEric Grimson

MIT

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