Some colleagues at work were sharing this article in the New York Times (California Bill Seeks Campus Credit for Online Study). The article is worth a careful read – California is the place to watch, and this could be a turning point in the acceptance of some MOOCs.
Category Archives: Internet
My MOOC Life (So Far): Part 4 – Course Cancelled
The Coursera MOOC I was taking (Fundamentals of Online Education) was recently cancelled. The reasons behind this (and the way in which the course was cancelled) have been instructive. I believe that this particular moment will feature heavily in future analysis of the MOOC movement.
On the 2nd February, I received this short email message from the instructor:
We want all students to have the highest quality learning experience. For this reason, we are temporarily suspending the “Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application” course in order to make improvements. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. We will inform you when the course will be reoffered.
Then I received this email update the next day:
Dear FOE students,
We were inspired to see the number of people who expressed an interest in seeing the class resume. There were some choices made in the initial design of the class that didn’t work out as well as we’d hoped. We are working to address these issues, and are reopening the discussion forums so that we can get feedback on how the class can be improved when it relaunches.
Thank you for your patience as we work to provide you with a great learning experience in the next version.
The FOE Course Staff
Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application Course Team
I don’t believe either of those emails were honest. The messages did not accept the three major problems that this particular course had:
- The course was still under construction at time of launch.
- The group model was both poorly designed and implemented.
- There was no Quality Assurance in place before the course was offered.
The course was still under construction at time of launch
The first issue was inexcusable, particularly given the subject matter of the course. One of the fundamental tenets of good online course design is to have everything built before a course goes live. This does not preclude alterations and improvements (where justified) as a course is being taught, but this particular course still had “insert text here” content in the “About” pages. Going forward, Coursera needs to institute processes that ensure a course is ready before it launches.
The group model was both poorly designed and implemented
The second issue was interesting on several levels. The stated reason for assigning groups for students in the course was:
to make the discussions more manageable and to allow you to form networks with people in your own field and even with others not in your field. The idea was to create a world wide network of people who can help each other and to start building a world wide online learning community that will provide support and help.
However, MOOCs exhibit a significant attrition rate. In the first Coursera course I took these statistics were shared:
- Number of students signed up: 45572
- Number of students completing week 1: 1164
- Number of students who took the Final: 5401
- Number of certificates: 4595
To my mind, group membership would be significantly reduced by the end of the course (unless being part of the group successfully induced the majority of students to complete the course). I did not see this particular group model working. The instructor’s point about MOOC discussion being unmanageable is correct, and this is something that needs to be fixed, but the group method she implemented was not a viable solution.
Additionally, the methods in which students added themselves to groups were flawed. Initially this was through Google Docs, which does not scale to thousands of students (and resulted in records being deleted either inadvertently or to cause trouble). The later method was via discussion boards, in a way that was both inefficient and confusing. In neither option was there a way for students or Coursera to plan the composition of a group based upon any criteria (i.e. mixed skill-set, learning style, location, primary language, etc.). Hopefully the instructional designers and developers at Coursera will look for a method in which the course technology can automatically assign groups in an intelligent fashion. This would be an opportunity to run some very interesting and productive research.
There was no Quality Assurance in place before the course was offered.
Lastly, I did not see any indication of Quality Assurance being run in this course. If there had been a process in place that that reviewed the course before launch, then this would have caught that fact that the course was still under construction, and this should have also highlighted problems with the groups model. This is a major issue for Coursera to address. Oversight needs to be in place to demonstrate that a MOOC offers a superlative educational experience to students. The publishing industry relies on editors, proof-readers, legal review, designers, and peer assessment to ensure that what reaches the reader is a quality product. A MOOC should be have the same level of oversight as a good publishing house.
UPDATE: Interesting commentary from Slate on the “course meltdown.” Worth searching on Twitter for #foemooc
DEPD 0330 Reflection
I an currently taking an online course (DEPD 0330 Learning in the Mobile Age) via the University of Wisconsin-Madison Distance Education Professional Development Program, and this is my time to reflect.
