Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education MITx

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/e...eam-up-to-offer-free-online-courses.html

Harvard and M.I.T. Team Up to Offer Free Online Courses
By TAMAR LEWIN
New York Times
May 2, 2012
In what is shaping up as an academic Battle of the Titans — one that offers vast new learning opportunities for students around the world — Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities.

Harvard’s involvement follows M.I.T.’s announcement in December that it was starting an open online learning project to be known as MITx. Its first course, Circuits and Electronics, began in March, enrolling about 120,000 students, some 10,000 of whom made it through the recent midterm exam. Those who complete the course will get a certificate of mastery and a grade, but no official credit. Similarly, edX courses will offer a certificate but will carry no credit.

But Harvard and M.I.T. are not the only elite universities planning to offer a wide array of massively open online courses, or MOOCs, as they are known. This month, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan announced their partnership with a new for-profit company, Coursera, with $16 million in venture capital.

Meanwhile, Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford professor who made headlines last fall when 160,000 students signed up for his Artificial Intelligence course, has attracted more than 130,000 students to the six courses offered at his new company, Udacity.

The technology for online learning, with video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback and student-paced learning, is evolving so quickly that those in the new ventures say the offerings are still experimental.

“My guess is that what we end up doing five years from now will look very different from what we do now,” said Provost Alan M. Garber of Harvard, who will be in charge of the university’s involvement.

EdX, which is expected to offer its first five courses this fall, will be overseen by a not-for-profit organization in Cambridge, owned and governed equally by the two universities, each of which has committed $30 million to the project. The first president of edX will be Anant Agarwal, director of M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who has led the development of the MITx platform. At Harvard, Dr. Garber will direct the effort, with Michael D. Smith, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, working with faculty members to develop and deliver courses. Eventually, they said, other universities will join them in offering courses on the platform.

...

The edX project will include not only engineering courses, in which computer grading is relatively simple, but also humanities courses, in which essays might be graded through crowd-sourcing, or assessed with natural-language software. Coursera will also offer humanities courses in which grading will be done by peers.



My comment -- sounds good overall, but I want a knowledgeable and committed human being grading the essays and term papers of my children, and I am willing to pay for that.

A similar article was posted in the Boston Globe today, but with a different angle on it:
http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrod...es-all/mvVGOfdCZqIhVLcVBVUVCJ/index.html

I know many will view this development as a threat or impacting their college degree and/or may not agree with me, but I say that it's only good for gifted, especially those who had lacked the money and the physical access/availability to MIT and Harvard, and that it's particularly good for the world at large. It's a big gain for parents who are homeschooling/unschooling their eg/pg kids and pressed for cash. It's a big gain for twice exceptional kid with print disabilities.

Billions of people around the globe are gaining access to the Internet and educational content online. From countries, such as Nepal, that are poorest and least networked in the world to the US, the impact is and will continue to be staggering. Billions of people who never had access or availability to a printed materials are acquiring knowledge and information with digital technology and free/open source materials. One Laptop Per Child is distributing hardware and software around the world. Governments around the world are also distributing hardware and software freely to children. Some, such as Turkey, are making wifi internet freely available and accessible as well.

Imagine billions of children worldwide using free software/open educational resources, and other creative commons content to learn and interact with their family, friends, neighbors, and the world. Imagine poor slum girls in Nepal who would otherwise be illiterate and enslaved or trafficked for money but can now take a course with MIT and Harvard online. Imagine if a future Taylor Wilson - a profoundly gifted kid who is working on nuclear fusion and now advising the Department of Homeland Security - being able to connect with MIT and Harvard professors, who may not otherwise be in a position to do so.
(http://www.worldrecordsacademy.org/...lor_Wilson_sets_world_record_112465.html).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/e...takes-online-education-to-new-level.html
Universities Reshaping Education on the Web
By TAMAR LEWIN
New York Times
July 17, 2012

As part of a seismic shift in online learning that is reshaping higher education, Coursera, a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists, will announce on Tuesday that a dozen major research universities are joining the venture. In the fall, Coursera will offer 100 or more free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners globally.

Even before the expansion, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, the founders of Coursera, said it had registered 680,000 students in 43 courses with its original partners, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.

Now, the partners will include the California Institute of Technology; Duke University; the Georgia Institute of Technology; Johns Hopkins University; Rice University; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Washington; and the University of Virginia, where the debate over online education was cited in last’s month’s ousting — quickly overturned — of its president, Teresa A. Sullivan. Foreign partners include the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Toronto and EPF Lausanne, a technical university in Switzerland.

And some of them will offer credit.

“This is the tsunami,” said Richard A. DeMillo, the director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech. “It’s all so new that everyone’s feeling their way around, but the potential upside for this experiment is so big that it’s hard for me to imagine any large research university that wouldn’t want to be involved.”

