Online learning at American University and elsewhere tries to replicate the small-class experience of classroom-based courses: intense student-faculty interaction, student-to-student learning, and a community for discussion. But in other places, the focus in the last couple of years has been on MOOCs – massive open online courses: thousands of students, open admissions, no tuition, and no academic credit. Here’s some recent MOOC news.
Study Finds MOOC Reality Not Yet Meeting High Expectations
Columbia University researchers conclude that from the educational and the business perspectives, MOOCs stll have a long way to go before they are fundamentally change the cores of higher education. A summary and the entire report.
Another report concluded that so far MOOCs are “more like health clubs than hospitals” – a summary and the report.
In Defense of Teacher Learning
A blog from the global business school INSEAD notes the importance, but lack of discussion, of instructors reconsidering their courses when preparing them as MOOCs. The new platform forces teachers to reconsider content choices, assignments, and assessments in ways that spill over into reconsidering their classroom-based courses.
Andrew Ng joins China’s Baidu
A Coursera co-founder, with roots at Google and Stanford will become chief scientist at Baidu, the Chinese Internet company with $1.5 in 2014 Q1 revenue.
MOOCs Go Global
From Jordan, Queen Raina’s Foundation for Education and Development will work to increase the number of Arabic MOOCs available for the benefit of Arabic students and scholars with a partnership with edX, called Edraak. MOOCs are also being offered from Asia and elsewhere.
MOOCs – Not Just for Universities
Forbes notes that while MOOCs pose challenges and opportunities for universities, businesses like SAP and Sky News are also using the ideas that shape MOOCs for their own business purposes.
MOOCs on Everything – Including, Now, SABRmetrics
“An introduction to sabrmetrics, baseball analytics, data science, the R language, and SQL.” From Boston University via edX. Begins next week….
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