Moodle Course on iPhone
I have consciously attempted to study on a plethora of mobile devices (iPhone 5, iPad 3, Nokia N900, and Apple MacBook Air). The experience has been pleasant, and I have been impressed by how well the Moodle site has rendered on mobile devices. In some ways the navigational process has been more pleasant on an iPhone, where much of the structure has been abstracted. The only times I have wanted to return to using a laptop (which is still a mobile device) have been where images were difficult to view on the phone, or now, when I needed to type something up that was more than a few paragraphs in length.
Larger Images Did Not Work So Well On A Mobile Device
The resources that have been particularly useful to me in this course were in Part 3 (Design and Development), where a list of applications and ideas were listed for mobile student activity. Some of these I was already using, but others will be explored. These resources will be used in the classes I teach, and shared with my colleagues at work.
Part 3: Design and Development
I liked how various “chapters” of the courses could be collated and printed as a PDF. This will allow me to explore these resources after the course had finished, but my ideal situation would have been to save everything as an ebook (epub or ibook).
The course has introduced the concept of a guiding question, defined here as:
“A guiding question is the fundamental query that directs the search for understanding.” (Traver, 1998, p. 70)
My guiding question is one I have pondered for a while – how should one communicate with online students? Essentially I am looking for the ideal delivery platform for instructional materials that lasts beyond the course. A Learning Management System is a powerful platform, but once a course is over students no longer have access to the contents. Communicating over the Internet is efficient and extensible, but students do not always have continuous access to the Internet. I need something that works beyond these limitations.
I think my guiding question is still relevant based upon the ideas and material I have encountered in the course. In some ways this has become more relevant, as during the course I experienced times in which I wanted to study but did not have Internet access. An ideal platform for study would have (perhaps) been something analogous to a service like EverNote, which provides a local copy of resources on digital device, but syncs when connected to the Internet.
The guiding question will continue beyond the life of the course, but the course has introduced new tools and perspectives that will help me approach a workable solution to the problem.
My MOOC Life (So Far): Part 2
So far I have taken three MOOCs, and I am currently taking another two (and I am enrolled in a Udacity course that I believe is study at your own pace – Introduction to Computer Science CS101, which I will look at way later in the year):
- Information Security and Risk Management in Context
- Ends 5th December, 2012
- Taught via Coursera
- Social Network Analysis
- Ends 19th November, 2012
- Taught via Coursera
- Internet History, Technology, and Security
- Completed – waiting for certificate
- Taught via Coursera
- Power Searching with Google
- Completed – received certificate (image)
- Taught via Google’s Course Builder
- Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success
- Did not complete, but downloaded/read/watched all material
- Taught via Blackboard Coursesites
My purpose in enrolling in these MOOCS has been twofold:
- To continue my education
- To investigate MOOCs
- Is there a business model?
- Do they “work?”
- What instructional design strategies are employed?
- How will they compete with traditional education?
- Is assessment possible on a large scale
- etc.
So here are some more observations…. (Part 1 can be found here)
Internet History, Technology, and Security
The instructor (Charles Severance) has been very good at communicating with students since the course has officially ended. There have been several email updates sent out to the group alerting us to the certificate status. This is good in of itself, but what is even better is that he recorded a “reflection / summary lecture” which he had planned to:
“talk about how the class went, what worked and how I would improve the class, and share some of the data about the class with you”
This is fantastic, and demonstrates what I find most powerful about the MOOCs – the way in which the large number of students combine with the open nature of the MOOC philosophy to rapidly iterate improvements (providing faculty, instructional designers, technologists, etc. are willing and prepared to make changes).
Data on where the Coursera students came from
Chuck shared some data on where the students came from, which can be seen by following this link to Google Maps.