Because of technological advances — among them, the greatly improved quality of online delivery platforms, the ability to personalize material and the capacity to analyze huge numbers of student experiences to see which approach works best — MOOCs are likely to be a game-changer, opening higher education to hundreds of millions of people.

...

Very cool and so exciting! Thank you for posting this.

They talked about this on the radio this morning.. University of Illinois is participating but will not be offering college credit.

I took a compilers course @ coursera and loved it. I am enrolled in many more at coursera and udacity. I just enjoyed learning after years !

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303942404577534691028046050.html
Tapping Technology to Keep Lid on Tuition
by David Wessel
Wall Street Journal
July 19, 2012

...

In a carefully crafted, foundation-funded experiment that has received less attention than it deserves, Ithaka S+R, a higher-education think tank, enticed 605 undergraduates at six public-university campuses in New York and Maryland to agree to be assigned randomly to one of two courses. Half took a conventional introductory statistics course that met three hours a week. The other half took a computer-assisted course that met once a week and relied on an interactive, online statistics course developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Online Learning Initiative.

To compare outcomes, researchers had students take a standardized statistics test and a final exam that had some of the same questions.

The statistically sound result: Students in the online course did just as well as those who took the conventional course. No better, no worse.

"The most important single result of our study: It calls into question the position of the skeptic who says, 'I don't want to try this because it will hurt my students,' " says one of the study's architects, William Bowen, a former president of Princeton University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Linda Cooper, a veteran stats professor at Maryland's Towson University who taught a computer-assisted course in the study, was among the skeptics. "I walked away with a much more positive outlook for online courses," she says, as long as they are well designed ("not all are," she notes) and include regular in-person sessions (as opposed to courses taught exclusively online).

She says most students came away with a "deeper understanding" than she had seen in conventional courses, although she found some less-motivated students expected her to cover everything during the one in-person class each week.

Surveys by the researchers found online students spent about 25% less time on the course—both in and out of the classroom and on and off the computer—than the others for the same test results. Online students tended to be less satisfied with the course, perhaps because the Carnegie-Mellon course lacks the entertainment of videogames while in-person professors leaven lectures with jokes and anecdotes.

At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, teacher Bonnie Kegan found one big advantage was the timely feedback the software gave by tracking students' answers to questions posed as they worked through each lesson. "You can drill down and see what questions they're missing," she says.

So how much can this really save? In a back-of-the-envelope calculation, Ithaka researchers estimated that—once the software investment is made—hybrid online courses could cost half what conventional classes do because fewer teachers are needed. That makes professors uneasy: Ms. Cooper, a full-time professor, says it's "definitely a worry." Ms. Kegan, an adjunct, taught twice as many students in the experiment but got twice the pay.

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The report "Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from Randomized Trials" is at http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-p...-universities-evidence-randomized-trials

The reason why tuition keeps going up is because of the massive federal government debt-origination spigot.

Which is the same reason that medical care keeps getting more expensive.

I am thrilled about these courses, but I don't view them as something to replace traditional courses. I heard an NPR interview with Coursera founder, Andrew Ng, who was asked if this would upset parents paying full-price for Stanford. I have one dd who just finished college and one who will graduate next year. I definitely value their education and don't regret the money spent. These courses, though, provide so much more - education to those around the world who can't afford it, distance learning for those in remote areas, and -best of all for our family- options for gifted students. Ds12 (against the rules, unfortunately, since you are supposed to be 13) just took two Computer Science courses, one through Udacity and one through Coursera. We're debating what course he'll do next. He really enjoyed them and learned a lot. What a great option for enrichment!

I keep trying to marshall my thoughts on this one-- but they are all over the map, honestly. What ALISON, MITx, Udacity, and Coursera are offering is not necessarily MOOC in the same sense of the word as the AI experiment last year at Stanford, or the juggernaut of DS106. "Massive" it may be, and "open" (well, at least in terms of enrollment), certainly, but not open-source or student-led. Nor is all of it 'college' coursework. Much of what ALISON has to offer is pretty basic computer skills training. Hardly "collegiate" in the way that most of us think of it.

NONE of the providers have any intention thus far of offering college credit (of any kind) for any of this free online content. I find that quite telling in and of itself. I think that one of the underlying problems here is a lack of validation/credibility. More on that in a moment. (I have a bit of an insider's view having had my DD enrolled in a major online-provider for elementary, middle, and now high school, and having been in on some of the 'ground floor' development for distance learning objectives 1996 through 2003).

More troubling to me personally is the seemingly sly or seductive commodification happening here, under the guise of the "open source" movement. Udacity and Coursera are both for-profit endeavors; neither has anything "open" about it; both have aggressively conventional copyright associated with ALL content. They've both refused to discuss their business plan. With anyone. I find that really troubling.

