Module 2 Assignment 1: MOOCs give education a digital face lift

The traditional perception of a quality college education from notable schools such as Stanford University, Harvard, or MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) include: unaffordable and out-of-my-league. However, with the inception of Massive Online Open Courses, better known as MOOCs, high quality courses from these schools are now free and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. According to Yuan, Powell, and Cetis (2013), the promise of MOOCs is that they will “provide free to access, cutting edge courses that could drive down the cost of university-level education and potentially disrupt the existing models of higher education (HE)” (pg. 5). Although they are not currently accredited and only offer certificates of completion, MOOCs will essentially give “education a digital face lift” and will hopefully become the new norm for acquiring transfer credits when entering college programs (Rodriguez, 2012, pg 12). 

Current applications of MOOCs and open course platforms are available through:

Alison Free courses in 10+ Course Categories."

Apnacourse - course on PMP, ACP, CFP, CFA, FRM, ISTQB

Canvas Network by Instructure

Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative

Class Central - Stanford, Coursera, MIT and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkeleyX), and Udacity

Coursera list of courses

Curricki - open curriculua

EdX courses

FutureLearn, the Open University's MOOC branch

iTunesU - some courses - guide from DIY University (Apple doesn't provide a list of courses, naturally); list of affiliates

iversity - Berlin-based MOOC provider, listing courses in English

Janux - the University of Oklahoma

Miríada X - Spanish / Portugese courses

MIT Open CourseWare (course materials only

MOOC.fr - dédié à des MOOC francophones (premier MOOC, Internet : Tout Y est Pour Apprendre)

NovoEd - a series of online classes from top institutions including Stanford GSB, Babson, and the Kauffman Foundation, with the majority free of charge.

Open2Study (Australia)

Open Education Europa, a Web site that aggregates MOOCs and other free online resources from European universities.

Open HPI, Hasso Plattner Institute

信息技术在线互动课程的公开平台 OpenHPI Chinese-language MOOC portal.

Open Learning courses

Open Learn - Open University (UK), see menu at left

P2P University - courses

Qualt - Qualt advertises "Free mobile courses in internationally recognised professional qualifications. Anytime, anywhere." The courses are available for mobile devices only.

SyMynd courses from NYU, University of Washington, McGill University

Stanford's Free Online Courses

Udacity courses

Udemy list of online courses

Universitat Politècnica de València - Spanish language

University of the People - course catalogue

Unow offers MOOCs in french (including this one reviewed here).

WikiEducator content

Wikiversity - 'schools'

Open Yale courses

What do MOOCs enhance?

The driving motivation of higher institutions adopting MOOCs is altruism. Education should be accessible to all and in order to do that, education must first be affordable and accessible to those who want it. Kolowich (2013) believes “MOOCs will drive down the cost of earning a degree” and “free online courses will make college less expensive in general.”

Although there was an initial fear that expectations in an online classroom setting would be lower than that of an actual campus. A survey conducted by Kolowich (2013) refuted that claim after surveying professors before and after using MOOCs who claimed their online coursework expectation was “significantly more rigorous and demanding than an on-campus version.” A Duke professor who originally struggled with “captivating a vast, fickle audience” in the MOOC classroom setting improved his teaching style by “honing [his] pedagogical presentation to a far higher level than [he] had in 10 years of teaching the class on campus” (Kolowich, 2013). Some professors who participated in the Kolowich (2013) survey simply hoped that MOOCs would “increase their visibility, both among colleagues within their discipline, with the media, and the general public” through their online exposure.

What do MOOCs make obsolete?

            With the low cost of MOOCs and availability to anyone with an internet, they essentially drive down the unaffordable high cost of higher education. As teachers switch from face to face lectures to video-taped recordings and from textbooks to EBooks and digital articles, the cost for classroom resources essentially drops, as well. Pappano (2012) hopes that through the usage of MOOCs, these “free courses can bring the best education in the world to the most remote corners of the planet, help people in their careers, and expand intellectual and personal networks.”

What does it retrieve?

            MOOCs still incorporate traditional teaching and learning models, material presentations, and assessments, but in a digitalized format. Professors who once “tired of delivering the same lectures year after year, often to a half-empty classroom” now have the ability to use videotaped lectures and supplementary recourses that support their curriculum online (Vardi, 2012). Many professors in a Kolowich (2012) survey improved their teaching strategies after teaching MOOCs, but teaching with MOOCs took a lot out of them because professors were spending over 100 hours on MOOC preparation by recording online lecture videos and adding supplementary online reading material. Unfortunately, with all the required preparation time needed for the MOOCs, most colleges do not yet have a “protocol for integrating their instructors’ work on MOOCs into normal faculty work flow” (Kolowich, 2012).

What does it reverse?

            Pappano (2012) claimed that “three things matter most in online learning: quality of material covered, engagement of the teacher and interaction among students.” The presentation of the material does not seem to be the problem with MOOCs. The problem seems to be in providing instructor connection and feedback, including student interactions because “Classmates lack a common knowledge base and educational background” which can drag down discussions due to the material being out of their league (Pappano, 2012). A study by Vardi (2012) also claimed the entire MOOC format lacked teaching pedagogy due to the “essential feature being short, unsophisticated video chunks, interleaved with online quizzes, and accompanied by social networking.” Clow (2013) conducted a study that compared MOOC learning models to formal learning and concluded that “there tends to be much higher rates of drop-out, and steeply unequal patterns of participation” (Pg. 4).

References:

Clow, D. (2013, April). MOOCs and the funnel of participation. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (pp. 185-189). ACM.

Kolowich, S. (2013). The professors who make the MOOCs. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 25.

Pappano, L. (2012, November 2). The year of the MOOC. The New York Times, p. ED26.  Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html?

Rodriguez, C. O. (2012). MOOCs and the AI-Stanford like courses: Two successful and distinct course formats for massive open online courses. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning.

Vardi, M. Y. (2012). Will MOOCs destroy academia?. Commun. ACM, 55(11), 5.

Yuan, L., Powell, S., & Cetis, J. (2013). MOOCs and open education: Implications for higher education.