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    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/moocs-large-courses-open-to-all-topple-campus-walls.html
    Instruction for Masses Knocks Down Campus Walls
    By TAMAR LEWIN
    New York Times
    March 4, 2012

    The pitch for the online course sounds like a late-night television ad, or maybe a subway poster: “Learn programming in seven weeks starting Feb. 20. We’ll teach you enough about computer science that you can build a Web search engine like Google or Yahoo.”

    But this course, Building a Search Engine, is taught by two prominent computer scientists, Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford research professor and Google fellow, and David Evans, a professor on leave from the University of Virginia.

    The big names have been a big draw. Since Udacity, the for-profit startup running the course, opened registration on Jan. 23, more than 90,000 students have enrolled in the search-engine course and another taught by Mr. Thrun, who led the development of Google’s self-driving car.

    Welcome to the brave new world of Massive Open Online Courses — known as MOOCs — a tool for democratizing higher education. While the vast potential of free online courses has excited theoretical interest for decades, in the past few months hundreds of thousands of motivated students around the world who lack access to elite universities have been embracing them as a path toward sophisticated skills and high-paying jobs, without paying tuition or collecting a college degree. And in what some see as a threat to traditional institutions, several of these courses now come with an informal credential (though that, in most cases, will not be free).

    Consider Stanford’s experience: Last fall, 160,000 students in 190 countries enrolled in an Artificial Intelligence course taught by Mr. Thrun and Peter Norvig, a Google colleague. An additional 200 registered for the course on campus, but a few weeks into the semester, attendance at Stanford dwindled to about 30, as those who had the option of seeing their professors in person decided they preferred the online videos, with their simple views of a hand holding a pen, working through the problems.

    Mr. Thrun was enraptured by the scale of the course, and how it spawned its own culture, including a Facebook group, online discussions and an army of volunteer translators who made it available in 44 languages.

    “Having done this, I can’t teach at Stanford again,” he said at a digital conference in Germany in January. “I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill, and you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.”

    Besides the Artificial Intelligence course, Stanford offered two other MOOCs last semester — Machine Learning (104,000 registered, and 13,000 completed the course), and Introduction to Databases (92,000 registered, 7,000 completed). And this spring, the university will have 13 courses open to the world, including Anatomy, Cryptography, Game Theory and Natural Language Processing.



    I wonder when, if ever, employers will recognize online credentials as equivalent to a traditional B.A.

    ETA: The next story in the NYT education section addresses my question.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/beyond-the-college-degree-online-educational-badges.html
    Beyond the College Degree, Online Educational Badges
    By TAMAR LEWIN
    New York Times
    March 4, 2012

    What’s so special about a diploma?

    With the advent of Massive Open Online Courses and other online programs offering informal credentials, the race is on for alternative forms of certification that would be widely accepted by employers.

    Last edited by Bostonian; 03/05/12 07:37 AM.

    "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
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    Thanks for posting these articles. I didn't see or get a chance to read them earlier.

    I believe we're on the cusp of a renaissance, the likes of which we have never witnessed before. MITx, Yalex, Carnegie Mellonx, and other MOOCs are a tipping point of a gigantic, global iceberg.

    Higher education have held great power and authority for years. They've been exclusive and restrictive to many. Ivory towers and the publish and peril dilemma under copyright are toast. No longer can academic wall themselves off from the masses and lord over them from above or in academic journals that few outside academia read (and I was studying for a PhD in history before I had my eg/pg DS6).

    From my perspective, It's a huge boon for women, minorities, low-income and the poor. It's intellectual freedom at its best. Anyone can avail themselves and self-empower, self-direct, and self-motivate themselves with commercial-free or open sources. It's another world and reflective of a digital, knowledge-based economy (for a chart, see http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/new_economy_transition.html)

    http://sourceforge.net/ - find, create, and publish open software for free - are only going to push MOOCs and open movement to the forefront. There's over 324,000 projects at the moment - up from how many a few years ago?

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    Given, though, that my class of college freshman/sophomores is struggling with understanding basic statistics, I wonder how many people will be able to really take advantage of these courses if public education does not give them the proper skills in math, reasoning, etc?

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    If a college freshman has missed learning something basic in public school, can't he just go online and teach himself using all the wonderful free educational math websites that homeschoolers like me use when they don't have a clue how to teach something?

    The recent college graduate that my husband, son and I talked to at a political rally told us that there were things he was not taught in his small town public school. He had to learn these things on his own outside of school.


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    First, let me apologize for my previous post. I read this post while frustrated with my stats students! Lol

    And, yes I do think a college freshman could self teach missing concepts, if they have been taught HOW to learn, which schools IMO usually don't teach, they teach primarily how to regurgitate rather than how to reason. So my students come to me as sophomores and often can't seem to see the logic in the statistical analyses I am teaching them. Since they can't see the logic it just looks like a mess of unrelated numbers to them (I assume). Since the textbook lays out the logic and the calculations and I reiterate it(ad nauseum) and they still don't comprehend the logic, I don't think they would be able to self teach.

    But, my point regarding these open source courses is that I think they are great, but given the limited nature of many people's early education, I am not sure that they will be the "great equalizer" that one might think since not everyone will be able to take advantage of them.


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    Originally Posted by LNEsMom
    Since the textbook lays out the logic and the calculations and I reiterate it(ad nauseum) and they still don't comprehend the logic, I don't think they would be able to self teach.

    But, my point regarding these open source courses is that I think they are great, but given the limited nature of many people's early education, I am not sure that they will be the "great equalizer" that one might think since not everyone will be able to take advantage of them.

    Well put, LNEsMom.

