The Province of British Columbia has a robust (world class) system for credit articulation and transfer, as one can explore through the BC Council on Admissions and Transfer (BCCAT) website and the companion site, BC Transfer Guide. Behind the scenes in all of this work are the councils and committees that make the system work.
One of my colleagues asked me to do a session on MOOCs for the BCCAT JAM session, and I was quite excited (and a little intimidated). I titled the talk “Articulating… MOOCs?”, because I was curious about what the people who, on a day-to-day basis, help students gain credit for their learning experiences were thinking about this topic. The beginning of many conversations I hope!
The slides I used for the talk are here. There were a number of images and links in the presentation – and I wanted to outline and acknowledge them here. This post is not intended to replicate the talk, just provide the links.
Slides 1-3
- Title, Confession and Overview. The photo in slide 2 is of me, taken back in -well, I’m not going to say – during PhD days. That is a 5 metre coal seam, by the way… (that represents a lot of peat in one place for a very, very long time).
Icebreaker questions…. (slide 4)
- Provided some time for table discussion, then gathered some of the questions. The link at the bottom of the slide provides an example of similar kind of brainstorming that took place on the Educause CIO Listserv: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QjEcIxCymm_0qTHC8aL6ziEqr14MnV46gpHu82mC6LY/
MOOC image (slide 5)
- CC-BY Licensed from Mathieu Plourde (University of Delaware); http://www.flickr.com/photos/mathplourde/8620174342/
The best graphic I have seen that captures how vast the MOOC playing field is and where the debates are.
Historical Confluence (1) (slide 6)
- Graphic builds circle-by-circle; it is intended to highlight the historical, cumulative work and forces that have come together.
- I know that not everything is captured here, but I wanted to give the sense that MOOCs – regardless of genre – are building on a significant body of work and aspirations.
Historical Confluence (2) (slide 7)
- MOOCs are building upon/leveraging a platform provided by the body of work and aspirations of many.
With MOOCs, we’ve neither invented nor discovered fire – we’ve found an excellent accelerant (slide 8)
- The photo is of a forest fire burning on the horizon near Quesnel, BC a few summers ago. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitrain/4849618037/ (My photo, cc-licensed)
- I know many of us that have been in this field a while find the MOOC dialogue interesting (in the Canadian sense). It feels like reboot sometimes. However, the appearance of MOOCs has sparked new and intense dialogues about teaching and learning, diverse forms of obtaining credit, open education…
- There were a couple of other photos that I thought of using here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitrain/9028878933/ (who can resist fire-discovering cows?) and http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitrain/7547931848/ (everyone loves a good campfire), but I liked the mood of the forest fire shot.
The Players: Historical Perspective (slide 9)
- Phil Hill, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 47, no. 6 (November/December 2012) http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/online-educational-delivery-models-descriptive-view CC-licensed image, Figure 3 in the paper
- In another figure in that paper, Phil Hill takes the history back a bit further (this one starts at 2008). Illustrates major branches in the MOOC family, as well four key challenges.
- FYI – I stood off to the left of this slide to represent where some of the earliest roots were…
Tracking MOOCs (slide 10)
- MOOC map – http://edutechnica.com/moocmap/
- mooc.ca – http://www.mooc.ca/providers.htm
- MOOCs, A short history – http://listedtech.com/content/moocs-short-history
- See Also: MOOCs and the Gartner Hype Cycle: A very slow tsunami http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/13/moocs-and-the-gartner-hype-cycle-a-very-slow-tsunami/
- Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Major-Players-in-the-MOOC/138817/
Key Challenge: Patterns of Course Completion (slide 11)
- MOOCs challenge traditional assumptions about success/completion (student motivational differences)
http://mfeldstein.com/combining-mooc-student-patterns-graphic-stanford-analysis/ - Additional reference – forgot to include in the slides but mentioned this: Deconstructing Disengagement: Analyzing Learner Subpopulations in Massive Open Online Courses (Kizilcec, Piech and Schneider, Stanford University, LAK 2013 Conference) http://www.stanford.edu/~cpiech/bio/papers/deconstructingDisengagement.pdf)
Interesting developments (1) (slide 12)
- Rise of certificates/badges
- Coursera Signature Track (http://blog.coursera.org/post/40080531667/signaturetrack and https://www.coursera.org/signature/guidebook)
- edX verified certificate (https://www.edx.org/verified-certificate)
- degreed.com (jail-breaking a degree) http://degreed.com
- Course sequences
- Wharton (Coursera) – MBA foundations online (http://blog.coursera.org/post/60889088289/the-wharton-foundation-series)
- MITs Xseries sequences (MOOC “Minors”) on edX https://www.edx.org/alert/mitx-introduces-xseries-course/1137
- Georgia Tech low cost online Masters in Computer Science, offered through Udacity, in collaboration with AT&T https://www.udacity.com/georgiatech
Interesting developments (2) (slide 13)
- Diverse partnerships
- edX (non-profit)
- Small number of institutions
- Open edX – e.g., Google, Stanford (open source, connection with OLI) http://code.edx.org and http://online.stanford.edu/openedx
- Services (China and others)
https://www.edx.org/alert/edx-open-source-platform-chosen/1188
- Coursera (for profit)
- Global Partners (https://www.coursera.org/partners/global), State Systems (https://www.coursera.org/partners/state)
- World Bank, National Geographic
- Learning Hubs (US State Department) – http://blog.coursera.org/post/65596539008/introducing-coursera-learning-hubs-global
- Professional development for Teachers http://blog.coursera.org/post/49331574337/coursera-announces-professional-development-courses-to
- ACE credit, Dino 101 (links below)
- edX (non-profit)
Iterating towards acceptability (1) (slide 14)
- Bit of a play on words – wanted to have a highlight “acceptability” – from a credit perspective.
- Drew attention to the photo – what is off? Need for attention to detail (like any articulation process)
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitrain/10662492193/
Iterating towards acceptability (2) (slide 15)
- Image flipped to “correct” perspective
Example: ACE Credit & Coursera (slide 16)
- See ACE website: http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/ACE-to-Assess-Potential-of-MOOCs-Evaluate-Courses-for-Credit-Worthiness.aspx
- Coursera website: http://blog.coursera.org/post/42486198362/five-courses-receive-college-credit-recommendations and https://www.coursera.org/signature/college-credit-guidebook
Close to Home Example: University of Alberta: DINO 101 (slide 17)
- http://uofa.ualberta.ca/dino101
- Can be taken as a course or MOOC
- Univ of Alberta will provide materials to students to facilitate transfer of credit (but up to institution)
New Player on the Scene (slide 18)
Questions (slide 19)
MOOC Image/Theatre Poster 1: slide 20)
- Image and quote from Giulia Forsythe (Brock University)
The best thing to come out of the MOOC phenomenon is that people are talking about teaching, instructional strategies, and assessment. Lots of people.
(Giulia Forsythe), http://gforsythe.ca/nothing-can-stop-it/; cc-licensed image http://www.flickr.com/photos/gforsythe/8028605773/
MOOC Image/Theatre Poster 2 (Gratuitous fun ending) (slide 21)
- Michael Branson Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
- http://www.michaelbransonsmith.net/blog/2012/12/19/day-of-the-mooc-now-animated/
There you have it!