Online Learning & MOOCS
The spark that light the fire was one online course on Artificial Intelligence by a Stanford Professor. Before this course, he would teach a couple hundred students and that would be the extent of his impact. Signed up for this online course was over 160,000 students in 190 countries – from India and South Korea to New Zealand and the Republic of Azerbaijan. Of course, every one did not finish the course but those who did gained so much from it. A crazy fact was that there were perfect scores in the course and not a single one came from a student at Stanford. Sebastian Thurn, the professor, said that he had made a bigger wave with this one course then his entire teaching career combined. (Leckart) Little did everyone know that Mooc ventures would begin sprouting up.
Now Coursera, Udacity, and edX are among some of the leaders in the mooc sector. It began with people taking course work to beef up their skill set or resume. After a while, people wanted college credit for the work they were doing. Udacity offers courses for credit now and others are beginning to change to a more structured course to offer credit. This shakes the higher education landscape by completely undercutting other institutions. A computer science course by M.I.T. or an average state college is a decision students will soon have to make. The MIT course will be cheaper and better. However, we are not yet to the point where we can add this course into the core of the degree plan at the local college.
A craze for many is that these courses is bringing education to those who prior had little or no access to this quality of learning. This I believe could potentially be a game changer for those who can not afford college or do not have access to courses like these. Personally, online learning has forever shaped my life. I am tuning out the critics who argue that it will not work or that MOOCs are evil. Coding courses have help mold my programming skills. In interviews, I find myself talking about what I learned on Code School and Udacity not about the college class I have paid all this money to attend. My projects and GitHub account are full of shining examples of what I have learned for a sheer fraction of the price I pay Oklahoma State University. I have been able to signal my skill set so well I have been offered full time positions from start ups. A tug of war exists inside of me. One side wants to pay attention to my college course work. While, the other side desires to learn what skills I need for my upcoming internship. My desire is that some how these two worlds will collide and I can benefit in both areas at the same time.
A focus that can occur right now is how to better develop the existing online courses offered by colleges right now. Better communities need to be created for online course work. Collaborative space on campus needs renovation before we get another practice field for football. I could care less if the flowers are changed every week when we do not have innovative spaces to work on online courses together. Simpler solution would be to flip classrooms. However, we need to make sure that the professors are trained properly before they are allowed to try this out. Flipping a classroom can be extremely powerful especially in a math or physics course. Students would be able to complete their homework in class and work together with other students.
Hertz from Edutoipa touches on even if flipping the classroom does not work every as educators we need to be reflecting on our approaches to teaching. She has a great point in that we need to have teachers “reflect on their practice and rethink how they reach their kids. It is inspiring teachers to change the way they've always done things..” (Hertz). I stand with her on the point that we need to be always challenging and making sure the methods work best for the students. In high school, I was able to explain and teach others and this helped me to better learn it myself. Some of these courses, I feel so alone even though there are 300 students taking the course.
The next step is to get rid of D2L. Changing the background and adding notifications is not going to make it a desirable product. One of the problems is the lack luster platform we are engaging the content on. This summer, I will be working for a company called NextThought. They have created a revolutionary platform for the University of Oklahoma, Janux. Stansbury states Janux will be a “scalable model for higher education institutions across the country, effectively customizing a solution so as to make the courses as face-to-face as possible.” I agree with the face that Janux is pushing the bounds of standard online course platforms.
With platforms such as Janux, online learning within the colleges will be transformed. E-Books allow students to highlight and create notes on their textbooks. This system is centered around social learning which is one downfall for many of these types of classes. Stansbury acknowledges social interaction as one of the seven distinct ways Janux is revolutionizing online learning. From her observations, she see a features similar to popular social media websitesa. My stance is that it is important to meet these students where they are as far as communication. Once these steps are taken, universities can better address their current online curriculum before they look past their own struggles to students taking courses on Udacity for credit.
