The Khan Academy -- on the Internet or a LAN near you

The Khan Academy began when hedge fund analyst Sal Khan started posting short, conversational videos on YouTube to help his cousin with her math class. The videos went viral. Today there are 23 courses in math, 7 in science, 4 in economics and finance, 25 in the arts and humanities, 3 in computing and preparation for 8 tests like the SAT along with content from 25 high-profile partners.

The Khan Academy is a non-profit organization that promises to provide a world-class education that is "free for everyone forever," and their open source software is available on GitHub. Over 39 million "learners" have used the material and it is being translated into 40 languages.

As shown below, the courses are comprised of fine-grained modules focused on a single concept and each module includes a test of mastery. The modules are arranged hierarchically, and a student has not completed the course until he or she has mastered a module -- they encourage experimentation and failure, but expect mastery. (Getting a C in a typical college course means the student understood only about half of the material and will do poorly in classes for which the course is a prerequisite -- an effect that compounds throughout college and into the workplace).

Portion of the beginning arithmetic course knowledge graph

In addition to the teaching content, the Khan Academy software presents a "dashboard" that enables a teacher, parent or other "coach" to monitor the progress of a student or class. The red bar shown in the dashboard view below indicates that a student is stuck on a given concept. The teacher can then help him or her or, better yet, have a student who has already mastered the concept tutor the one who is stuck. (Research shows that the tutor will benefit as well as the tutee -- "to teach is to learn twice").

Dashboard with fine-grained progress reports

The dashboard enables a coach to adapt to the strengths and weaknesses of each student and spot learning gaps. They understand that students may be blocked by one simple concept, and sprint ahead once it is mastered. (I recall sitting in freshman calculus class, and being totally lost for half the term, until I figured out what the teacher meant when he said "is a function of" and the class snapped into focus).

Confusion on a single concept "blocked" this student.

The third major component facilitates community discussion among the students taking a given class, allowing for questions, answers, comments and tips & thanks.

Tracking student participation in the course community

But, what if you don't have Internet access?

Learning Equality grew out of a project to port the Khan Academy software to a local area network at the University of California at San Diego. Their version, KA-Lite, can be customized for an individual learner, classroom or school running on a Linux, Mac or Windows PC as small as a $35 Raspberry Pi.

KA-Lite is three years old and has been used in 160 nations by over 2 million learners from above the Arctic Circle to the tip of Chile and translations are under way into 17 languages. The following shows organizations that are deploying it and installations.

There is an interactive version of this map online.

To learn more, visit their Web site and contribute to their Indiegogo campaign.

See this companion post on MIT's Open Courseware, which is also available off line.

For the history, pedagogical philosophy, accomplishments and future of the Khan Academy along with a video collage showing examples of their content, see this 20-minute talk by Sal Khan:

Innovations in vocational education and certification

Certification options from Coursera and the California Community Colleges

MOOCs are often used for vocational training rather than a traditional college degree and Coursera has launched six "Coursera Specializations" for vocational training.

A Coursera Specialization requires completion of a group of related courses followed by a capstone project. A Specializations consists of several online courses, developed at universities, leading up to a real capstone project/case study developed by a company in the relevant industry.

For example, the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and Instagram have collaborated on an interaction design Specialization. UCSD will provide six MOOC-format courses and the capstone project will come from Instagram.

Students can still take the courses for free, but they will not receive a certification of completion and will not be allowed to do the capstone project. Students wishing to complete the capstone and receive a certificate of completion will pay a tuition of $343.

A sample Specialization completion certificate

Another approach to vocational education is being taken by the California Community Colleges, which are proposing fifteen vocationally-oriented bachelors degrees. For comparison with Coursera, consider this proposal for an interaction design degree from Santa Monica College (SMC).

The SMC interaction design curriculum

The SMC program would take longer to complete and would cost more in terms of tuition and opportunity cost, but it covers more ground and is taught face-to-face.

