My experience with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and distance education

Dr. Brad MehlenbacherDepartment of Leadership, Policy & Adult & Higher EducationNC State UniversityRaleigh, North Carolinabrad_m@ncsu.edu

CWSP 2014September 29, 2014

The year of the MOOC* “... one of the hottest subjects in

education has been MOOCs, otherwise known as Massively Open Online Courses…. MOOCs have been pegged by some as representing the future of the educational system†, democratizing education, bringing quality learning content to people of any age, in any corner of the world for a small fee—if not for free.”

Brooks, D. (2012). The campus tsunami. The New York Times, The Opinion Pages, May 3. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/opinion/brooks-the-campus-tsunami.html Empson, R. (2012). 2U one-ups MOOCs, Coursera, now offers online undergrad courses from top schools for credit. Techcrunch.com, November 15. Available online: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/2u-one-ups-moocs-coursera-now-offers-online-undergrad-courses-from-top-schools-for-credit/ †Leckart, S. (2012). The Stanford education experiment could change higher learning forever. Wired Science, March 20. Available online: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/ff_aiclass/ *Pappano, L. (2012). The year of the MOOC. The New York Times, Education Life, November 2. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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“What happened to the newspaper and magazine business is about to happen to higher education….”

MOOCs: Acronyms everywhere

Masters, K. (2011). A brief guide to understanding MOOCs. The Internet Journal of Medical Education, 1 (2). Available online: http://www.ispub.com/journal/the-internet-journal-of-medical-education/volume-1-number-2/a-brief-guide-to-understanding-moocs.htmlWatters, A. (2012). The language of MOOCs. Hackeducation.com, June 7. Available online: http://www.hackeducation.com/2012/06/07/the-language-of-moocs/ *Wiley, D., & Green, C. (2012). Chapter 6: Why openness in education? In Diana G. Oblinger (ed.), Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies (pp. 81-89). Louisville, CO: EDUCAUSE.

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M for Massive: Define massive? How many students? Duration? Retention?

O for Open: Open enrollment? Openly licensed content? Open source platform? Open-ended classes? Is anything free?*

O for Online: Online lecture halls with TA-small group interaction: familiar? Can there be offline versions? Study groups?

Course: Or connection, connectivism, community, credit, certificate?

MOOCs: The beginning

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MOOC coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier (U of PEI) in response to online course designed by George Siemens (Athabasca U) and Stephen Downes (NRC Canada, mooc.ca)

First MOOC: 25 tuition-paying students at U of Manitoba and 2,300 general students who took Connectivism and Connective Knowledge class for free

RSS feeds, Moodle discussions, blogs, 2nd Life, synchronous online meetings.

Connectivism 2008. (2008). Extended Education and Learning Technologies Centre, University of Manitoba.. Available online: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Connectivism_2008#Week_9:_What_becomes_of_the_teacher.3F_New_roles_for_educators_.28November_3-9.29 Massive open online course. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Available online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course#History

MOOCs: The media attention

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Stanford U launches set of free online courses

Sebastian Thrun’s Stanford U AI MOOC attracts over 160K users (25K complete the course) from over 190 countries

Thrun founds Udacity, for-profit start-up based on the course

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng at Stanford spin off Coursera (16M venture funding).

Coursera. (n.d.). MOOC start-up. Available online: https://www.coursera.org/ Lewin, T. (2012). Beyond the College Degree, Online Educational Badges. The New York Times, March 4. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/beyond-the-college-degree-online-educational-badges.html Lewin, T. (2012). Instruction for Masses Knocks Down Campus Walls. The New York Times, March 4. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/moocs-large-courses-open-to-all-topple-campus-walls.html?pagewanted=all Simon, S. (2012). Startup aims to rival Ivy League online: Elite Internet university to see top students from around the globe. Edmonton Journal, April 6. Available online: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Startup+aims+rival+League+online/6420373/story.html Thrun, S., & Norvig, P. (n.d.). Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Available online: https://www.ai-class.com/ Weissmann, J. (2012). Can This “Online Ivy” University Change the Face of Higher Education? The Atlantic, April 5. Available online: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/can-this-online-ivy-university-change-the-face-of-higher-education/255471/

MOOCs: The money

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MIT OpenCourseWare announced in 2002 with over 2K courses online, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT (edX has $60M MIT and Harvard funding)

Salman Khan starts the Khan Academy in 2009, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google

Ben Nelson secures $25M in venture capital from Benchmark Capital in 2011 to start an online university, Minerva Project.

