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Exploring MOOCs: Roles, Advantages, and Concerns in Education

Join Dan Grossman from University of Washington as he discusses his journey in teaching MOOCs, exploring the advantages, disadvantages, and potential threats in online education. Learn about the impact of MOOCs on universities and the evolving landscape of online courses.

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Exploring MOOCs: Roles, Advantages, and Concerns in Education

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  1. Let’s Talk About MOOCs(After All, Everybody Else Is )Dan GrossmanUniversity of WashingtonDepartment of Computer Science & EngineeringOctober 5, 2012

  2. My plan • My roles related to MOOCs • Personal take on why I will teach a MOOC • Personal take on why my department is doing MOOCs • Thoughts about some advantages / disadvantages / threats Caveats: • Would rather have more Q&A than say everything I think • I do not speak for UW • 12 months ago I had never heard of a MOOC and I haven’t started teaching one: my opinions are evolving Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

  3. My role • Teaching Programming Languages on Coursera, January 2013 • https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang • Sophomore-level functional programming and more • 200-500 sign-ups per day (already > 25,000) • Leading department’s efforts to prepare for 5 courses this year • This term: 0 courses but 5 TAs (There are also other courses from UW) • Why me? Good question.  • Having a blast between bouts of anxiety  Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

  4. What makes a MOOC a MOOC • Semi-synchronous • Social cohorts with modern lives • Scale • Past, say, 5,000 students, more students makes a class better • Nothing can flow through the course staff • Online • Video, discussion board, etc. • Free • Can talk monetization strategies if you want, but not my role • UW is offering “enhanced versions” for credit if you pay Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

  5. Why I’m excited • I believe I have a superior course and want to have impact • 10x more students in one term than in last decade combined • Influence among other educators • More fun, less work, more effective than writing a textbook • Fame (not fortune) • Be part of academic change • Not read about in NYT, CACM • No substitute for first-hand-experience • My concerns • “Stage actor fails in transition to television” • Grading scripts • Errors for the world to see Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

  6. My take on department’s reasons • Can have amazing impact • Teach 10,000s of people amazing and useful stuff • Be bigger worldwide leaders in CSE education • “MOOCs” might [not] change how universities work in N years • We need experience in online courses • Improve CSE and UW reputation • Feedbackto improve conventional courses • New modalities (video) • Massive data • Impetus for error-free instructions • Yes, this costs money, but remarkably little Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

  7. Does free mean doom? “If these courses are free, why are people paying tuition?” Coherent 4-year curriculum Personal interaction with course staff Homeworks graded by humans Open-ended design and free-response questions Credit because we know you actually learned the material Courses adapt to student needs on the fly Plus other reasons to be at a university: social support, job fairs, advisors, independent study/research, etc. None of these killed universities: public libraries, VCRs, Internet, … Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

  8. The false denominator Why do MOOCs see completion rates < 10% ? Students: • Sign up for courses they are not qualified for • Sign up for N courses and pick one later • Have jobs, lives, constraints and get busy • Just change their minds • Sign up twice to cheat Also plausible that: • Some courses are poorly organized, taught, etc. • MOOCs “work better” for some kinds of students • Self-motivated, experienced, … Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

  9. Remember the numerator • Which has more impact? • 95% completion rate with 200 students • 3% completion rate with 50,000 students • I accept my MOOC students will likely learn less and be less impacted by me than my conventional 50-70 students • That’s not my goal: I want more impact than writing a book • The comparison is moot: We don’t have capacity and students don’t have the flexibility to make that choice Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

  10. Some real concerns • Financial model for higher ed if you move the 1,000-person lecture courses to MOOCs • The certification/ assessment issues • Rampant cheating • Too little free-response, design, iterative assignments, … • How many FieldX 101 lecturers do we need? • Argument for “flipped classroom”? (Not my immediate plan) Problems lessen if we stick to viewing MOOCs as “a better textbook” with a “huge social component” Frontiers in Education, MOOC Panel, Dan Grossman

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