The reflection video shared some great data on the student population, but this data I found particularly interesting:
- Number of students signed up: 45572
- Number of students completing week 1: 1164
- Number of students who took the Final: 5401
- Number of certificates: 4595
Chuck then shared his thoughts on what went well, and what he would do differently. I don’t think he will mind me repeating this here given his adherance to openness and transparency:
Worked Well
- Using Twitter as the way to contact me
- Discussion tool is outstanding
- Multi-take quizzes with automorphing questions
- Lecture video format with me looking at the Cintiq
- Discussion forums and their voting
- Cognitive load from the forums to me was manageable
- Mail to the class needed to come from me
- Office hours as small focus groups to help me improve the course
Things He Would Do Differently
- Better Welcome Lecture
- How to use the software lecture from Coursera (i.e. like resources)
- How and when to use the “flag” icon
- How do Late Days work?????
- Describe community communication guidelines – when we will delete a thread
- Delete threads more often
- Faster lecture translating
- All writing assignments are extra credit (because this is an intro class)
- I still don’t get reputation points and how I should use them
- More student editable spaces
- Better way to identify natural leaders in the community and give them ways to communicate broadly other than “+1 votes” in the discussion
- Split lectures at week boundaries (oops)
- Add a “breath/pause” during lecture recording to allow me to later decide where to put a question.
- Come up with an extensive preview so people don’t register just to peek
- Tell late entrants that after week 3 they will not likely get a certificate – perhaps even close registration – you can go on a wait list and see the materials but not take the quizzes
- I would like to come up with a selfpaced version – but the software would need to be different
This really gets to why the course was so successful – a professor who felt passionate about making improvements to the course as it was being taught, and then applying longer-term changes for the future. He also was extremely approachable using Twitter, the discussion boards, and traveling office hours to communicate.
I was lucky enough to participate in the Chicago office hours, and found this to give me more of a connection to the course.
It gets even better – Chuck is intending to build a sequence of MOOC courses that build upon each other, and he is personally signing all certificates sent to him.
It has been a definite pleasure taking the course.
Social Network Analysis
This looks to be the more “hands-on” of the various MOOCs, with applications to install and data to process. I have some assignments to complete and need to dig in deeper. I am happy with the way the course is going, and know that this will stretch me.
Information Security and Risk Management in Context
There has been an undercurrent (and sometimes more than that) of dissatisfaction in the discussion boards the past week. The areas that several of my fellow students feel less than happy are:
- Announcements that the videos cannot be downloaded.
- Reuse of older classroom videos.
- Promotion of the certificate programs ($1,025 for noncredit or $2,055 for graduate credit). Here the wording and frequency of this information seems to have rubbed people the wrong way.
- A feeling that the course was rushed to meet a deadline, rather than waiting to release something more polished later in the year.
These are all fixable issues, and this is the first time this course has been taught, so it will be interesting to see what approaches are taken to meet these student comments.
This is the first Coursera course where textbooks have been required/recommended. What I think would have worked better here would have been:
- Selecting entirely digital required reading (rather than having to find and order a physical book).
- Providing the required/recommended reading information earlier in the course.
However, I am finding the content in this course particularly relevant to my interests, and look forward to future weeks.
SNA MOOC: Day 2
After posting (yesterday) about the Coursera Social Network Analysis MOOC I received a form email that impressed me. It looks like the Coursera staff are monitoring the Web for conversation about this particular MOOC. The email was well crafted and balanced, conveying respect for those who wanted to blog about the course but reminding students of the honour code.
To summarize the email:
- Posting solutions to quiz problems is not allowed.
- Sharing experiences, ideas, and examples that go beyond the assignments is allowed.
- Sharing/discussing assignments after the deadline is allowed, but this should not take place publicly (i.e. on a blog)
The email concluded with a reminder of the Coursera honor code:
- My answers to homework, quizzes and exams will be my own work (except for assignments that explicitly permit collaboration).
