I have a new word. I love new words. Here's my new word: MOOCs. MOOCs is short for massively open online classes. I would have preferred MOOSE or massively open online senseless exercises, but that wouldn't be right.
Harvard and MIT have teamed up to create edX, which will offer free online courses from both universities. Cousera is a rival operated by Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and the University of Michigan. There's also Udacity, which a Stanford professor operates.
I love the idea that there's free information out there. A poor farm kid in Nebraska with a love of the Greeks can watch a lecture on Plato's Republic and be happy. I like that there's a rival to over-priced, elitist colleges. but I'm not sure how this will all pan out.
David Brooks is sceptical. What do you think?
I might watch a few of those lectures this afternoon and write a review.
Apt. 11d 
Ooh, do it! Someone suggested these courses as a possible summer curse for kids who are interested, so I spent some time yesterday looking at Coursera, Udacity, and the MIT site.
At Udacity, I found a web design class (one of the classes my daughter is asking for, and which CTY-Johns Hopkins charges $600+ for — of course the CTY course is designed for children and has an instructor, and the Coursera is a “MOOC”). At Coursera, I found a class on Sociology that stars in the summer. I signed up for both and am going to check them out (the web design class has started; the sociology one not yet).
I haven’t figured out how you would do this kind of thing with a kid (i.e. I wouldn’t let them onto a MOOC discussion board without some supervision), but am intrigued.
Though, as you see, I’m imagining it as a substitute for another online course, and not for my kids’ excellent teachers or coaches or directors.
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Just got an OK to write about this for the Atlantic. If you have opinions on this topic, I would love to hear about it.
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Oh, super cool. I don’t have a super-sophisticated opinion, but I do have opinions!
I wrote a high school term paper on computer-aided instruction, back in the day when computers were the size of desks, and we keep going through the same loops over again. I think most of these endeavors are flawed because people get excited about leaving out the human teacher, and in fact, that’s what most people need, a human teacher.
But, online instruction (2.0, they’re calling it, but I think it’s more like 5.0) has some changes that I’m intrigued following:
1) the ease of video in this digital age, both in production and in viewing.
2) the potential for online “grading”. I believe, though haven’t verified yet, that udacity has automated checking of code, so that certain kinds of outside assignments can be checked without human intervention, but beyond the multiple choice exam.
3) the widespread accessibility of computers (which wasn’t there when I wrote my report). Instead of specialized computer labs needed for computer aided instruction, lots of folks who may not have access to teachers (certainly at that moment, like in the middle of the night) have access to computers.
4) the research possibilities that allow improvement of the instruction (one of the MIT experiments suggests that people prefer some form of handwritten notes to powerpoint presentations, for example). They can do this kind of experiment ’cause they have n’s of 1000, and click through information stored through the web.
I think the main issue is that people need to interact with people; it’s a human need, fundamental, and no scheme that tries to take that away from people is going to work as a replacement. Supplement, yes, replace, no.
BTW, I do think this kind of thing is going to change education. For example, check out the introduction to psychology lectures from John Gabrielli at MIT. I don’t think they’re fantastic or anything, but if that’s all someone was doing in the classroom, I don’t see why a series of lectures by Gabrielli wouldn’t be better than a series of lectures in a group taught class in which a group of different profs come in and talk , without knowing the students very well, on the same topics.
(Well, except for the live theater v movies, but, we know that movies had a huge effect on live theater.)
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“(Well, except for the live theater v movies, but, we know that movies had a huge effect on live theater.)”
I was thinking about theater, too. A taped class may bear the same relationship to a live class as a filmed play has to a live play. At least from what little I’ve seen, a filmed play is a very sad thing. You have to add lots of cinematic razzle dazzle to make a film version of a play tolerable.
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“At least from what little I’ve seen, a filmed play is a very sad thing. You have to add lots of cinematic razzle dazzle to make a film version of a play tolerable. ”
Ooh, exactly what I think. But, it’s also the case that the market for live plays was significantly affected by movies, to the point where most of the plays had to move into not-for-profit ventures.