These are interesting, innovative times for vocational education. Hiring practices and societal values will eventually determine the winners, but for now, how would you advise a young person who wanted to become an interaction designer?

Learning in an Introductory Physics MOOC: All Cohorts Learn Equally, Including an On-Campus Class

Researchers from MIT, Harvard and Tsinghua University in China have published a study analyzing learning in a Newtonian Mechanics MOOC offered by edX.

The class was intended for students familiar with the topic at a high school level. Approximately 17,000 people signed-up, but, as is typical in MOOCs, most were browsers. Only the 1,080 students who attempted more than 50% of the questions in the course were included in this study.

They looked at pre-post test improvement for several student cohorts based on previous education level and math and physics background. There was also a cohort of high school physics teachers.

Obviously, students in some cohorts did better on the average than those in other cohorts, but normalized gain for the various cohorts was about the same. They state that "there was no evidence that cohorts with low initial ability learned less than the other cohorts," which "should allay concerns that less well prepared students can’t learn in MOOCs."

Furthermore, the MOOC students learned at a similar rate to MIT students who had taken the on-campus version of a similar course. The on-campus students had four hours of small-group, flipped classroom instruction each week, staff office hours, helpful fellow students and access to physics tutors the MIT library. In spite of those resources, they were surprised to find no evidence of positive, weekly relative improvement of on-campus students compared with MOOC students.

Bear in mind that even the students who had less than a high school education and were relatively unprepared in math were motivated to complete the MOOC -- they were not typical low-performing students. Still, this is the sort of research we can look forward to seeing as we study innovation in Internet-based education.

Harvard and MIT release data on 641,139 MOOC student/course enrollments

This illustrates the difference between a university based program and a commercial enterprise

In the early days of the Internet, the National Science Foundation, which operated the major global backbone, NSFNET, had an acceptable-use policy (AUP) stipulating that the Net was to be used for teaching and research only, not commercial applications. The AUP led to an academic culture that encouraged and rewarded research and sharing.

In that tradition, MIT and Harvard have published data on 16 HarvardX and MITx courses offered during the 2012-13 academic year. The release includes a 20-column, 641,139-row CSV file ready to open with a spreadsheet or other statistical analysis program along with several papers analyzing the data and describing their method of hiding the identity of the students taking the courses.

Download the data and and analyze away -- and don't forget to share your results as a comment on the database download page.

Outline of a system for asking, answering and discussing student and teacher questions

I give my students weekly quizzes to focus their studying on key skills and concepts and to encourage them to keep up with the class. The quizzes typically have 7-9 questions and a typical answer is a couple of words or sentences.

After they take a quiz, I post it online so, by the end of the term, they have all the questions. I refuse to give the students answers (that drives some of them nuts), but am willing to discuss the questions and encourage them to discuss them among themselves. (I curve grades relative to the top person in the class, so helping another student does not hurt one's grade).

Each semester, an enterprising student sets up a forum for collectively answering the questions -- perhaps on a blog with a post and comments for each question or, more likely, as a shared Google doc.

I like that because it provides an example of a student assuming leadership and illustrates the use of the Internet to facilitate collaboration, but I very much dislike the focus it puts on memorizing the "right" answer rather than discussion and explanation and, more important, raising new questions.

A blog or shared document with comments or a vanilla threaded discussion, allows for questions and discussion, but the students take the easy way out and pretty much focus on a single answer, period. (I find that the first answer someone posts is usually accepted without question or discussion, even if it is incorrect).

So, I would like a collaborative system that encouraged discussion and questioning. What might that look like?

I would seed the discussions with the sorts of weekly quiz questions I currently give and students could respond by suggesting an answer or asking a related question. A simple answer would not suffice -- it would have to be supported by a brief explanation and/or a link to its source. The system would present the student with a simple answer submission form (with all fields required):

There would also be a mechanism for the other students to evaluate the answer and its explanation. A simple mechanism like a "Thumbs Up" button would encourage voting, but is somewhat superficial and easily gamed (though one might detect that through statistical analysis -- or at least tell the students you could :-). More elaborate systems in which students have to fill out a simple form in order to vote for an answer would also be possible. That would discourage thoughtless voting and also provide more fine-grained data for determining the value of an answer, but would discourage voting.