- I will not make solutions to homework, quizzes or exams available to anyone else. This includes both solutions written by me, as well as any official solutions provided by the course staff.
- I will not engage in any other activities that will dishonestly improve my results or dishonestly improve/hurt the results of others.
I was impressed that Coursera is actively communicating and reinforcing the honor code. I have noticed that for other/older Coursera courses that some students have posted old quiz questions and possible solutions. Hopefully the reminder emails will limit the sharing of assignment information.
I am watching the Week 1 videos as I travel too and from work. Being able to download the videos to a tablet, and then watching them on the El has been very helpful. In my last course the instructor positioned the camera in such a way to capture footage of him working with a Wacom Cintiq display and splitscreen the results with Camtasia (on the Mac). This instructor is using a splitscreen that mixes PowerPoint slides with a talking head – the downside of this is sometimes the experience is akin to the “uncanny valley,” the instructors eyes and attention is directed away from the camera (towards off-camera notes) and the communication does not work as well. But when you get the “direct eye contact” the presentation comes across particularly well, and the instructors passion for the subject makes the topic come alive.
I definitely get the opinion that the Coursera MOOCs (and maybe all MOOC in general) are faculty-driven. The faculty are doing this because they love the topics and the idea of open education.
My Second Coursera MOOC: Social Network Analysis
Just started my second Coursera MOOC (Social Network Analysis). Very interesting to notice the changes and improvements going forward. Coursera is now sending an updated email alert when the course is about to start:
Today’s the first day of Social Network Analysis. Here’s checklist to help you get started:
✔ Log in to the course and review the syllabus
✔ Watch the first lecture
✔ Go to the forum and introduce yourself (i.e. Hi! My name is Gustavo and
I’m from San Francisco.) Don’t worry, they won’t bite!
✔ Schedule a time to watch the video lectures and do the assignments
each week
✔ Visit meetup.com/coursera to see if there’s a in-person meetup
happening in your area
✔ Fill out your profile (if you haven’t already!)
✔ Have fun!Let the learning begin!
Your Coursera Team
Logging into the course for the first time, students are now presented with these honour code statements:
In order to ensure fairness, all students participating in any of our online classes must agree to abide by the following code of conduct:
I will register for only one account.
My answers to homework, quizzes and exams will be my own work (except for assignments that explicitly permit collaboration).I will not make solutions to homework, quizzes or exams available to anyone else. This includes both solutions written by me, as well as any official solutions provided by the course staff.
I will not engage in any other activities that will dishonestly improve my results or dishonestly improve/hurt the results of others.
The first assignment looks very interesting, and involves downloading data from my Facebook network (195 contacts) and loading this into Gephi. Looking forward into how things progress.
One of my initial observations is how the grading policy for this course is markedly different to the previous one. I don’t know how much direction Coursera provides to faculty. Policy is as follows:
Grading scheme
non-programming option 8 homework assignments are worth 10 points each. The 7 highest scores will be counted toward 70% of the grade (i.e. I will be dropping the lowest score from your assignments) . The final exam (multiple choice + short answer) counts for 30% of the final grade. A certificate will be issued to those achieving 80%+ of the total points possible.programming option If you select this option, in addition to the regular assignments there will be ~4 programming assignments, the last of which will be a an independent mini-project to be peer-evaluated. The projects can optionally be submitted to the forum. Those voted up by the community will be featured and discussed in a Google Hangout session.
Late policy
I realize that many of you are leading busy lives and may not always be able to meet the deadlines. You can always skip one of the assignments (only the top 7 will be counted). You also have an allocation of late days (8 in total). If you don’t allocate late days, the assignment will be marked down 10%/day. These lenient policies are meant to encourage you to submit work throughout the course without stressing too much about deadlines.
Also, there are four teaching staff rather than one in my previous course. I wonder if this is a model Coursera is moving towards, or if this was just a decision for this course and the nature of the assignments.
