MOOCs update

The other two major providers of MOOCs are Coursera and edX, which were created in April 2012 and May 2012, respectively. Although these three organizations are US-based, today, participation in MOOCs is growing and is pretty much global. Take edX as an example. This free Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) non-profit joint initiative […]

The other two major providers of MOOCs are Coursera and edX, which were created in April 2012 and May 2012, respectively. Although these three organizations are US-based, today, participation in MOOCs is growing and is pretty much global. Take edX as an example. This free Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) non-profit joint initiative has approximately 1.3 million student enrollees, of which 9% (117,000 students) are from Africa, while 12% (158,000) are from India. (Note that Coursera and Udacity have 5 million and 1.6 million total students, respectively.)
I summarized the history of MOOCs in the 4 March 2013 issue of this column. Although the idea started around 2008, it wasn’t until last year that it picked up much steam, thanks to the proliferation of project founders, contributing institutions, and donations. In the early deployment, the contents of MOOCs were available through the Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed, a family of web feed formats used for publishing materials like blog entries, news headlines, audio, video, etc., in a standardized format. RSS feeds can be read with the aid of software (RSS readers) that is desktop-based, web-based, or smartphone-based. Also in these early deployments, you could participate in a MOOC with threaded discussions in the Moodle e-learning software, blog posts, Second Life, and synchronous (videoconferencing) online meetings.
MOOC originally grew out of a free course called “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” at the University of Manitoba in 2008. The “connectivist” way of teaching advocates “aggregation,” whereby a person starts with a small amount of content online, and as other people join in, it eventually leads to a massive amount of content that is produced by numerous people from different places online. The contributions are combined into a newsletter or web page. The connectivist principle also involves “re-mixing,” whereby the various materials for a course are properly grouped into coherent topics and contents cross-linked, perhaps. Current deployments of MOOCs differ significantly from the connectivist philosophy.
Although the “modern” MOOCs platform was conceived and developed by scientists and engineers, the courses now offered include virtually all the major disciplines, from physics, medicine, computer science, and engineering, to the humanities and social sciences. Many major universities all over the world have bought into the MOOCs idea. In addition to Harvard and MIT, institution members of edX include Cornell, University of California – Berkeley, University of Texas, Georgetown University, University of Toronto, University of Kyoto (Japan), Australian National University, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, McGill University in Canada, and 17 other tertiary institutions. The original partners of Coursera include Stanford University, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Michigan. It is estimated that Coursera now has up to 84 university partners, including the University of Edinburgh (UK), Ecole Polytechnique (France), Yale, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago. Unlike edX, which is jointly owned by Harvard and MIT, Coursera and Udacity are commercial entities founded by Stanford University professors.
In terms of the number of courses offered, edX and Udacity each has several dozens, while Coursera has over 400. The format of the courses varies. In Udacity, the structure is that of a self-paced program, with no start or end dates, and in which students can access lectures and assignments on demand. In contrast, edX and Coursera are a more structured type, where courses are offered at specific periods of time, and lectures and assignments are given out on a weekly basis.
Being a commercial entity that does not charge fees, Coursera monetizes its services by linking corporations looking to hire competent workers with the students who have registered for MOOCs. I can also envision the additional use of ads to generate revenue. There are folks who are still skeptical of MOOCs, which are yet to be accepted for use toward a university degree. However, upon successful completion of a MOOC, students do receive a completion certificate. Note that websites exist that offer learning tools reminiscent of MOOCs, such as Udemy and Khan Academy. However, these operators are not university professors.
MOOC is still plagued by several other challenges. One manifestation of this is the high dropout rate of over ninety percent (90%), which is significantly higher than for brick-and-mortar institutions.
Alan Finder discussed a few of these issues in his 26 September 2013 article in the New York Times. However, the following summary of the challenges is taken from Geoffrey Fowler’s 9 October 2013 article in Wall Street Journal. Among these issues is the need for MOOCs students to interact with other students, such as in online discussion groups, peer-to-peer forums, peer assessments, or in-person study groups. Interactive questions in between video segments have been suggested, as has the blending of online and offline learning, sometimes called flipped classrooms. There are also suggestions for enlivening online course offerings. In addition, it has become obvious that online learning doesn’t work for all students. For example, a study found that all students performed worse in online courses when compared to face-to-face ones. Fowler points out that “what remains a challenge are capstone design projects like a senior thesis and very subjective exams, which are impossible for a professor or even a team to grade on a mass scale.” He also added that “some MOOCs are experimenting with peer grading and self-assessment, but results have been mixed and plagiarism is an issue.”
The main idea of this article is that although MOOCs are becoming more popular globally, challenges still exist, which continue to motivate providers to search for innovative solutions.