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What’s the difference between these MOOCS and reading books?
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Udacity is the for-profit venture (and has VC funding, which in turn, means that the VC, at least, plans to turn a profit, eventually). Udacity seems to be recruiting non-teachers to run courses
I’ve peeked in on Udacity’s CS253: web application engineering. It’s a topic I’m actually interested in, and if I can learn the topic, it would be an interesting experiment (though I’m not sure I’m willing to follow through). It is also the specific topic my daughter asked me to find courses on for her. If it were able to teach her, that would be truly interesting.
Udacity has homework assignments (Homework one on the web app design course is to download Google App maker, in the Python version and have it print simple text, and send in the url). The lectures are Khan-like (i.e. you see the chalkboard) and have built in quizzes.
Coursera is a not for profit, and is trying to leverage the work of professors who are already working at universities. I checked in on a currently running course, Computer Vision. The instructor is Jitendra Malik, at U Berkeley. The first lecture is a powerpoint projection + an inset with the talking professor in video. It’s old fashioned lecturing, and quickly jumps into Malik’s own research (EZ-Gimpy, captcha recognition), a standard issue in topics like computer vision that are fast moving. Also there’s a survey feel of jumping into a set of moderately arbitrary topics. Can’t see that it’s significantly worse than a similar class at a university (which I have probably taken, though, it’s a fast moving field, and I haven’t taken one recently).
He caught my interest in reviewing the data on computer-based object classification/recognition challenges and the improvements seen. But, he hasn’t taught me how the computers did the work, only that they have done better.
But, I’ve picked a topic that I know a lot about, and in fact, when Malik introduces the precision/recall curve, is using a graph that I’ve actually constructed and published. I can’t tell who would be able to understand, or who this class would be targeted at. Maybe me, but that’s a pretty small audience.
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My 11 year old self got VERY excited reading this – replace Nebraska with Alberta and you have me as a kid who would have LOVED access to online courses.
My only experience currently with online teaching is hour long lectures on a variety of topics related blogging. Content aside, the platform for the teaching works well. The person leading the course is visible to everyone while all the attendees chat online. The lecturer is at their computer so it isn’t just a video of a lecture in a classroom at some university.
Think one screen where you have one box for introductions/contact info, one to see the lecturer speaking, one for slides, one for q&a afterwards and one to chat during the lecture.
Now that I think of it, nothing differs from a real life class except you aren’t physically together.
Depending upon the topic and the class size, it’s a powerful mode of teaching. I wouldn’t want to do an entire degree this way but it works.
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“What’s the difference between these MOOCS and reading books?”
1) videos (and this is big, if you prefer getting your information that way, a feature I’m seeing in kids more and more these days). It doesn’t work for me; I prefer the book in general, and I fear that some of the kids are just pretending to listen to the video (which is easier to do then pretending to read). At this instant I’m writing this while running the Malik video in the background. I can do that and get a smattering of what he’s saying, but clearly, I’m not really getting it.
2) Udacity has inline quizes (though one could have them in books, it is more interactive/immediate in teh video).
3) Homework, with some form of grading (in Udacity, don’t know about Coursera — which has assignments, but I don’t know that they get posted /graded in anyway).
4) online discussion forums. For example, they’re hoping they’ll grade essays in crowd-sourcing eventually; Udacity has knowledgeable people commenting. If I were participating actively in the Courseara course, I would be able to contribute significantly in the forums — but, of course, I’m not. Others might, though, grad students in vision courses & computer science, for example).
5) cheaper than paper books, and, video lectures may be easier to produce than the equivalent written document. It’s more casual, a person just talking about something they know how to do (showing, not telling). I’ve noted the significant impact of videos on origami models. One can easily show someone how to make an origami model (in fact, my 8 year old has produced an origami crane video that shows someone how to do a crane). But, of course, he’d be completely incapable of writing a crane diagram model. That’s a particular case, involving 3-d spatial info, but there’s plenty of learning that includes equivalents, where showing someone how to do it is easier than trying to write the text that describes the info.