The system should allow the teacher to customize the answer-evaluation mechanism and to allow or disallow anonymous contributions.

More important than answering questions, students should have a mechanism for posing questions. (Our education system focuses on getting correct answers to questions, but raising questions and seeking satisfactory answers is a more valuable skill -- life is not a series of multiple choice exams).

The same answer-submission form would be used for a question asked by a student as one asked by the teacher.

In addition, there should be a means of evaluating a question -- again, ranging from a simple "Thumbs Up" to a short form.

In addition to student evaluation of answers and questions, the system should be instrumented to give the teacher feedback on what is working and what is not and for (optional) use in grading. (Like it or not, grades are the primary motivation for most students). The teacher should also have the option of sharing those statistics with the students or keeping them hidden.

Well, that is a rough sketch of the question discussion and answering system I would like to have. The closest thing I have seen is Stack Overflow, where users post technical programming questions, answers are voted up or down and a contributor's reputation is a function of the ratings of his or her answers over time -- perhaps that could be a starting point for implementing what I've outlined here. In the meantime, I plan to take a look at QSQA, an open source question answering system that I may be able to use for my class. Has anyone reading this post used it?

Udacity drops free certificates in their shift toward lifelong vocational education -- universities should pay attention

Udacity has continued with its shift of focus toward lifelong vocational education by phasing out certificates of free courseware completion. The courseware will still be available free, but a certificate will require interaction with "coaches," projects and testing.

The certified course model is explained here and they are offering courses in three certified tracks for now: Data Science, Web Development the Georgia Tech Masters in CS.

Udacity is not trying to compete with universities by offering the equivalent of a college education at a lower price -- they are doing something more subversive -- trying to alter the vocational certification process.

The reason most students go to college is to get a job or get a better job -- what do employers look for in making hiring decisions and will that change in the future?

Consider Google -- here is an excerpt from an interview of Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google:

Q. Other insights from the data you’ve gathered about Google employees?

A. One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.

What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.

Q. Can you elaborate a bit more on the lack of correlation?

A. After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different. You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently.

Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it’s much more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.

Maybe Udacity is on to something universities should pay attention to. If Udacity is right, what does that imply for undergraduate education? For research universities?
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Update
4/23/2014

Sal Khan published a book, The One World Schoolhouse on his educational philosophy and strategy. Here is an interview on the book and the future of the Khan Academy. His view of certification -- of signaling competence -- is not unlike that of Udacity.

Innovative online courses from World Science University

I have claimed that we would see innovation in educational pedagogy and technology as a result of the feasibility and interest in MOOCs and modular courseware.

Well, I just saw a post by Lauren Weinstein in which he linked to a good example, World Science University (WSU). So far, there is not much there, but what is, is indeed innovative. I've watched part of a course on special relativity and here are some of the innovations.

There are three levels of granularity. The first level is like an FAQ on the topic. The teacher, PBS Nova host Brian Greene, poses questions then answers them. The second level is a no-math short course -- eight or nine hours of self-paced material with no math or homework. The third level is an 8-10 week college-level course with math.

Greene uses a TV-like lecture style. He is not a talking head or a voice behind a screen presentation, but an animated lecturer moving around on a stage -- like a TED talk. The lectures are tightly scripted, shot with multiple cameras and edited like polished TV video.

The user interface features a five-dimension timeline, showing the video lectures, demonstrations, (threaded) discussion, office hours and reviews. It is displayed below the video and can be toggled on and off.

Greene uses two large interactive displays. He can write and draw on the displays -- as one would on a whiteboard. He also uses them to display animations and to interact with programmed demonstrations and simulations.

The lecture segments are interspersed with review videos. In addition to multiple choice questions, the review might have Greene asking, then answering, a significant question or giving a summary of the previous video lecture.

