Massive Open Online Courses

MOOCs

Massive Open Online Course, a term used to

describe web technologies that have enabled

educators to create virtual classrooms of thousands

of students. Typical MOOCs involve a series of 10-20

minute lectures with built-in quizzes, weekly

auto-graded assignments, and TA/professor

moderated discussion forums. Notable companies

include Coursera, edX, and Udacity.

MOOC

(noun)

1

THE HISTORY

1840s

1920s

1960s

2000s

1 THE HISTORY OF DISTANCE LEARNING

As technology has evolved, so has distance learning. It began

with mailing books and syllabi to students, then radio lectures,

then tv courses, and now online courses.

2

WHY ARE MOOCs

DIFFERENT?

Beginning with the first correspondence courses in the

1890s from Columbia University, distance learning has

been an important means of making higher education

available to the masses. As technology has evolved, so

has distance learning; and in just the last 5 years a new

form of education has arisen, Massive Open Online

Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs are becoming increasingly

popular all over the world and the means by which

learning is measured, evaluated, and accredited has

become topic of controversy in higher education.

Short (10-20 minute) lectures

recorded specifically for online.

Quizzes that are usually

integrated into lectures.

2 WHY ARE MOOCs DIFFERENT?

TA / Professor moderated

discussion forums.

Letters, badges,

2 WHY ARE MOOCs DIFFERENT?

Graded assignments with set due

dates (graded by computer).

Large class sizes (often tens

of thousands of students).

3

COMPANIES

AND UNIVERSITIES

SERVE MOOCs

The modern MOOC began with an open Computer Science course at Stanford, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, taught by Professor

Sebastian Thrun in 2011. The wildly successful course, with 160,000

students in attendance, led Thrun (along with his colleagues David

Stavens and Mike Sokolsky) to create Udacity in 2012, kicking off MOOC mania.

3 COMPANIES AND UNIVERSITIES SERVE MOOCs TO THE MASSES

WHY

FOUNDED Enable the best

professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of

students. To serve students who were not enrolled on a traditional campus.

Bring education to the masses & research

how students learn and how technology can transform

learning.

Expanded after huge popularity of initial experimental AI course. FOUNDED BY Andrew Ng (Stanford) Daphne Koller (Stanford) Anant Agarwal MIT and Harvard

President (MIT) Sebastian Thrun Mike Sokolsky David Stavens (Stanford) 2012 April 2012 Feb 2012 DATE FOUNDED

3 COMPANIES AND UNIVERSITIES SERVE MOOCs TO THE MASSES REVENUE MODEL For-Profit. Revenue through Amazon affiliate program. Signature Track: $30-100 for course credit. $60-90 proctored exams. Coursera Career Services. Non-Profit. Revenue through retail partners like textbook suppliers.

For-Profit.

Revenue through retail partners like textbook suppliers.

Udacity Career

3 COMPANIES AND UNIVERSITIES SERVE MOOCs TO THE MASSES

PROFIT

SHARING Partner universities

get 6-15% of gross revenue, plus 20% of profits generated by “aggregate set of courses provided by the university”. University Produced: edX collects first $50k generated by course, $10k for recurring courses. University gets 50% of all further revenue.

edX Produced: Costs $250k for each new course, $50k for additional terms. University gets 70% of revenue. Courses produced in-house independent of universities.

3 COMPANIES AND UNIVERSITIES SERVE MOOCs TO THE MASSES

CREDIT

MODEL Identity verified,

“Signature Track”

courses offer accredited completion certificate.

Universities accept

credit after completion of certificate & final.

REACH _{62 Colleges and}

Universities. 2.8 Million Registered Users. 337 courses. 675,000 Registered Users. 12 Universities. 24 Classes. 400,000 Users. 22 active courses.

4

Some courses have already been accredited and

universities are beginning to accept transfer credit for completing MOOCs. These companies have quickly

grown in size and hype, and their rapid growth has led to many questions around how MOOCs may shape the

future of higher education.

As MOOCs become increasingly popular all over the world,

the means by which learning is measured, evaluated, and

credited is a topic of controversy in higher education.

4 CONTROVERSY

Coursera, Udacity, and edX were not originally meant to grant credit, and the recent push from administrators to enable students to earn credit for the successful

5

What are people saying?

"MOOCs are just the tip of the iceberg," said John Mitchell,

professor of computer science and Stanford's first vice provost

for online learning. "One of the great things about online

technology is we can produce one kind of material – a video,

an interactive session, an experimental laboratory that is online

– and use it in multiple different ways. We're evolving our way

of presenting educational material."

5 DISCUSSIONS TODAY

Credit: 72% of professors say students should NOT earn units for MOOCs.