One thing of particular note with the Coursera videos, is that they provide subtitles as a standard. The FAQs indicate that the primary focus here is for students where English is not their first language, not students with disabilities.
Coursea Course Statistics
I am in the final weeks of a Cousera course (Internet History, Technology, and Security), and the instructor has kindly shared the demographic data provided (via a survey) for the students in the MOOC. As Charles Severance says:
Of course the caveat is that it is not scientific, it is partial, incomplete, your results may vary, void where prohibited, etc etc etc. It is anecdotal at best but certainly interesting. This is not all the data but the other items like country need some coding as they were fill-in-the-blank and folks filled it in a lot of ways.
Is this your first online class?
- 1611 Yes
- 1942 No
Is this your first large, free, online course (i.e. MOOC)?
- 2232 Yes
- 1319 No
Which best describes your motivation for taking this class? Check all that apply:
- 2677 General interest in the topic
- 2215 Extending current knowledge of the topic
- 442 Supplement other college/university classes courses
- 203 Decide if I want to take college/university classes on the topic
- 1539 Professional development
- 1437 Interest in how these courses are taught
Are you currently a student in a school or college?
- 972 Yes
- 2572 No
What is your highest level of education?
- 81 Some high school
- 298 High school
- 363 Some college
- 207 Associate’s degree (2 years of college)
- 1234 Bachelor’s degree (BA/BS, 4 years of college)
- 1016 Master’s degree
- 186 Doctoral degree
- 174 Professional degree (MD, JD)
Are you currently a teacher?
- 451 Yes
- 3088 No
If you are a teacher, are you thinking about reusing some of the material in this course for your own course?
- 510 Yes
- 1496 No
What is your gender?
- 2387 Male
- 1121 Female
- 31 Decline to state
What is your age?
- 75 I prefer not to answer
- 757 18-24
- 1189 25-34
- 621 35-44
- 491 45-54
- 420 55+
What You Need to Know About MOOC’s
What You Need to Know About MOOC’s
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a balanced and short piece about MOOCs (What You Need to Know About MOOC’s). Well worth reading if you are unsure what all the fuss is about (thanks to Curt Bonk and GiamMario Besana for the link).
I would disagree with the line “with minimal involvement by professors” – I would not say that involvement is minimal, just that one-to-one interaction will be rare given the sheer number of students.
If reading the the CoHE piece, I would recommend going here after:
https://sites.google.com/site/edumooc/
28th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
A week ago I spent three extremely rewarding days at the Distance Teaching and Learning conference in Madison (full disclosure, I am on the planning committee). It has taken a few days to put my notes and thoughts in order, and here they are.
Wednesday
Madison, 2012
Early morning saw me boarding the Megabus to Madison. The cost of the trip was shockingly low – just five dollars. I spend more travelling to and from work on the El each day.
I arrived in Madison in time to meet with Dawn Drake and finalize our presentation for one of the Communities of Practice sessions that afternoon (on Management and Administration). I enjoyed discussing the topic with the folks there.
I was slightly shocked to discover an inadvertent promotion on page 33 of the conference brochure (I am not Dean of the College of Commerce).
Thursday
The trending topics of the conference from my perspective were mobile learning and MOOCs. Previous conferences had been abuzz with discussion on Second Life, Google Wave, and Social Media. The focus on mobile and MOOCs seemed to me to be more pragmatic. Mobile communication was ever present during the conference – the effective use of Twitter heightened my enjoyment of the sessions (and muted any dissatisfaction with particular presenters). The keynote from James Zull was not the strongest part of the conference. Zull is a far better researcher than large-venue presenter. His premise did make me think, and his presentation style gave me plenty of time to tweet and retweet with others in the room. This was particularly refreshing, with a vigorous discussion and commentary taking place along the back channels.