Now moving on to online courses outside the institution that the student is enrolled in. A huge question is how will courses from Coursera transfer to Oklahoma State University. Something as simple as a Calculus course could be completely different than the one offered here. One option could be to have a 3rd party that a student could pay to evaluate courses and create a plan for them to take courses from other providers online that will easily line up with their degree. A fee could be paid to the university if a student wanted to take a course online from another university. These courses that transfer need to be more than a special elective or side course. They need to be able to transfer as the meat and core of a degree. This will receive a lot of resistance fast because it will blur the identity of the degree received from that university.
Beauty to me comes from a degree that is comprised of classes from OSU, MIT, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Carnegie Mellon. A day will come when a degree will be almost Frankensteinish and have courses stitched from numerous universities. This is far off however, I am hoping that we move in that direction where we are learning from the best professors. No longer will a students future be defined by that one class who is only taught by a horrible research professor but that student can opt to take the course from Michigan instead. This will hold professors accountable because they will be competing against other professors to keep their students taking their classes. Most of this could me dreaming but I believe some action will have to be taken by the Presidents of Universities sooner or later.
MOOCs are still laking in four areas before they will be considered for any of the above notions. These areas are the 4 C's: Community, Completion, College Credit, and Credibility. As much as people want to believe, online learning can be lonely even with some of the discussion boards. In the future, there will be public places where groups form to take a course together. Already, people are grouping up in various cities however, most of the time this is in San Francisco or Chicago not Oklahoma City. Social learning will play a big part in the success of MOOCs.
Students right now hardly ever finish the courses they have started. Sadly, I contribute to some of that percentage because college happens. Creators of these websites will need to improve how they engage the students and how completion is approached. There a couple of methods that can be used such as gamification or better rewards. One of those awards can be college credit towards completion of a course. Slowly and surely, college credit is becoming a reality. It is only a matter of time before more colleges accept certain “basic general education courses”. Udacity offers courses such as College Algebra that are accepted.
For this to continue, there needs to be an entity that holds the credibility of these MOOCs as its highest priority. Advancements will only occur when the integrity of these courses in place. Standards will need to be in place because right now there are countless websites that are offering courses. A possibility could be verified and approved courses from a company that checks to make sure that the professor is in fact teaching it and that the standards met the cut. MOOCs have a long hard road ahead of them but if they survive higher ed will be forever changed as we know it.
The spark that light the fire was one online course on Artificial Intelligence by a Stanford Professor. Before this course, he would teach a couple hundred students and that would be the extent of his impact. Signed up for this online course was over 160,000 students in 190 countries – from India and South Korea to New Zealand and the Republic of Azerbaijan. Of course, every one did not finish the course but those who did gained so much from it. A crazy fact was that there were perfect scores in the course and not a single one came from a student at Stanford. Sebastian Thurn, the professor, said that he had made a bigger wave with this one course then his entire teaching career combined. (Leckart) Little did everyone know that Mooc ventures would begin sprouting up.
Now Coursera, Udacity, and edX are among some of the leaders in the mooc sector. It began with people taking course work to beef up their skill set or resume. After a while, people wanted college credit for the work they were doing. Udacity offers courses for credit now and others are beginning to change to a more structured course to offer credit. This shakes the higher education landscape by completely undercutting other institutions. A computer science course by M.I.T. or an average state college is a decision students will soon have to make. The MIT course will be cheaper and better. However, we are not yet to the point where we can add this course into the core of the degree plan at the local college.
A craze for many is that these courses is bringing education to those who prior had little or no access to this quality of learning. This I believe could potentially be a game changer for those who can not afford college or do not have access to courses like these. Personally, online learning has forever shaped my life. I am tuning out the critics who argue that it will not work or that MOOCs are evil. Coding courses have help mold my programming skills. In interviews, I find myself talking about what I learned on Code School and Udacity not about the college class I have paid all this money to attend. My projects and GitHub account are full of shining examples of what I have learned for a sheer fraction of the price I pay Oklahoma State University. I have been able to signal my skill set so well I have been offered full time positions from start ups. A tug of war exists inside of me. One side wants to pay attention to my college course work. While, the other side desires to learn what skills I need for my upcoming internship. My desire is that some how these two worlds will collide and I can benefit in both areas at the same time.