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Sandra — what is your 11 year old interested in? My 11 year old is interested and I’m trying to figure out the logistics of actually having her do one of these courses over the summer. Right now, the web design class and the sociology class (Coursera) are potentials. She says she’s interested in the world history course at Coursera, but that doesn’t start until September.
(Having watched half the Malik lecture, I think I’m unlikely to want to work through that whole class).
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There are logistics problems with the Computer Vision class, with complaints in the forums and some delays with assignments/quizzes/other online parts of the course.
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The optimistic side of me thinks it’s a game changer in terms of both access for people and that it should be having us ask the big questions, like above “if a big lecture is just like this, why not do the lectures this way?” but add in “and find out what really really happens in classrooms that is better and DO THAT really well rather than butts-in-seats lectures.
The pessimistic side of me thinks this is kind of like a bigger Google. Yes, you can get the information…but can you evaluate it? Put it in context? Apply it to the next problem/issue/whatever? Or does it just become a bunch of people who have *some* idea fumbling around.
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“One can easily show someone how to make an origami model (in fact, my 8 year old has produced an origami crane video that shows someone how to do a crane). But, of course, he’d be completely incapable of writing a crane diagram model. That’s a particular case, involving 3-d spatial info, but there’s plenty of learning that includes equivalents, where showing someone how to do it is easier than trying to write the text that describes the info.”
Right! For certain manual operations, it’s both easier to make a video and easier to understand a video. I think a big part of the issue is that way you eliminate the need for the teacher to completely translate from visual to words and then for the student to translate from words back to visual. (Not sure what terminology to use here.) There will still be some language in the video, but the words don’t have to carry the full load of communication.
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I think the big question, of whether this is a game changer, is being asked the wrong way. These courses aren’t replacements for universities. They are replacements for 1) online courses, like CTY, or the courses Sandra says she’s taken, or the online photography class I’ve taken 2) those “great lectures” series that used to be available on DVDs, maybe still are 3) opportunities for motivated students to extend their education, on their own time. 4) access to international students.
Looking at the Malik course forum, a substantial number of the students are foreign students (a number from India, South America, all with good English skills). Not a big contingent from China (internet access issues? English issues?).
None of that list replaces a conventional university, though it could, in the future, replace a conventional university class.
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Steve Huffman, a co-founder of reddit is teaching the Web App Engineering class. Don’t know what that means, because the class is actually organized like a teacher is teaching it (i.e. syllabus, outlines, etc.). Does Huffman just know how to do that? or does he have course organization support?
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bj – I meant “me” at 11! I have a six year old daughter…
I also have taken photography courses online and they were fab too – good feedback and instruction by video. I can control when I do the work and don’t have to faff around with “every Tuesday night at 7pm”. I get to see everyone else’s work and the instructor comments for all too.
I am also studying Hebrew but that is in “real life” as it is conversational and you do need to be with others to learn a language. Amazing how motivating it is to show up NOT having done your homework and stumble through your conversations…
So not every topic fits this format.
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Oh, ok. None of the classes I’ve seen are suitable for a six year old :-).
I do think people are making use of skype for language instruction. In fact, I think there’s some scheme out there that’s supposed to be pretty good, matching up people who want to learn each language. For example, there are probably more english language learners who speak chinese, but I’m sure there are a number of chinese language learners who speak english (a potential good match, via skype, to practice conversation).
I get excited about this topic because I think there are a lot of ways that this technology can be used to enhance learning. But, I think that often, the conversation stumbles over political implications with too broad expectations and too specific economic goals.
(interestingly, none of the courses in MIT’s OCW, in history, writing or humanities have video lectures. They all contain syllabuses, assignments, but not more). Possible explanations include the possibility that there are no lectures in those courses, that the lectures are highly interactive, so that the students matter as much as the “lecturer” or that the lecturers are uncomfortable with posting what they consider their intellectual property online.