The students can run the demonstrations themselves. For example, during a lecture on experiments to demonstrate that the speed of light is constant, Greene interacts with a binary star simulation. After watching Greene run the simulation, the student can link to and run it themselves.

I've only watched part of one course -- a short course on special relativity -- and found it impressive. It was a better learning experience than sitting back and watching a Nova program, but just as accessible.

So far, WSU has produced hundreds of answers to "FAQ" questions, three physics short courses and three university level physics courses. They are working on biology.

But, can it scale? The production cost and quality are high. (Some of the animations I saw were repurposed from Greene's PBS Nova production "The Fabric of the Cosmos"). Greene is an experienced, dynamic lecturer and author -- can they find other lecturers as good as he is? WSU is a .com -- do they have a viable business model?

Well, I for one hope it scales and prospers -- the course I've been taking is terrific.

Here is Greene's preliminary description of WSU:

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Short MOOCs -- departing from the university course format

When World's Collide is a University of Leeds MOOC on environmental policy. Even if you are not interested in the topic, check out the format:

The first applications of new media -- books, movies, television, radio, textbooks -- often mimic previous media. Early MOOCs emulated university classes.

But, most people who take MOOCs are not interested in emulating a university class or getting university credit.

Netflix deviated from the standard format TV format with their 13 hour drama House of Cards and The University of Leeds has departed from the university course format in this 8-hour short course.

What other forms will the MOOC take?

PCAST report and recommendations on MOOCS

Last year, PCAST, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, turned their attention to smart radio technology and spectrum sharing and their work yielded an executive order on the sharing of federal spectrum.

Now they have issued a short report with recomendations on MOOCs.

The report states that they are interested in MOOCs because:

MOOCs offer something different from radio, video, and even Internet courses of the past. Improvements in bandwidth and software innovations have enabled enormous improvement in the speed and quality of communication among large numbers of students and between students and teachers.

They continue with a concise, documented survey of MOOC developments (in the US), and discussion of the possible benefits from MOOCs and the criticisms that have been leveled against them.

They conclude with three recommendations:

• Let market forces decide which innovations in online teaching and learning are best.
• Encourage accrediting bodies to be flexible in response to educational innovation.
• Support research and the sharing of results on effective teaching and learning.

Their faith that the market will do the right thing got my attention -- is there no proactive role for the government in this? Would we have the Internet today if it were not for the government's role in developing the ARPANet and seeding connectivity with NSFNet?

I'd also be a bit worried that flexibility in accrediting might mean lower standards, but, in this case, I think market forces -- the job market -- will trump credit. College students will pay for training that leads to jobs.
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Update 12/20/2013

PCAT has published a MOOC Hierarchy:

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Update 12/20/2013

PCAT has published an infographic Harnessing Technology for Higher Education.

Thrun shifts Udacity toward lifelong vocational education

You will want to read this article on Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, the man who popularized MOOCs with his 2011 artifical intelligence class.

He has abandoned the goal of bringing conventional college courses to low performing students in developed and developing countries, and pivoted toward vocational education.

The switch was motivated by the poor results of San Jose State University students who used Udacity material rather than conventional textbooks in "flipped" classrooms. The results left Thrun dissilusioned -- "I'd aspired to give people a profound education--to teach them something substantial, but the data was at odds with this idea."

Thrun himself prepared the material for an introductory statistics course to be used at San Jose State. He did his best, stating that "From a pedagogical perspective, it was the best I could have done -- It was a good class."

But the students did poorly and Thrun concluded that they had a "lousy product."

I think Thrun's elite background led him down a garden path. Any San Jose State professor who had taught an introduction to statistics could have told him that many (most?) of his students would not have basic arithmetic skills and would "hate math." They are not Stanford students.

His response to this experience is to focus on industrial education, stating that "At the end of the day, the true value proposition of education is employment." As such they are developing an AT&T-sponsored masters degree at Georgia Tech and training material for developers.

