No doubt some of you also noticed this announcement from Google today regarding its foray into open-source course building tools for education. If you missed the announcement or would like to learn more, you can follow the link below: http://edudemic.com/2012/09/google-course-builder Cheers, Scott.
Continue reading Google Open Source Course Builder Posted in: Blog Café, Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
A Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) is an emerging model for interactive online learning experiences designed to accommodate possibly unlimited numbers of learners who potentially arrive, attend, participate, and leave on their own terms. MOOCs can take advantage of existing social media and gaming environments as platforms to host both formal and informal learning experiences. Opportunity Statement MOOCs are primarily […]
Continue reading Massively Open Online Courses Posted in: Emerging Markets Poll
Post secondary institutes spend too much money developing courses that already exist with other institutes and as MOOC’s. This is a way to reduce duplication and costs and be more efficient taxpayer dollars.
My concern would be how realistic is this? The people who have the ability to design the tools for such a venture are not necessarily the people who actually have the knowledge that needs to be learned. I read an article last semester that brought up this very point. There was no easy way to get the designers and the field experts to collaborate. It seems great in theory
MOOC is an excellent idea for eager students who want to learn and don’t care about receiving credits or diplomas. I like the idea that the students who enrolled at the institution and the “open” students who pay nothing and who will receive no credit can interact and of course that will add variety and different points of view to the class. However too much information (posts) and interaction can be overwhelming for everyone too , and not to mention the workload for the instructor.
I’m very interested to see how MOOCs will progress and what the future will be for these courses, especially now that some institutions are starting to offer credit for certain MOOCs as early as this fall (probably for a fee and some additional assignments so then does that still even qualify as a MOOC?)
MOOC’s are an excellent way to learn from some of the industry’s sought after brains and interested individual across the globe. I am currently taking a MOOC course in Gamification at Coursera and really like the learning experience…
I really like the idea of massively open online courses. Coming from working with underprivileged youths initially I thought this type of course is ideal especially as it can economise on the costs and can be delivered anywhere at anytime. However, now I realise in general in their current this type of course is not for people who do not already have a reasonable educational background and are very self motivated/organised. Furthermore, they need to also have access to the relevant hardware, software and network infrastructure to participate – something usually not available to the target audience whom I used to think this type of initiative would be most beneficial for. That said for the right audience I feel there is huge potential in this domain and the offering available in iTuneU, Khan Academy etc are just in their infancy.
As Doug mentioned I also believe there is room to economise (and improve quality at the same time) on course creation and delivery via this type of initiative.
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David Vogt 8:46 pm on September 12, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
How could anyone, even Google, improve on PowerPoint as a course building tool? 😉
Seriously, Google rarely launches duds, but I’m worried about this one. I’m looking forward to some critical reviews from our MET-resident experts…
jkotler 3:01 am on September 13, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Scott,
Thank you for sharing that link. I actually was unaware that Google was launching a course builder but after reading the article and taking a quick glance at it, I am hesitant that it will offer something better than many other open-source platforms already out there. In any case, I am interested to see what type of response it gets.
teacherben 12:09 am on September 14, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Google has been playing in this sandbox for a bit. GApps integrates well with a number of Learning Management Systems, including Moodle, and last year, they released a product called OpenClass together with Pearson.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/pearson-and-google-jump-into-learning-management-systems/33636
Don;t know how this new course builder fits into the ecosystem, but it wouldn’t be the first time Google has released a number of different products that overlap.
I had a look at it but it looks like I will need a JavaScript refresher to make any use of it–ughh!
Eva Ziemsen 10:06 am on September 20, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Scott, Thanks for sharing. I checked it out. I hope that they refine things to be less tech-heavy. It would be more attractive for someone like myself, who would use this in a heartbeat, but not if it means I need to know HTML or Java, etc. I guess we will see what happens. Eva
melissaayers 7:19 am on October 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for sharing that Scott. I can not see this being too popular with the majority of learning professionals if it potentially requires Javascript and Python skills, these are not something you can just pickup in 5 minutes. Out of curiosity however I joined their Power Searching with Google course to see what it was like. It was very clear, easily to follow and had multiple delivery formats (text & video) for the content which was nice and I have to admit I did learn a few new things 🙂