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I’ve taken CS courses online–one through MIT’s opencourseware (soon to be EDx, I guess), and one through a for-profit venture. The second one was better than the first, in that it was mostly reading and then doing exercises/programming projects. There was little interaction in the discussion board. I don’t think there were that many people taking it.
The MIT course was awful. Lectures don’t work for me in person, and they’re less helpful online. I like watching a good TED talk, but I’m impatient with an hour and a half lecture, especially when I can’t see the board.
I might try a couple of these courses myself, though. I’m looking at CS212 from Udacity. The problem I’m in at the moment is that I have very specific needs–CS taught in a particular programming language. Many of the CS courses that are online right now are taught in a different language. I will want to take those at some point, but not now.
Selection in most of these ventures is very limited. There’s a fair amount of CS–Udacity is all CS–but if you’re a student who needs a second level history class (because the one at your own school won’t let you in), then you might be out of luck.
Eventually selection will increase, but I’m wondering if it’s really going to be cheaper (which seems to be a motivator) to do courses this way.
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My dad has taken to listening to all sorts of on line lectures, mostly about history. I should tell him about this. Even though he isn’t a kid or poor, he is in Nebraska.
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I attempted a SAAS course from UC Berkeley, offered via Coursera; and another on Model Thinking, from U Mich; flunked out of both..
The SAAS one was well organized and prepared, the problem for me was the time required. I’d planned 10 hours/week, but that barely got through the lectures and reading, with nothing left for coding and assignments. In Model Thinking the lectures gestured broadly in the direction of the reading, and left the 20-plus hours of other study/week as an exercise for the reader 😉
A couple of family health events, house maintenance diversions, and Boy Scout meetings later – contemplating a new coding exercise redeyed at 11:30 pm, I quit in shame.
I’ve also taken a lot of online training at work. It is generally ineffective for two main reasons:
1. online training still needs a human at the other end of the pipes, to respond to questions, clarify ambiguities, and fix the broken exercises/coding tests. Lacking this, the training can stall out.
2. learning doesn’t happen in lectures, it happens while talking/thinking over the material and doing the exercises. It’s not simple to hold a conversation of multiple participants with video conferencing or IM. Forums help a little in the case of the work training, but with the MOOCs the forums tend to become overwhelmingly large and busy.
MIT has had its OpenCourseWare online training available for quite some time. The innovation in these new online courses is that certification is available. Obviously it will be much easier to game the certificate exams/quizzes when nobody knows you’re a dog.. so I wonder how that will play out.
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I think that friends don’t let friends read David Brooks, but you knew that already.
Beyond that, I think the key question is our old social science standby, “Compared to what?” As several commenters have already said, these courses will be good for some things, less good for others.
Speaking of The Atlantic, TNC’s immersion in the Civil War has several pointers to online courses in that area.
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My issue with online video courses is that I hate lectures and any kind of auditory learning experience. I do like TED Talks, but I often just skip the video and read the transcript. Certain kind of subjects (like origami or engineering, I guess) do require a visual aid of some sort, but if I had to sit around listening to someone lecture on, say, African American literature–which I *love* and which I did my dissertation on–for hours and hours, I’d go crazy. I also point you to this:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/05/01/students-brain-flatlines-during-class/
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I’ve set my own western civ students off to watch a Yale lecture on the witchcraze — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rHSu2oDZXE — but we’re moving away from the lecture as learning paradigm.
I want them to get some important information and it certainly doesn’t have to come from a textbook! If they’re more audio-visually oriented than textually oriented as learners, maybe these lectures will help. Certainly some of them are both interesting and informative!
Students are still going to need to read, analyze and write. I don’t see a MOOC bridging that last gap except in a modelling sense: watch us deconstruct this model assignment and suggest how to do it differently! That technique can work for some fields but not so well for history. There’s no way to build in helpful feedback nor judge how the audience is reacting to restart and essay another tactic!
