Search Results for « MOOCs »

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are one of the most prominent trends in higher education in recent years. The term ‘MOOCs’ represents open access, global, free, video-based instructional content, videos, problem sets and forums released through an online platform to high volume participants aiming to take a course or to be educated. With time and place flexibility, MOOCs gathers scholars and ‘like-minded fellow learners around the globe’. Although it has a great prominence in its implementation, there is a lack of research studies and critical papers examining its current situation around the world. For this aim, beginning with the definition and a brief history of MOOCs, this paper examines it from various dimensions: pedagogical and technological implementations around the world and its research focus. Therefore, a literature review on MOOCs characteristics, timeline of its development and a blend of practical issues with the experiences of well-known MOOCs providers are presented.

1] At colleges and universities across North America, online education is a topic that has generated a significant amount of discussion in the past year or so.In many ways, the idea of online education is only the most recent version of something that got its start in the nineteenth century: the correspondence course.(1) The development of radio and television in the twentieth century, and then the rise of the internet over the last twenty years, has made it possible to conduct courses with far less time lag than was present in the early days of distance learning, when lessons and assignments were carried by surface mail.Each issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education seems to bring word of some new development or wrinkle in the rapid development of online courses, and perhaps no topic is more controversial than MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).(2) While many embrace the idea that MOOCs make college-level learning available to thousands who would otherwise not have pragmatic access to it, others worry that MOOCs threaten to put traditional college courses out of business.(3) [2] In February 2013, the University of Rochester officially joined Coursera, one of the largest providers of MOOCs in the world.(4) The university had considered several options regarding online education, some of these claiming to offer the prospect of revenue generation and increased ease and flexibility for students, as well as the possibility of functioning as an alternative to conventional classes and counting for credit.In choosing to partner with Coursera, the university chose to place availability of knowledge above the concern for revenue: Rochester MOOCs are free, open to anyone who wants to enroll, and do not count for college credit.(5) [3] I was chosen to teach one of our first MOOCs and based my Coursera courses on the History of Rock class I currently teach at the University of Rochester.Coursera recommends that regular semester courses of twelve or more weeks be broken up into six-to eight-week courses.Accordingly, History of Rock Part 1 runs seven weeks, while History of Rock Part 2 is six weeks in length.The courses are offered consecutively, with Part 2 immediately following Part 1; students electing the sequence thus have a similar experience to those taking the regular semester-length course at Rochester.Coursera has found that students tend not to stick with lectures that extend longer than about fifteen minutes; they strongly recommend Volume 19, Number 3,

Ce texte présente un portrait à la fois synthèse et critique de la question des MOOC (massive open online courses) ou les CLOM (cours en ligne ouverts et massifs) en enseignement universitaire. Nous présentons d’abord l’historique de cette innovation en pédagogie universitaire, les principaux acteurs universitaires impliqués dans la création de MOOC, la question de la gratuité réelle de cette nouvelle tendance, puis les composantes des MOOC. Nous traitons aussi de la pédagogie à des supergroupes : comment enseigne-t-on à plus de 100 000 étudiants? La question des méthodes et techniques d’évaluation, puis celle des MOOC dits connectivistes sont aussi abordées. À partir d’une recension de quelque 100 écrits, une synthèse des résultats de recherche sur la question vient clore ce manuscrit.

Learning processes and learning potentials are continuously investigated. Exploration of the possibilities of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) led to the development of many solutions and recently to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs are probably the most important “novelty” in the field of e-learning of the last years. MOOCs are capable of providing several ten thousands of learners with access to courses over the web. MOOCs have recently gained much attention especially in leading universities and are now often considered as a highly promising form of teaching. More and more universities are currently working to offer their courses in the form of MOOC providing learners with a wide variety of choices. With MOOCs proliferation, learners will be exposed to various challenges and the traditional problem in TEL “finding the best learning resources” is more than ever up to date. Since information retrieval and searching for the appropriate learning resources is an essential activity in TEL, the development of recommender systems for learning has seen increased attention. Recommender systems permit to respond to the traditional problem. In the present paper, we address this major problem – the difficulty for learners to find courses which best fit their personal interests. We propose a system that recommends appropriate MOOCs in response to a specific request of the learner. Using the Case Based Reasoning (CBR) approach and a special retrieval information technique, the system proposes to the learners the most appropriate MOOCs (from different providers) fitting her/his request based on learner profile, needs and knowledge.

For an instructor who is teaching a massive open online course (MOOC), what is the best way to understand their class? What is the best way to view how the students are interacting with the content while the course is running? To help prepare for the next iteration, how should the course's data be best analyzed after the fact? How do these instructional monitoring needs differ between online courses with tens of thousands of students and courses with only tens? This paper reports the results of a survey of 92 MOOC instructors who answered questions about which information they find useful in their course, with the end goal of creating an information display for MOOC instructors.

'CCK08' was a unique event on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge within a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in 2008. It was a course and a network about the emergent practices and the theory of Connectivism, proposed by George Siemens as a new learning theory for a digital age. It was convened and led by Stephen Downes and George Siemens through the University of Manitoba, Canada. Although the event was not formally advertised, more than 2000 participants from all over the world registered for the course, with 24 of these enrolled for credit. The course presented a unique opportunity to discover more about how people learn in large open networks, which offer extensive diversity, connectivity and opportunities for sharing knowledge. Learners are increasingly exercising autonomy regarding where, when, how, what and with whom to learn. To do this, they often select technologies independent of those offered by traditional courses. In CCK08 this autonomy was encouraged and learning on the course was distributed across a variety of platforms. This paper explores the perspectives of some of the participants on their learning experiences in the course, in relation to the characteristics of connectivism outlined by Downes, i.e. autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness/interactivity. The findings are based on an online survey which was emailed to all active participants and email interview data from self-selected interviewees. The research found that autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness/interactivity are indeed characteristics of a MOOC, but that they present paradoxes which are difficult to resolve in an online course. The more autonomous, diverse and open the course, and the more connected the learners, the more the potential for their learning to be limited by the lack of structure, support and moderation normally associated with an online course, and the more they seek to engage in traditional groups as opposed to an open network. These responses constrain the possibility of having the positive experiences of autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness/interactivity normally expected of an online network. The research suggests that the question of whether a large open online network can be fused with a course has yet to be resolved. Further research studies with larger samples are needed, as is an investigation into the ethical considerations which may need to be taken into account when testing new theory and practice on course participants.