Thrun's revelation has produced a sense of schadenfreude among some academics, who were happy to say "we told you so" and perhaps breathe a sigh of relief that their jobs will remain secure.

But, even if many college courses are best taught in a conventional classroom or in a flipped class with a conventional textbook, those jobs may still be in danger. If Thrun is right about industrial education -- jobs -- being the true value of education, we may see more and more students foregoing college altogether for offerings like Thrun's.

Those San Jose students want jobs and they are increasingly aware of the rising direct cost and opportunity cost of a college degree.

When speaking of his five-year old son, Thrun reveals his vision of the future of education, saying "I hope he can hit the workforce relatively early and engage in lifelong education -- I wish to do away with the idea of spending one big chunk of time learning."

Udacity has already moved into workforce training, and I think they have been working on lifelong learning all along.
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Update 11/30/2013
There is a long discussion of this post on Slashdot.
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Update 3/25/2014

As Udacity moves away from university education, Coursera hires a university administrator as CEO -- Richard C. Levin, who was president of Yale University for 20 years. No one seems to have figured out the university-course business model, but Levin's international experience indicates that he sees a global market -- for students and teachers.

Bill Gates talk to community college leaders

Earlier this month, Bill Gates addressed the Leadership Congress of the Association of Community College Trustees.

He described a few of the projects they have funded -- flipped classrooms, using MOOCs and other material:

We don’t have to have 20 different people in a large urban area all giving a lecture in the same introductory course. We can get the greatest lecturers in the English-speaking world, every student can listen to them – and the instructors who used to spend their time preparing and delivering lectures can become 21st century community college instructors.

This implies a different, but important role for instructors:

These instructors are gifted at relating to students, running small group learning sessions, and matching up students with the best resources available – the best lectures, the best problem sets, the best assessments. They have more time to get to know the students, explain difficult concepts, and trouble-shoot when students aren’t thriving. They are the architects and motivators of learning.

The smart use of technology doesn’t replace faculty – it redeploys them, to the benefit of the students.

Gates emphasized remedial classes and his funding of the Khan Academy seems like a good fit for the approach outlined in this talk. You can read a transcript of his presentation or watch this video:

MOOC competition is heating up -- two European MOOC providers are going live

I discussed the global nature of online education in an earlier post. While MOOCs started in the US, and US companies and universities have offered the majority of classes to date, online education will be a global market for providers as well as students.

Two European MOOC providers, iversity and Futurelearn, are going live this month. The first course offered by Futurelearn, a coalition of UK universities, starts October 21. It is an ecology course called "Fairness and nature: When worlds collide" and it will only last two weeks. I will enroll to get a look at the Futurelearn delivery platform.

Iversity began with a scholarship from the German Federal Ministry of Science and Technology and is now venture funded. They will be offering MOOCs by university professors from around the world and are launching with six courses this month. Their course promotion videos are innovative, for example, combining video and graphics and using 3D video, as shown below. I want to keep an eye on their platform as well.

Gallup poll on traditional versus online education in the U.S.

During the first week of October, Gallup polled U. S. adults on their opinion of online education. in the U. S.

They found that online education was rated as better than traditional education at providing value and a variety of courses. On the other hand, the respondents see student success as more likely in traditional classes. They also rate traditional classes as better at individualized instruction and delivering high-quality instruction from well-qualified instructors. They see traditional classes as more likely to have rigorous testing and grading that can be trusted, which correlates with a belief that they are more likely to be viewed positively by employers. Here is a summary of the results:

The survey was done over the phone (50% cell and 50% landline) and the results are weighted in proportion to U. S. demographics. Gallup says they are 95% confident that the results are within +/- four percent.

Five percent said they were currently taking an online course and they tended to be relatively young and focused on school work as opposed to job skills or recreation.

These results are indicative of general public opinion, which may give some insight into the future of public funding for online education as well as its worth in the job market, but I wish they would survey people who have recently or are currently taking a class online -- asking what they were taking, why they took it, whether it was massive, open, a traditional college class online, etc.