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“My issue with online video courses is that I hate lectures and any kind of auditory learning experience.”
Me too (I also even prefer the transcript of talks over the audio). But, we are not typical. There are plenty of people who like the audio/video presentation method. And to the extent that the audio/video is a replacement for a book, it might work for those people.
Seems like an experiment that must have been done — to deliver the same content in audio v reading format and see how people do on retention/recall/etc. My guess is that such an experiment would not show a significant bias towards reading (though I think I would be better, and, I think, I actually have test data from my child that shows the effect).
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bj, true, and I have to admit, I have been using video and visual texts more and more in my own teaching. My students tend to be auditory or kinesthetic learners rather than visual learners, and in fact, when I am talking with them one on one, I’ll often ask them how they think they learn best so I can adjust my style.
Right now, there is a lot of discussion in pedagogical circles about the “flipped” classroom. You flip the classroom by having student watch the lectures on video on their own time, then use class time for discussion/projects/group work/etc. Go here for more info: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-best-practices-andrew-miller
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no time to read the comments. I don’t know about the latest initiatives, but the folks from faculty innovation at my university have checked the Stanford ones out and apparently it’s really bad stuff. I mean, stuff that doesn’t really work as effective distance learning. I’ll try to come back and read the comments to learn more what people are saying.
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There was also an interesting comment on the Chronicle of Higher Education about the new types of crimes have begun to emerge. We all knew that it was possible to go on the internet and buy a term paper, a college application essay and probably a dissertation for all I know (for example, a social science type who was required to have stats in a assignment could hire some dude in India to crunch the numbers). But now apparently you can also pay someone to take online courses for you. There used to be a built-in disincentive to do so — what is the point of having someone else take your exams in web design if you end up getting fired from your first job when you can’t actually design anything?
The problem is with situations like the civil service where you get a raise JUST FOR HAVING A DEGREE; school districts that require teachers to get a master’s degree to get a raise, etc. etc. and if you don’t have any mechanisms for making sure that the person taking the course is actually the person getting the credit, then basically you’ve just started selling certificates, degrees, diplomas, The commenter at CHE mentioned that it was inevitable when you start graduating lots of really bright people for whom there are no jobs in the economy, that eventually they’d figure out how to make money using their degrees. I think this is what we’re seeing.
I know that my university is reeling from a drop in applications next year across the board and that the word on the street is that people are starting to figure out that we don’t need more useless diplomas that don’t lead to jobs. If credetials aren’t valued by employers and aren’t monitored by those who issue them, you’re looking at a recipe for disaster.
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Really? A big drop in applications, Louisa? Wow.
And bad reviews from online specialists, Lillian? Would be interested to hear more.
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Louisa, isn’t that analogous to the people selling term papers and college application essays online?
I love to listen to lectures or TED talks as podcasts, while driving. It’s a real luxury to attend a lecture in person.
What is the value of a college degree? Is it the opportunity to learn things, to improve one’s skills, or is it a certificate? (Trying to be provocative here.)
I think the MOOCs may be valuable in the long term, for things such as computer skills–knowledge and skills which can be put to immediate use. I predict it will not catch on for high school and college education, because our high schools and colleges function as sorting mechanisms, not just as sources of education.
The gatekeeping function is not a byproduct of a lack of resources. It’s a feature. High schools select the students they want to present as the most capable. (They may not be the most capable–that’s beside the point.) Our local high school allows kids to take AP courses online, through Virtual High School. http://www.govhs.org/. They may only take courses not offered by the high school. So, if you are not placed into AP Calc, you can’t take it online. The grades earned in those courses are not included in their GPA. In my biased opinion, giving AP weighting to grades earned online would upset the local star system.
So, yes, it is possible to learn by independent study, or by taking online courses. Will it help a student “get ahead,” though?
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