Cons: 55% say teaching a MOOC diverts their attention away from their existing

responsibilities on campus.

Pros: MOOCs have the potential to greatly further the spread of higher knowledge and help individual professors gain larger

recognition for their work. Some professors report having higher engagement with their students, and believe MOOCs will produce a larger number of solutions for projects and assignments, as many more students will be participating.

5

Presidents remain unpersuaded by, if not skeptical of, MOOC mania.

Only 14 percent of presidents strongly agree, and another 28 percent agree, that massive open online courses have “great potential to make a positive impact” on higher education;

31 percent disagree or strongly disagree, and the rest are neutral.

5

The biggest concern remains how to keep the integrity of the student record. If a

student is attempting to receive credit for completing a MOOC course, how does a university verify the student’s identity and

that that student completed the assignments and passed the exams?

Needs: Keeping constantly informed about the issues surrounding MOOCs will help Registrars fully support the needs of their faculty and students.

Legislators are primarily concerned with

remedying the problems of accessibility and affordability in public higher education.

Many public institutions struggle with

over-enrollment in core classes necessary for graduation and MOOCs have the

potential to help students complete their degrees on time. By passing legislation to permit the teaching of core classes using MOOCs, legislators and universities stand to gain huge cost savings.

Legislators

5

The biggest challenge will be in supporting the resource needs of their institution’s

courses. The open nature of a MOOCs

course necessitates using content with open copyrights.

5

MOOCs will provide new opportunities to

help employers find and evaluate candidates. In the future, employers will be able to

purchase access to student names and

accomplishments and students can leverage their new skills to land better jobs.

5

MOOC courses have been met with

resistance from tuition-paying students who want distinct experiences for the amount of money they pay.

6

MOVING FORWARD,

HOW WILL UNIVERSITIES

CHANGE?

In the future we may see major changes,

driven by the rise of MOOCs, in the way

higher education institutions measure

achievement, offer courses, and earn

revenue.

Universities hit hard by budget cuts may

offload the economic burden of lower-level

courses like introductory mathematics to

MOOC providers to focus efforts on

upper-division courses.

The student transcript may shift from

measuring achievement in Carnegie credit

hours to instead recording

competency-based accomplishments.

The university structure itself could

dramatically shift; lower level universities

might become facilitators for online

courses, hiring instructors skilled in

education facilitation rather than research.

7

WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY?

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Universities

Research must be done to evaluate the effectiveness and future of MOOCs.

Universities are running pilot programs with MOOC providers with select classes to test their feasibility, such as San Jose State

University’s Udacity math classes. SJSU is

currently offering 3 classes for credit, open to anyone. Beginning June 1, Edx will be available as an open source learning platform. Stanford will integrate features of its existing Class2Go open source online learning platform into the edX platform.

MOOC Providers

The companies themselves are collecting data on every interaction they have with students. The researchers behind each provider hope to use that data to support the argument in favor of the expansion of MOOCs. Coursera is using the data

collected from the thousands of students in its 30+ classes to study the most effective teaching methods.

Government

The California State Senate is currently

considering a bill (SB520) that, if passed, would force state universities to teach lower division classes as MOOCs.

The field of higher education will see massive and constant

change in the near future, and MOOCs will continue to play a

major role in its rapid evolution. How will YOU play a part in the

revolution of learning?

Read more: http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/moocs

SOURCES

Distance Learning

Von V. Pittman, "Correspondence Study in the American University: A Second Historiographical Perspective, in Michael Grahame Moore, William G. Anderson, eds. Handbook of Distance Education pp 21-36 (Correspondence Courses)

Levering Tyson, "Ten Years of Educational Broadcasting," School and Society (1936) 44:225-31 (Radio) Enter MOOCs

http://davecormier.com/edblog/2008/10/02/the-cck08-mooc-connectivism-course-14-way/ (coining MOOC) http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7078.pdf (first MOOC course)

MOOC Companies

https://www.edx.org/about (edX why founded)

http://blog.coursera.org/post/40080531667/signaturetrack (Coursera Signature Track) http://chronicle.com/article/A-First-for-Udacity-Transfer/134162/ (Udacity Revenue)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html?smid=pl-share (Udacity Profit Sharing)

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/21/coursera-and-edx-add-universities-and-hope-expand-global-reach (Twice As Many Moocs)

What are People Saying?

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Professors-Behind-the-MOOC/137905 (Professors - Credit)

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/survey/affirmative-action-innovation-and-financial-future-survey-presidents (Presidents) What’s Happening Today?

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/edx-collaborate-platform-030313.html (Universities - edX) http://chronicle.com/article/A-Bold-Move-Toward-MOOCs-Sends/137903/ (SB 520)

http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/moocs

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