May 14, 2013
The Quality of Massive Open Online Courses
Stephen Downes,
MOOC Quality Project,
May 14, 2013
In this contribution I address the question of assessing the quality of massive open online courses. The assessment of the quality of anything is fraught with difficulties, depending as it does on some commonly understood account of what would count as a good example of the thing, what factors constitute success, and how that success against that standard is to be measured. With massive open online courses, it is doubly more difficult, because of the lack of a common definition of the MOOC itself, and because of the implication of external factors in the actual perception and performance of the MOOC.
Moreover, it is to my mind far from clear that there is agreement regarding the purpose of a MOOC to begin with, and without such agreement discussions of quality are moot. Let me begin, then, with a statement describing what I take a MOOC to be. I will then address what I believe ought to be the purpose of a MOOC, the success factors involved in serving that purpose, the design features that impact success, and finally, questions regarding the measurement of those features.
This is a contribution to the MOOC Quality Project (which posted part 3, 'MOOC Success Factors, on the blog, with the final edited version intended for eventual publication somewhere, and possibly other sections on other blogs).
Enclosures:
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Laptop U Has the future of college moved online?
Nathan Heller,
The New Yorker,
May 14, 2013
Don't miss this exploration of MOOCs and elite schools. But note well, this (and not education) is what the elite universities sell: "At twenty, at Dartmouth, maybe, you’re sitting in a dormitory room at 1 A.M. sharing Chinese food with two kids wearing flip-flops and Target jeans; twenty-five years later, one of those kids is running a multibillion-dollar tech company and the other is chairing a Senate subcommittee. Access to 'élite education' may be more about access to the élites than about access to the classroom teaching." So why are they offering MOOCs? To make sure nobody else sells what they're selling. And - perhaps - to prevent the wave of open learning reform from striking their sacred shores and breaching their hallowed halls.
Enclosures:
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(re)Inventing the free online textbook
Sean Connor,
The Saylor Journals,
May 14, 2013
Saylor knows how we feel. "First came free online courses. Now come…free online textbooks (Coursera to offer students free online textbooks, with conditions | WaPo). Call us picky, but the implication that free textbooks are an xMOOC innovation is a bit frustrating, especially coming a couple days before we announced the release of a free-and-open, no-strings-attached college mathematics textbook. Even more especially after we’ve spent a couple years seeking, vetting, and deploying free, open textbooks, in free, open-as-we-can-get-’em courses." I would say "a bit frustrating" is probably a bit of an understatement.
Enclosures:
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Chaos Theory, Twitter and the Common Core
Karl Fisch,
The Fischbowl,
May 14, 2013
Karl Fisch captures the fallacy of the Common Core with one short post. He observes, referencing chaos theory, "When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future." Small microscopic changes in initial conditions result in large changes in outcome. Given this, he asks, "By trying to standardize on a common core curriculum to assure equality of preparation, aren't we ignoring what we know about dynamic systems?" To the point: "there's no possible way to standardize enough to prevent wildly different outcomes... we can't possibly use a controlled curriculum to pre-determine the outcomes."
Enclosures:
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Fighting Privatization in Chile
Lili Loofbourow,
Boston Review,
May 14, 2013
Interesting account of the privatization of education that took place in Chile under Augusto Pinochet and the evolution of the system over the decades that followed, cumulating in recent years in protests and reform movements seeking to repair what has become one of the most expensive and least accessible education systems in the world. "The new system was intended to promote competition between schools and to stimulate the public schools to improve. But the plan backfired. Instead, three tiers developed... Chile has the most expensive education in the world, yet the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked primary education there 119th out of 144 countries."
Enclosures:
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Learning Theory
Richard Millwood,
HoTEL,
May 14, 2013
This is a great big graph of 'learning theories'. As summarizedby Cammy bean, "With hyperlinks galore, you can drill down to learn about Vygotsky (and possibly even how to say it!), scaffolding, experiential learning and more." To me, it's just a really complicated way to make the point that connectivism is not a theory.
And, actually, a note on terminology. To me, these - constructivism, critical pedagogy, instructivism - are educational theories, or perhaps instructional theories. They do not describe how learning takes place. Learning is the formation of connections between nodes in a networks. A 'learning theory' describes a process that fosters the formation of these connections, such as Hebbian Associationism, Back Propagation, or Boltzmann mechanisms.
Enclosures:
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Professional Responsibility
C.K. Gunsalus,
Inside Higher Ed,
May 14, 2013
I've taught ethics in the past and on reading this would contemplate teaching ethics in the future - but in today's more emlightened MOOC format, rather than a classroom (I wonder what the interest would be in that). These days in the popular press 'ethics' typically is held to mean a set of principles to live one's lfe by that somehow act against one's own interest (this article actually states it outright: "what you’re willing to sacrifice for your principles"). But that's just one view of ethics, and not (to my mind) the best - I am more inclined to want to foster what Hume would call a 'moral sentiment' which can be fostered through the development of compassion and empathy in people.
Enclosures:
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ActiveHistory replies to Gove's accusation of 'infantilisation'
Russel Tarr,
ActiveHistory,
May 14, 2013
UK Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove is in the news twice in two days following this response to his Mr. Men speech in which he accuses history professor Russel Tarr if "infantilizing" history lessons by requiring students to participate in an activity whereby they render certain periods in history in the form of childrens' books. "It is anything but ‘infantilisation’ to get secondary school students (or indeed adults) of any age to produce an effective children’s storybook on a complex topic. The process of transforming a sophisticated historical phenomenon to its essential elements in a manner that much younger students will understand is no easy feat: it requires a sustained handling of analogy and metaphor. that is as challenging as it is stimulating and memorable." Quite so. See also, Richard Byrne, 5 Excellent Educational Activities Developed by @RusselTarr.
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