    The key element of education that is typically missing from these courses is feedback on the student's work. Better, more personalized feedback means more learning. Most students are not sophisticated enough to monitor their own work; they need expert feedback to achieve mastery.

    These online resources are great for those who can use them, but using them well requires a level of preparation that I doubt most people have.

    DeeDee

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    Originally Posted by Lori H.
    If a college freshman has missed learning something basic in public school, can't he just go online and teach himself using all the wonderful free educational math websites that homeschoolers like me use when they don't have a clue how to teach something?

    That is possible, but remember that the student must fill in gaps while SIMULTANEOUSLY learning the new material presented. A freshman taking 4 or more courses, and adjusting to living away from home, may get discouraged or give up if he does not have the background that other students in his class have. I will try to ensure that my children are not in this category when they start college.


    "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
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    How many of us are viewing the impact of MOOCs beyond the US and on a worldwide scale?? How many of us are viewing the impact of MOOs beyond or outside the college level??

    Open resources are and will continue to have a tremendous impact worldwide and in the US. Australia is the #1 ranked English-speaking country and #2 ranked globally in terms of digital education (behind #1 ranked S. Korea). Australia has been using open sources for 5-10 years. Moodle was created by an Australian who grew up as a distance learner in Western Australian, being a thousand kilometers from a school.

    Education in the US and around the world has been unequal. This inequality has partly been due to money and physical barriers (physical access and availability). Open resources eliminates money and physical barriers to digital content/curriculum/instruction/delivery, etc.

    Minorities, in particular are often underrepresented in gifted programs or lack access to them. With open resources, they have access to digital content/curriculum/instruction/activities, etc. that may have been denied due to the lack of money and physical access to them.

    Open access to information and knowledge not only enables digital inclusion within and among countries, but will address/confront social divides. Learning is a source of self-empowerment.

    There are many reasons why children/adults struggle or do not learn in the public schools/college. Instruction, delivery, or presentation may be a reason. Lack of interest, motivation, or attention may be another. As Bostonian mentioned, there may be other mitigating factors that intervene with a person's learning. However, this doesn't mean that these reasons have to be barriers for life.

    There are plenty of late bloomers in the US and world who are capable of being successful. Dr. James Goodrich barely graduated high school with a 1.62 GPA before going to a community college and then medical school; today he's one of the top pediatric neurosurgeons/cranial facial specialists in the US and world (http://nymag.com/nymetro/health/features/12470/index1.html).

    I'm not saying everyone is cut out to be a top pediatric neurosurgeon, but I'm just saying that there's a lot of people who will benefit from open sources and there's a lot of gifted people out in the world who haven't received an education through public or private schools that might have benefited them and society.


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    Please don't misunderstand, I think they open sources are great. My issue is with the idea that they are accessible to "the masses" just because they are free and open to all. One's ability to take advantage of these courses is still dependent on several background factors, such as early education (you have to be able to read at a certain level and reason to a certain degree) and access and familiarity with technology. If you don't have those, then these sources will not be of value to you. In other words, they don't make up for a crappy public education.



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    Originally Posted by cdfox
    From my perspective, It's a huge boon for women, minorities, low-income and the poor. It's intellectual freedom at its best. Anyone can avail themselves and self-empower, self-direct, and self-motivate themselves with commercial-free or open sources.

    I think technology may increase achievement gaps, because not all groups are equally able or motivated to use it for educational ends. An NYT article confirms this:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/business/11digi.html
    Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality
    By RANDALL STROSS
    New York Times
    July 10, 2010

    MIDDLE SCHOOL students are champion time-wasters. And the personal computer may be the ultimate time-wasting appliance. Put the two together at home, without hovering supervision, and logic suggests that you won’t witness a miraculous educational transformation.

    Still, wherever there is a low-income household unboxing the family’s very first personal computer, there is an automatic inclination to think of the machine in its most idealized form, as the Great Equalizer. In developing countries, computers are outfitted with grand educational hopes, like those that animate the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which was examined in this space in April. The same is true of computers that go to poor households in the United States.

    Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.

    Ofer Malamud, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago, is the co-author of a study that investigated educational outcomes after low-income families received vouchers to help them buy computers.

    “We found a negative effect on academic achievement,” he said. “I was surprised, but as we presented our findings at various seminars, people in the audience said they weren’t surprised, given their own experiences with their school-age children.”

    Professor Malamud and his collaborator, Cristian Pop-Eleches, an assistant professor of economics at Columbia University, did their field work in Romania in 2009, where the government invited low-income families to apply for vouchers worth 200 euros (then about $300) that could be used for buying a home computer.

    The program provided a control group: the families who applied but did not receive a voucher. They showed the same desire to own a machine, and their income was often only slightly above the cut-off point for the government program.

    In a draft of an article that the Quarterly Journal of Economics will publish early next year, the professors report finding “strong evidence that children in households who won a voucher received significantly lower school grades in math, English and Romanian.” The principal positive effect on the students was improved computer skills.

    At that time, most Romanian households were not yet connected to the Internet. But few children whose families obtained computers said they used the machines for homework. What they were used for — daily — was playing games.

    In the United States, Jacob L. Vigdor and Helen F. Ladd, professors of public policy at Duke University, reported similar findings. Their National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, “Scaling the Digital Divide,” published last month, looks at the arrival of broadband service in North Carolina between 2000 and 2005 and its effect on middle school test scores during that period. Students posted significantly lower math test scores after the first broadband service provider showed up in their neighborhood, and significantly lower reading scores as well when the number of broadband providers passed four.

    The Duke paper reports that the negative effect on test scores was not universal, but was largely confined to lower-income households, in which, the authors hypothesized, parental supervision might be spottier, giving students greater opportunity to use the computer for entertainment unrelated to homework and reducing the amount of time spent studying.




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