Norma Scagnoli’s and Seung won Hong’s presentation on “iPads is graduate professional education” was enjoyable. Norma admitted that the use of iPads at the University of Illinois in the Management program was flawed, with students and faculty not knowing initially whether they owned the iPads or had to return them. I hope they are able to repeat the experiment and train students and faculty on effective use, rather than discover what happens organically. I wanted to know whether students were able to use etextbooks on the iPad effectively in a classroom situation (I have observed that students are able to make notes and refer to material more rapidly in printed textbooks).
Ray Schroeder’s “eduMOOC: Open online learning without limits” presentation was packed, and worked as an iceberg presentation – there was much more material below the surface. I will have to return to his site and explore more:
https://sites.google.com/site/edumooc/
Ray Schoeders talk about MOOCs was probably the most productive session for me.
Scott Schopieray’s “One Week, One Course (OWOC): A rapid prototyping concept for courses” contained a little smoke and mirrors – the courses were not completed in a week, but the idea is intriguing. The design of the rapid prototyping model was clever, and effectively implemented. I am tempted to see if this is an idea that can be implemented at work.
The “iPad apps for utility and learning” was not a presentation that I should have attended. Unfortunately I was in the front row as the presentation started, and when I realized my mistake it was too late to leave….
I did not see much at the vendor presentations that was new and exciting, but I am taken with the idea of Camtasia Relay. This may be an effective way way to scale classroom recording and adhoc lecture capture. This is something I will look later.
Thursday evening ended with a delicious meal with some of my colleagues from DePaul at Harvest, a little restaurant with a great view of the capitol.
Friday
The Capitol in Madison, and a statue of Hans Cristian Heg
Friday morning began with a fun follow-up discussion of Administration and management. I then attended Dean Blackstock’s and James Mudie’s presentation on “Streaming high quality mobile video: A conversation and some code!” Dean and James developed a great solution to automatically serve up the right type of video to mobile users. Not a solution that I need at the moment, but fun and interesting.
I next attended Johanna Dvorak’s and Laura Pedrick’s presentation on “Developing a comprehensive campus-wide online student services initiative.” What they presented was a work in progress, but the policies applied to assemble the stakeholders and determine what needed to be done are ones I will gladly borrow.
The last concurrent session of the day was “Using mobile technology in faculty development and training.” This was a Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt session, with George Engel providing most of the information I was interested in. Their handout is on the web, and can be found here:
http://mobilefieldworkshop.wikispaces.com/file/view/Faculty+Training+Using+Mobile+Technology.pdf
What I didn’t see answered was how mobile devices constrain focus. Anecdotally, I have noticed that those that I correspond with on mobile devices frequently cannot process multiple concepts in the same email. This topic is deserving of a conference presentation (and research).
The conference ended with a keynote from Judy Brown. Already I am looking forward to next year.
My MOOC Life (So Far)
I have cautiously been circling MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) recently. The educational media has been all over the trend to create an appropriate platform and populate with courses, and “mainstream media” has started to pay attention too. My fear is that MOOCs will be viewed as a silver bullet to the plethora of problems that education in general faces. Most likely there will be a MOOC bubble. However, MOOCs are moving education in the right direction. Faculty, instructional designers, software engineers, and students are generously donating their time and attention to craft courses and reusable learning objects that are intended to be easily understood and utilized in a scalable fashion. Things could of course become too commoditized and homogenous, but MOOCs are starting to deliver the promise that opencourseware failed to deliver.
Anyway, my firm belief is that you only truly learn from doing (and making mistakes), so I signed up for some MOOCs. I started with Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success. Here I really appreciated and enjoyed the content (from Curt Bonk), but met some frustration with the delivery system. In working through the material I felt that my view that Desire2Learn is a superior LMS to Blackboard was validated. I felt that Blackboard constrained navigation and communication. I felt that Blackboard was more of a document repository than a system that facilitated teaching and Learning.
Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success
The course had an accelerated schedule, a five-week duration rather than eleven weeks or longer. This was to be my undoing as I got really, really ill twice during the course. I lost two weeks, and with other commitments I could not catch up. However, the course is still open, and I will endeavor to finish all of the assignments. The content and readings in the course were very helpful. I also made some new contacts via Twitter and Google+ along the way.
Power Searching With Google
My next MOOC was Google’s “Power Searching With Google.” Google is a company that I like and admire, but it sometimes frustrates me immensely. My frustration in this situation was that the course was unnecessarily ugly. The content, videos, transcripts and exercises were great, but the aesthetic was like an out-of-town factory store -a functional big box that was effective and efficient, but depressing to view. Google’s relentlessly puritan view of engineered effectiveness depresses me. I wish that the company would sometimes make their products look beautiful.
As with many other MOOCs, entering into the discussion area had a tendency to be overwhelming – just keeping track of the conversations was impossible. However, judicious use of search and tags was of use.
Internet History, Technology, and Security
My current MOOC is Coursera’s “Internet History, Technology, and Security,” taught by Charles Severance (@drchuck). This is a seven-week course, one in which I arrived late (but not too late). This is a course in which the professor is (by his own admission) inventing along the way, but the structure and material works very well. I have not taken any other Coursera courses, so I don’t know if the instructional design of this course is used in other Coursera courses, but here are a few of the things that have impressed me:
- The LMS used supports the vast number of students exceedingly well. Video is streamed and downloaded without a hitch. The navigational scheme is well designed, I have not experienced any disorientation looking for materials.
- Video is available in both streaming and downloadable versions.
- Video is generally short, and has embedded quizzes.
- Students are collaborating on providing transcripts (in multiple languages).
- The course looks nice. This might sound like a trivial statement, but many online courses are ugly. A pleasant environment is, to my mind, helpful in learning.
- There are physical office hours. The instructor is travelling around the U.S., and posts office hours for various coffee shops along the way. This is an excellent way for students to actually get to meet each other and their instructor. Luckily Chicago was one of the destinations, and I got to participate.
Cousera Office Hours
Like other MOOCS there is the inherent issue of assessing learning. So far there have been two strategies employed:
- Automatically graded quizzes. Ten questions are posed for each assessment, which are based on the week’s materials. The questions are drawn randomly from a larger pool of questions, and students can take the quiz multiple times (highest score is preserved). However, students have to wait ten minutes after taking a quiz to retake.
- Peer assessment. So far there has been one written assignment. After submitting the written assignment, students are provided with five assignments to grade via a structured rubric. The rubric is largely binary, which simplifies grading. Students are able to provide written feedback and suggestions to their peers. The system works well. There has been at least one instance of a student plagiarizing extensively from Wikipedia – I am interested to see if a plagiarism detection system (like Turn-it-In) could be added.
Next and Continue
There is one minor flaw that I have encountered in the MOOC, and that is the “Continue” and “Next” buttons in the videos. The videos have embedded quizzes – these pause the video and present the student with questions. After successfully answering the question the student can proceed by clicking on “Continue.” However, the “Continue” button is very close to the “Next” button…. The “Next” button is part of the video player, and Fits Law being what it is, I have a tendency to click on this rather than “Continue.” This results in me navigating to the next video in that week’s content, rather than continuing through the video that I was watching. I silently curse and backtrack when this happens (I think others have encountered the same issue, so the “Continue” button is in green).
Charles Severance has thoughtfully provided some statistics on student participation. I found this information to be very interesting:
- Enrolled: 42935
- Watched at least one lecture: 22651
- Took Quiz 1: 11402
- Submitted the Peer-Graded Assignment: 5808
My views on MOOCs at the moment are that they are here to stay. A business model has not been established, but I am sure one will evolve. I don’t think traditional universities are going to be hurt by MOOCs, but this may hurt the publishing industry. A MOOC is essentially an interactive book, so why buy a textbook or manual when you can take a MOOC that covers the topic for free?