Pros:

access to pretty much anyone with a high-speed internet connection (which still, in case anyone is counting, leaves the majority of the developing world utterly out in the cold )

access to content which is different/higher level than anything available in remote locations (though again, see note above about high-speed internet)

access to low cost alternatives to enrichment (this seems like a VERY positive thing for EG/PG children and for adults, too, for that matter)

Cons:

see note above about lack of transparency re: business models-- what is fueling this, monetarily, once the venture capital runs out, hmmm?

what if this just leads to repetition for kids that do these courses in high school but... cannot get any kind of 'credit' for having done them??

Coursera has now teamed up with VUE (Pearson.... ahhhhhh, the stories that I could tell about Pearson and assessment...) in order to 'validate' mastery via end-of-course, ON-SITE testing at a 'validated' testing site, run by Pearson. For a modest fee, of course. Of course. This is currently the ONLY real way to 'certification' and even this is fraught with pragmatic problems. There already exist persons whose sole occupation is apparently to take exams for others. Why would this be any different? Answer-- it won't.

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While I love the idea of MOOC for some endeavors (ds106, anyone?? WOWSERS!), I simply do not think that it is valid to draw comparisons between grand experiments like DS106 or AI, with many MATURE participants all learning from one another and conducting an inquiry-led course with undefined objectives and therefore no particular goal-based outcomes (hey-- sounds JUST like a large graduate seminar course!)... to introductory content like the canned instruction offered by S. Khan or elsewhere... (Yeah, something tells me that there is a VERY good reason why introductory calculus isn't taught like "advanced topics" is).

I really have some irritation over the misappropriation of the term MOOC, for starters (because there is nothing "open" about what Udacity and Coursera are doing), and secondly, some angst over the idea that, with respect to foundational material;

a) 'canned' instruction-- of any caliber or from any institution-- is a good substitute for interactive, real-time instruction from even a moderately effective teacher-- for students of any ability...

or that

b) the 'organic/exploratory' approach is an appropriate means of teaching/learning the basics in any discipline. The MOOC is not a viable model for teaching basic skills.


These two highly antithetical approaches (both profoundly incorrect, IMO), are both being termed "MOOC" and offered for free. They have little to do with one another and probably fairly little to do with good formal education to start with. Personal enrichment? Fine. Substitute for good instruction in the basics? Not-so-fine, and that is my problem with this; because that is what seems to be the subtext of all of the cheery press on the subject. Well, not 'all' since there are a fair number of ed bloggers and higher-ed consortiums/thinktanks that seem to be as wary as I feel. It's not just me, in other words. This just isn't a solution to higher ed's cost containment woes. But it's being touted that way, and I think that is deeply unfortunate, since it is ultimately leading to wholly unrealistic expectations that may doom the entire thing to be judged as a 'failure' on that basis.


I should add that I have been horrified that my child's online school has decided that 40 minutes of weekly math instruction is "sufficient" time with a live expert instructor. Yes-- you read that right. In courses through precalculus, no less. Oh, sure, there are canned "video tutorials," (about four minutes each day) and those are (supposedly) sufficient. The subtext is that if you can't get it from that, you're placed inappropriately, or that maybe you should spend time watching MORE canned instruction on youtube or Khan Academy. (HUH?? Maybe if you're lost on some smaller foundational point, a real teacher could ferret that out in a few minutes, whereas you could easily-- as a student, I mean-- spend weeks not knowing why you were going wrong, or where.) What school is this, you might rightly ask? Connections. Yes, the same Connections which was recently snapped up by Pearson. I have nothing but bad things to say about their supposed "expertise" in assessment, by the way. Mostly, it can be summed up with... "Wha??" or "I spent fourteen weeks learning this material, and THIS is what you wanted me to get out of that?? REALLY?" (In the case of the latter, think "What is the fourth word of the Bill of Rights?" Truly that bad. In the former, incomprehensible questions and/or technically incorrect answers or even multiple equally correct answers.) Lowest levels of Bloom's taxonomy, which some of the assessment experts I've spoken to don't even seem to understand when I've expressed concern over this point. So yeah-- certification by Pearson? Puhhleeeeeeeez. My point in sharing that anecdote is to note the natural endpoint of this kind of thinking in action. Sure-- students should "own" their education. Sure. What this really amounts to is that teachers aren't going to actually be interactively teaching kids anymore. Oh well. Good for kids that are complete autodidacts, but honestly, that isn't even most GT kids.

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While we may elect to use MITx for enrichment, I have deep misgivings about Coursera and Udacity; this is not politically motivated. Frankly, I could care less about whether or not a company makes money by providing services, as long as they don't adopt cost-cutting that harms quality and/or price-gouging of students/families. Unfortunately, all of my experience (both as a parent and educator) suggests that is virtually inevitable. At least MITx/Edx is nonprofit, even if I don't see how the model is sustainable.

There is also no way that I'm going to encourage DD to take content that is likely to be duplicated in required college coursework. The reason is that she doesn't tolerate repetition very well.

For some creative, truly MOOC activities, though? Absolutely thrilled with the option (though I doubt that ALISON, Coursera, MITx, or Udacity are going to offer such inquiry-led courses anytime soon).