Khan Academy. (n.d.). The team. Available online: http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team Kolowich, S. (2012). How will MOOCs make money? Inside Higher Ed, June 11. Available online: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/11/experts-speculate-possible-business-models-mooc-providers MIT OpenCourseWare. (n.d.). Unlocking knowledge, empowering minds. Available online: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm Weissmann, J. (2012). Can This “Online Ivy” University Change the Face of Higher Education? The Atlantic, April 5. Available online: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/can-this-online-ivy-university-change-the-face-of-higher-education/255471/

Fischer Black: On learning “Why are we talking about

school so much? What you learn on the job is nine to 11 times what you learn at school. I don’t know the exact number, but that seems a reasonable estimate.”

Fischer Black, a Goldman Sachs (GS) partner, legendary quant, and co-creator of the famed Black-Scholes option pricing model, Quoted in Farrell, C. (2012). Our (work) education crisis: Send in the MOOCs. Bloomberg Businessweek, September 18. Available online: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-17/our-work-education-crisis-send-in-the-moocs Marks, J. (2012). This is the real revolution of MOOCs. David Murphy’s Occasional Blog, October 22. Available online: http://opob.edublogs.org/2012/10/22/this-is-the-real-revolution-of-moocs/

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Ben Nelson: On higher education

Is this a good industry within which to start a new company?

Here are the industry characteristics. Here is a multi-billion dollar industry providing a service that’s doing gross margins of about 80 percent or so.

The industry provides a service that has grown in price three times the rate of inflation in 30 years. So the service has become substantially more expensive. And for the privilege of buying that service, this industry serves approximately 10 percent of market demand…

Nelson, B. (2011). Taking on the Ivy League. TEDx SF: Independently organized TED event, December 5. Available online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEv8g80lcjo

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Ben Nelson: On higher education Another 10 percent approximately is serviced by people outside

of that industry and substitute goods and about 80 percent just don’t get that service, they just can’t buy it, even though they have the means and the ability to take advantage of the service, they just can’t buy it.

Now the last characteristic of this industry is that the service is delivered by service professionals who not only have no training to deliver the service but, in the course of their evaluation, their promotion, their compensation, etc., not only are not monitored in how they deliver the service, they’re not trained in how to deliver the service, but there’s absolutely little to no, and mostly no, penalty or reward for providing this service well….

Griffith, E. (2012). Ben Nelson is Building a Virtual Harvard. It’s Ambitious—Just Don’t Call it Disruptive. Pandodaily, April 3. Available online: http://pandodaily.com/2012/04/03/the-minerva-project-lands-25-million-for-elite-virtual-university-ambitious-yes-just-dont-call-it-disruptive/ Sumagaysay, L. (2012). GMSV Q&A with Ben Nelson, CEO of planned ‘elite’ online university. MercuryNews.com, April 4. Available online: http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_20324886/gmsv-q-ben-nelson-ceo-planned-elite-online?source=rss

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Higher education and global economic collapse Expansion of American universities in 1940s

connected to enormous expansion of world economy Reduction in monopoly of socioeconomically

advantaged in 1970s Global economic stagnation results in reduced state

investment and investment in external funding (16.4%) During 1980s and 1990s, universities increasingly

privatized, the professoriate stabilizes, creation of adjunct (contingent) culture (41%)

Today, universities under attack for serving student population poorly (in the light of scarcity) and under attack from anti-intellectual consumer culture of the U.S.

Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation. NY, NY: NYU Press.Edsall, T. B. (2012). The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity will Remake American Politics. NY, NY: Doubleday.Hoeller, K. (2014). The Wal-Mart-ization of higher education: How young professors are getting screwed. Salon, February 16. Available online: http://www.salon.com/2014/02/16/the_wal_mart_ization_of_higher_education_how_young_professors_are_getting_screwed/Wallerstein, I. (2012). Higher education under attack. Energy Bulletin, March 1. Available online: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-03-02/higher-education-under-attack

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The revolutionary pedagogy of MOOCs

Shaffer, J. (2011). MOOC crib sheet. Workshop at ISTE 2011. Available online: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/

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Features of a MOOC: Wiki or blog for course materials, open enrollment, readings or audio/video recordings, networking between students, activities, sharing knowledge, student-driven assignments, participation, content production, auto-grading and/or peer review and assessment.

Things to think about when we think about MOOCs Reinforce hierarchy between students

who can and cannot afford on-campus “experience”

Highlight inequality between Ivy League and State universities

Promise to revolutionize pedagogy although evidence of how this is accomplished (videos? blogs?) has not been provided

Provide additional argument to external critics who feel that education should continue to be de-funded

Stress credentialing as primary mission of university

Encourage adjunctification of instruction

Support argument that sequestered learning is outmoded

Reduce student-faculty interaction.