For this survey, I have the impression that many of the people who were taking online classes did so as part of a degree program, but that is not made clear. I hope Gallup will follow up with surveys of online students.

Globalization of MOOCs: Futurelearn announces first courses

When you think of MOOCs, edX, Coursera and Udacity come to mind, but global online education is taking off.

Futurelearn, a coalition of 20 UK and international universities, the British Museum, British Library and British Council, has just launched with 20 courses starting this fall and winter. The courses are 6 or 7 weeks long and require 2 or 3 hours per week.

I checked out their "beta" Web site and few things caught my attention.

Their slogan is "Learning for life," indicating a focus on students who are not seeking credit and degrees. That audience may turn out to be more important than traditional university students -- more lucrative and more beneficial to society.

They also show interest in training for job-related skills. One of the initial courses is Dental photography in practice.

Their tagline is Enjoy free online courses from leading UK and international universities, indicating a global focus. In addition to international universities, they will be serving international students. One of their partners is The British Council, the UK international cultural organization, which offers classes (online and off) and arranges cultural and educational exchanges and events. The British Council has offices in 116 nations and they will no doubt help with marketing and spreading the word.

Futurelearn is later to the game than the big three U. S. MOOC providers, but the game is just beginning -- the technology, pedagogy and place in society of online education are all changing rapidly. Furthermore, FutureLearn is a private company wholly owned by the Open University, which has been doing distance education (online and off) since 1971.

I've enrolled in a course and am anxious to see their platform and pedagogy. Stay tuned.

MOOCs, BOOCs, DOCCs and SPOCs

If you do not agree that we are in the midst of an explosion in educational innovation, check this blog post by Daniel Hickey.

We all know that MOOC is a massive open online course, but do you know what a BOOC is? A DOCC? A SPOC?

The post contains links to examples of links to each. (Well, no links to SPOCs).

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Update 9/17/2013

+Mark Vickers added OLAs to the acronym list, but OLAs -- OnLine Activities -- sound a lot like learning modules, which I and many others (most successfully the Khan Academy) have used for years.

Google and edX combine their strengths to form mooc.org

In previous posts, I've said universities and university systems (like mine) could host open source MOOC platforms from Google and MIT edX, allowing faculty and others to experiment with innovative educational technology -- to develop focused instructional modules to supplement their own courses or complete MOOCs.

Better yet, I've suggested that Google could offer a hosted service where individuals could do the same without support of their university -- a "YouTube" for MOOCs and modular teaching material.

It looks like we are moving in the direction of the second suggestion. Google and edX announce today that they will be collaborating on MOOC.org.

The service is slated to be available in mid 2014, and it sounds as though a lot of the details (including revenue sources) are yet to be decided, but open software, open data and collaboration are clear values of this non-profit entity.

You can read more in a Google blog post and an MIT press release. Here are a couple of quotes from each along with some parenthesized comments:

Google blog post

We support the development of a diverse education ecosystem, as learning expands in the online world. Part of that means that educational institutions should easily be able to bring their content online and manage their relationships with their students. (I hope they support individual teachers, students and non-academics who want to develop teaching material in addition to supporting educational institutions).

Today, Google will begin working with edX as a contributor to the open source platform, Open edX. (It sounds as though the edX and Google platforms will be combined. Some time ago, Stanford also rolled their MOOC effort into edX. Perhaps competition from Udacity and Coursera has been a factor in driving this consolidation.)

edX press release:

In collaboration with Google, edX will build out and operate MOOC.org, a new site for non-xConsortium universities, institutions, businesses, governments and teachers to build and host their courses for a global audience. (This sounds like "EdX for the rest of us" -- those who cannot afford edX fees and are not at elite universities).

Google shares our mission to improve learning both on-campus and online. Working with Google's world-class engineers and technology will enable us to advance online, on-campus and blended learning experiences faster and more effectively than ever before ... This new site for online learning will provide a platform for colleges, universities, businesses and individuals around the world to produce high-quality online and blended courses. MOOC.org will be built on Google infrastructure. (It sounds like Google is bringing their Hangout, Live Stream, YouTube, Plus, etc. infrastructure to the party).