A focus that can occur right now is how to better develop the existing online courses offered by colleges right now. Better communities need to be created for online course work. Collaborative space on campus needs renovation before we get another practice field for football. I could care less if the flowers are changed every week when we do not have innovative spaces to work on online courses together. Simpler solution would be to flip classrooms. However, we need to make sure that the professors are trained properly before they are allowed to try this out. Flipping a classroom can be extremely powerful especially in a math or physics course. Students would be able to complete their homework in class and work together with other students.
Hertz from Edutoipa touches on even if flipping the classroom does not work every as educators we need to be reflecting on our approaches to teaching. She has a great point in that we need to have teachers “reflect on their practice and rethink how they reach their kids. It is inspiring teachers to change the way they've always done things..” (Hertz). I stand with her on the point that we need to be always challenging and making sure the methods work best for the students. In high school, I was able to explain and teach others and this helped me to better learn it myself. Some of these courses, I feel so alone even though there are 300 students taking the course.
The next step is to get rid of D2L. Changing the background and adding notifications is not going to make it a desirable product. One of the problems is the lack luster platform we are engaging the content on. This summer, I will be working for a company called NextThought. They have created a revolutionary platform for the University of Oklahoma, Janux. Stansbury states Janux will be a “scalable model for higher education institutions across the country, effectively customizing a solution so as to make the courses as face-to-face as possible.” I agree with the face that Janux is pushing the bounds of standard online course platforms.
With platforms such as Janux, online learning within the colleges will be transformed. E-Books allow students to highlight and create notes on their textbooks. This system is centered around social learning which is one downfall for many of these types of classes. Stansbury acknowledges social interaction as one of the seven distinct ways Janux is revolutionizing online learning. From her observations, she see a features similar to popular social media websitesa. My stance is that it is important to meet these students where they are as far as communication. Once these steps are taken, universities can better address their current online curriculum before they look past their own struggles to students taking courses on Udacity for credit.
Now moving on to online courses outside the institution that the student is enrolled in. A huge question is how will courses from Coursera transfer to Oklahoma State University. Something as simple as a Calculus course could be completely different than the one offered here. One option could be to have a 3rd party that a student could pay to evaluate courses and create a plan for them to take courses from other providers online that will easily line up with their degree. A fee could be paid to the university if a student wanted to take a course online from another university. These courses that transfer need to be more than a special elective or side course. They need to be able to transfer as the meat and core of a degree. This will receive a lot of resistance fast because it will blur the identity of the degree received from that university.
Beauty to me comes from a degree that is comprised of classes from OSU, MIT, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Carnegie Mellon. A day will come when a degree will be almost Frankensteinish and have courses stitched from numerous universities. This is far off however, I am hoping that we move in that direction where we are learning from the best professors. No longer will a students future be defined by that one class who is only taught by a horrible research professor but that student can opt to take the course from Michigan instead. This will hold professors accountable because they will be competing against other professors to keep their students taking their classes. Most of this could me dreaming but I believe some action will have to be taken by the Presidents of Universities sooner or later.
MOOCs are still laking in four areas before they will be considered for any of the above notions. These areas are the 4 C's: Community, Completion, College Credit, and Credibility. As much as people want to believe, online learning can be lonely even with some of the discussion boards. In the future, there will be public places where groups form to take a course together. Already, people are grouping up in various cities however, most of the time this is in San Francisco or Chicago not Oklahoma City. Social learning will play a big part in the success of MOOCs.
Students right now hardly ever finish the courses they have started. Sadly, I contribute to some of that percentage because college happens. Creators of these websites will need to improve how they engage the students and how completion is approached. There a couple of methods that can be used such as gamification or better rewards. One of those awards can be college credit towards completion of a course. Slowly and surely, college credit is becoming a reality. It is only a matter of time before more colleges accept certain “basic general education courses”. Udacity offers courses such as College Algebra that are accepted.
For this to continue, there needs to be an entity that holds the credibility of these MOOCs as its highest priority. Advancements will only occur when the integrity of these courses in place. Standards will need to be in place because right now there are countless websites that are offering courses. A possibility could be verified and approved courses from a company that checks to make sure that the professor is in fact teaching it and that the standards met the cut. MOOCs have a long hard road ahead of them but if they survive higher ed will be forever changed as we know it.