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.
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.
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?
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
I received my certificate for successfully completing the “Power Searching with Google” online course. I decided to upload to the site rather than following Google’s suggestion to print out the certificate and affix to my wall.
I was impressed with what Google put together. Essentially this was a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) with short video presentations/tutorials immediately followed by short exercises to demonstrate learning. The element that I found less impressive was the use of Google Groups discussion boards – meaningful conversation was drowned out by the sheer number of participants. However, this criticism is endemic to MOOCS.
Also, Google did a great job at transcribing the videos. In some ways the written elements are an easier method to learn. Printing these out (or viewing them on a second screen) whilst watching the videos was a good way to learn.
I am currently taking an online course, or rather a MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) this month. Full disclosure, I know the instructor, and have blogged about Curt before.
I am enjoying the course, and that is due to a couple of features. The primary reasons for my enjoyment to date are:
Week 0: The course has an introductory week, which I both admire and appreciate. Even though I have experience of Learning Management Systems (and online course design), the first time in any new course provides a degree of confusion. Like walking into a building for a first time, a quiet period for orientation is required to know exactly where to go and how to get there.
Effective use of video: Online courses can be a little text-heavy. I appreciate using video to communicate with students.
Icebreakers: There are 3000+ of us in the course. I know I won’t be able to read all of the introductions, but I feel like I am getting to know others in the course. Acceptance of Social Media. Conversation is also taking place outside of the LMS, using social media tools. Tags help aggregate the conversation (such as this one: #Bonkopen).
Synchronous and Asynchronous content: My preference is to asynchronous courses, which allow me to better manage my time, but the knowledge that there are (optional) synchronous elements helps push me to meeting deadlines.
Weekly email reminders: I am fairly organized, but regular prompts help me stay on schedule.
Reasons For Taking The Course
I am taking this course for two reasons:
To improve my knowledge and level of expertise, to as to better advise faculty who are teaching online.
Taking this course has been very helpful in changing my perspective – merely by being an online student again. I have a plethora of devices on which I can study and collaborate, but limited windows in which I can study. The times at which I can study are:
Early morning: 5 – 6 a.m. (before everyone else in the house is up)
On the way to work: 7 – 8 a.m. (On the El)
On the way back from work: 5 – 6 p.m. (On the El)
Last thing at night: 10 – 11 p.m. (everyone else in the house has gone to sleep)
The past week was a good opportunity to experiment with how well I could study at these times, and on the devices and in the environments made available to me. Here are the devices I use:
Dual Macs
Mac with dual monitors. In a quiet room at home (basement), this is the idea machine and environment in which to study and collaborate. The dual monitors allow me to place content on one screen, and write on the other screen. My home Internet connection is decent enough so as not to frustrate me whilst downloading and uploading, but this environment does not come with me…
MacBook Air
MacBook Air. Carried with me near everywhere. The screen is tiny, which can be a bit of a pain, but the device is lightweight and a pleasure to use. My cellphone provides a precarious Internet connection for the laptop whilst travelling on the El. If the train is not too crowded, I can get some work done on the Air on the way to and from work.
N900
Nokia N900 Cellphone. This aging device (has been my primary ‘phone for about three years) has an unlimited EDGE dataplan. Not the quickest device, but can get the job done. Has a great browser, nice screen, and keyboard. Lacks a spellchecker…
iPod Touch
iPod Touch. Second generation. Essentially an iPhone without the Phone. Again, my cellphone provides a precarious Internet connection whilst travelling on the El.
iPad
iPad. First generation. Essentially a super-sized iPod Touch. Again, my cellphone provides a precarious Internet connection whilst travelling on the El. Works best for consuming content rather than creating content. I don’t take it with me as often as the MacBook Air.
My Bold Plan
My bold plan was to see how well I could operate as a mobile student – accessing the CourseSites course whilst on the move. So far this has not worked as well as I might have hoped, but this is good. Mild frustration helps point out things that I could change in future courses (or at least prepare students for).
Mild Frustrations and Observations
Here are the issues I ran into along the way (sometimes just because I was looking for things to break):
1: Reading PDFs
Reading PDF on the iPod Touch Kindle did not work for me
My first day of class I downloaded the PDF reading assignments to my laptop. I knew I was going to be travelling home on a packed train, so iPad and laptop use were not an option. Instead I thought I would use my iPod Touch to read the PDFs, so I sent them to the device via Amazon’s Send To Kindle service before leaving work’s WiFi cloud. This approach did not work for me, as the PDFs were too small to read on the screen (and I could not rotate the screen to read in landscape mode).
Reading PDF on the cellphone – not fun, but it worked
Reading PDF on the cellphone – not fun, but it worked
My fallback was to open the PDF with the cellphone – this worked, but reminded me how PDFs can sometimes be a pain to work with.
Lessons Learnt (for future courses)
When providing PDF handouts, provide the content in other formats that can be read more easily on mobile devices. HTML or epubs would have let me scale up the content to be legible on a device with a small screen. The issues here is whether this can be legally done, or if the content in the PDF can be easily converted.
2: CourseSites Navigation
I found the layout and the organization of the course to be logical and efficient, but there is one aspect of Blackboard CourseSites that I found frustration – that is navigation to components of the course. One of the first assignments is to introduce yourself via the discussion board, but the directions to do that are less than ideal:
Use the link above to introduce yourself and share your expectations for the course.
Where the link is the heading (Discussion: Let’s Get to Know One Another). My frustration here is that the link is not apparent (no visual cues, beyond the mouse pointer changing form when hovering above the link). A better solution would be contextual links within the body of the text, for example:
Introduce yourself and share your expectations for the course through the discussion board.
(where discussion board is the linked text)
I think this is a constraint imposed by CourseSites, rather than a design decision.
Lessons Learnt (for future courses)
Ensure that navigation is contextual.
3: Mobile Applications
Using CourseSites on the iPod Touch
I did experiment with the Mobile Learn iOS app, but ultimately found using the browser on my cellphone to be an easier approach. Interaction did not work well on the mobile apps.
Lessons Learnt (for future courses)
Review online courses on a mobile device, and decide whether the app/LMS affords easy navigation and collaboration
4: Video Content
Lastly, there is one suggestion for improvement that I would suggest. I really enjoyed the video content, and that it was hosted on YouTube. This allowed for some collaboration and commentary to take place outside of the MOOC (which is a great idea). What I did not like was that I had to open a separate window to view the video outside of the LMS, my suggestion would be to embed the YouTube video in the LMS and provide a link to the YouTube page (for those who wanted to comment interact with the video directly from YouTube)
Lessons Learnt (for future courses)
Embed video.
Time For Bed…
Anyway, that is me for this post. This was more my thoughts and reactions to the LMS and instructional design. My next blog post will be about the actual reading and reflection (i.e. learning) that I am following in this course.
