Pamoja Education PLC Blog - MOOCs for Professional Development

Coursera ? My first two weeks

I am a?Coursera?student and I am not alone! Coursera has literally hundreds of thousands of students ? studying for FREE. They are not unique, there is also?EdX, who may not have such an extensive choice of courses but is also impressive, well supported by top universities and definitely ?la tendence?. A quick look through Coursera shows that it has a impressively wide range of course choice and is supported by top universities in the US, including Stanford, CalTech and UPenn.

And it?s free????

Yes it is. I am currently following a seven week course from?Stanford on Game Theory?and it is well presented and fun?.don?t forget that I like Math!

I would recommend you to read the?following article?about who created Coursera and how it may be monetized in the future. The key point is that for the moment, and the foreseeable future, it is free for the individual student.

How can it be free?

The coursera model is?scalable. Once the work has been done to create a course, and in these courses the use of green-screen and tablets to make the video lectures is really impressive, then there is no limit to the number of students that the course can accept. The course includes short video lectures, discussion forums (optional), simulations (optional) and problem sets. The problem sets are multi ? choice and graded automatically. Apart from dealing with technical or organizational problems the lecturers have no need to be involved in the course, apart form the odd input into a discussion forum. This scalability means that there is a front end cost to create the course which is known but after that there is little additional expense.

What is the student experience?

I am really enjoying the course. That is not surprising, since I love doing mathematics and my reasons for doing the course are self ? motivated. However, if I did not have a strong math background and if I was not used to a certain type of thinking about problems then I can imagine a student becoming quickly discouraged. There is not much technical mathematics in the course but it does require a certain approach that a general student might struggle with. If I was not capable of this then the course would not help me develop the key meta skills that allow me to cope with the thinking required.

There are study groups in the course and if I hooked up with the right people we could collaborate to develop the necessary thinking or technical skills. However, the key point is that there is no ?teacher? to go to that supports or models these approaches to mathematical thinking. Meta thinking and learning is not explicitly built into the course. I think this is a similar situation for another much vaunted education platform ??Khan Academy. Coursera and Khan Academy are content delivery platforms, no bad thing, but that is just one (perhaps rather small and unimportant) element in the education of a person. I would argue that this is just as true for a subject such as Mathematics as a ?creative? subject such as Art. One could argue that pure content delivery is a general model for university education and not the fault of the online platform. However, I would rather you compare such an experience with the learning environment in a good school

Courses vs Curriculum

One thing I really like about Coursera is the name. I do not know whether this was a definite decision or subliminal but Coursera provides courses and this seems an honest acceptance that Coursera is about content delivery. I am aware that the etymology of?Course?and?Curriculum? both come from the idea of forward movement, a race. However, in modern usage I think a Course is a body of knowledge to be communicated whereas a Curriculum is a broader definition of learning. Curriculum implies process, meta thinking, methodology and a set of values. Curriculum needs teachers and teachers are not scalable. If I have hundreds of thousands of students I need thousands of teachers. The more students, the more teachers. That costs money.

So what is a teacher for?

My positive experience with Coursera and my (also positive) experience as an online educator is helping me to crystalise my thinking about education, teaching and learning in these environments. We seem to be getting to the nub of the issue. During the next few weeks I will blog about what it means to TEACH online and what it means for students if they are to LEARN. Here are some questins that will motivate my next few blog posts.

If content delivery can be leveraged for quality and made scalable for access where does this leave the role of a teacher if they are no longer the primary means of content delivery?Do online ?taught? curriculum allow students to learn or are they just content delivery with bells and whistles?Can teachers in online environments help students develop meta thinking skills and transmit value sets, approaches to learning and routines that help students learn how to learn? How?

This is all fascinating stuff and I really hope you will join me on this journey. I am excited about hearing your thoughts.

Source: http://pamojaplc.edublogs.org/2013/02/21/moocs-for-professional-development/

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