I will be working with others at my school to investigate what our response should be in regards to MOOCs. Do we want implement any courses in the MOOC model? Do we want to accept competency based credentials, either by using competency-based exams or accepting certificates? These are just some of the questions that come to mind for now. Is anyone else going through a similar process, and what questions are you asking? The ultimate goal obviously is to have an educated student body and to guide them towards life-long learning.
Is it somethings about distant learning or education? Here in Saudi Arabia there is much talk about distant or online courses but very few people go for them because of their accreditation problems. However, the idea is gaining ground. The verification of credentials is really a big issue. Then, many people who are engaged in open line education seldom do the assignments by themselves. Often they look for other people or sometimes they pay for that. So, a certificate or degree earned this way lacks legitimate credibility. However, there is a great potential in this type of coaching and learning. Things will also get matured with the passage of time.
We are looking at a whole online plan, disruptive education, with MOOCs as a piece. It's open (no pun intended) right now and we have to decide the overall vision. Do we want to fly a couple of MOOCs for marketing purposes and only award certificates, consider awarding credit or transfer credit, create or own or join a group? The discussions are just in the beginning phases right now so I am curious what other smaller universities are doing.
Thanks for the suggetion Camelia, I guess I've been reading so much about these in varous international and national newspapers that I forget there are those not familiar with the vocabulary. Yes, the massively open online courses. Coursera, Udactiy, edX are some of the bigger players if your school does not want to have to deal with infrastructure issues, but then they present problems of their own, such as not allowing the content to be truly open for use by others.
We are going to conduct a survey of faculty and staff somewhat early in the process, although we already have some faculty interest. Again, we are looking at both sides - creating content as well as accepting transfer credits from students who have taken MOOCs elsewhere. The main point of my question is that current players seem to be all "big name" schools. Therefore I am wondering if there are any schools that may not be as famous who have implemented MOOCs, and if so, what their course participation numbers may have been. My school is not as well known internationally except in one area so I don't see us hitting those 4, 5 or 6 figure participation numbers.
Are you sure that you want to try implementing MOOCs? If so, why? What is the cost / benefit analysis that's made you think that MOOCs are a viable option for your school? There seems to be a bit of MOOC-hysteria right now, with everyone wanting to jump on the bandwagon.
That said, here's a great overview of MOOCs from Audrey Watters, which you might find useful as you explore this topic:
http://hackeducation.com/2012/12/03/top-ed-tech-trends-of-2012-moocs/
I do agree there is a bit of a bandwagon atmosphere around MOOCs. I've been following the creation since George Siemens developed his MOOC, the AI MOOC by Dr. Thrun, and then the multitude that followed. For us it is somewhat legislature driven as politicians begin to see this as a way to get graduation rates up, despite no evidence in that area. This is not a "can't wait to start one" effort, but a "do we really want to do this, will it help the university and its students" type of inquiry. I was hoping to find institutions outside of the main three (Udacity, Coursera, and edX) who have used MOOCs to help student progress and have found them to be effective in that endeavor.
Janice, that is my concern as well, though it does seem the Siemens MOOCs do push participants towards the gold standard of co-construction of knowledge. I have signed up for his learning analytics MOOC which starts late January and will find out for myself.
As both an instructor of an online class and a student taking classes, I find Siemens' Connectivism model (and yes, Stephen Downes as well) is an important component of a successful MOOC, or any online class. I have yet to find a course, either face-to-face or online, that provides all my learning needs on a topic and have found I learn best when I venture outward into my various PLNs. As I read more of the responses and reflect a bit I guess my main concern is how best to help students develop the PLNs that can help them achieve the fullest learning opportunity possible. Most undergrads do not seem to have the skill, or know that such a thing is possible.
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