The devil is, no doubt, in the details, but this combination of MIT's educational expertise and reputation, Google's vast infrastructure and the lofty goals of both organizations might turn out to be revolutionary.

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Update 9/18/2013

Mooc.org announced that they would be offering certified multi-course sequences as well as single courses. Do you think that this sort of thing might become more important than a traditional college degree in the job market? If so, for what sorts of jobs?

While I am glad to see them move in this direction, I also hope they make room for creating and discovering sub-course modules on focused topics. (I am a long-time modular teaching material nut).

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Update 11/4/2013

Stanford, which had committed to the edX platform some time ago, has announced additional support.
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Uppdate 12/1/2013

There is a discussion of this post on Slashdot.
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Update 12/16/2013

EdX drops plans to match students with potential employers. In a failed trial -- they tried to match 868 high-performing students with job openings and none got a job -- they ran into competition from traditional headhunters and codified hiring criteria in HR departments. They are considering other revenue generating options like licensing courses to universities and other types of organization (sounds a bit like the shift toward vocational training at Udacity) and hosting and supporting their open source course delivery platform. If they were to pursue the latter option, how would that impact their collaboration with Google at Mooc.org?

Reflections on teaching a freshman composition MOOC at Georgia Tech

Karen Head has written a series of blog posts on a Freshman Composition MOOC she and her Georgia Tech colleagues (a team of 19) taught using the Coursera platform with support from the Gates Foundation. (The course name, composition, reflects the legacy of a course catalog -- this was a course on written, visual and oral communication).

Anyone thinking of teaching a MOOC (in any subject area) should read these columns. They are an open minded presentation -- the good and the bad. One is left with the feeling that today's Coursera platform is not up to the task of teaching a MOOC on a topic that requires substantive, subjective feedback on student work. That's the bad news. The good news is that we are at the start of a period of innovation and Dr Head and her colleagues learned a lot from the experience that will improve their classroom teaching. She says she is glad she engaged in the process, stating that "It is important, I think, to be part of things rather than only yelling from the sidelines (no matter which side you support)."

The following are quotes from the blog posts, with a few parenthetical remarks I added. (I hope I found all the posts).

Here a MOOC, There a MOOC: But Will It Work for Freshman Composition?
January 24, 2013

I am no Luddite. However, I will admit to some reservations about whether a MOOC is the ideal platform for teaching writing. I have argued passionately for keeping composition classes small. Ultimately, I decided to pilot this MOOC because I am open to the possibilities, but I prefer to discover firsthand whether it works.

A representative from Coursera (the platform we must use) contacted recipients of the Gates MOOC grants asking all the recipients to form a collaborative led by a Coursera representative to discuss course design. While the explicit message was one of helpfulness, the implicit message felt intrusive and seemed more about Coursera’s desire to ensure a certain continuity of experience for its users. Since Coursera is a business, I can understand its desire for such consistency. However, ours is a nonprofit project. This creates an obvious tension. (Like the "suits" -- network executives -- who sensor and tamper with creative decisions in a movie or television production).

Of MOOCs and Mousetraps
February 21, 2013

From the beginning we have had logistical issues getting a large group together on a regular basis. After only three meetings, we decided to break into two main subgroups: one focusing on curricular decisions and the other on technical ones.

Collaboration is an important element, and since my last post, the instructional designers of three other MOOCs devoted to introductory composition have joined us to create a consortium to discuss best practices. Those MOOCs will also be offered this spring. Our discussions have highlighted our biggest challenge—finding an experienced MOOC instructional designer, or at least a platform specialist.

Sweating the Details of a MOOC in Progress
April 3, 2013

Our consortium’s members collectively decided to add intention statements to our syllabi, stating that our courses are not equivalent to a semester-long college-composition course. The main reason for that decision is not that we believe our courses have inferior content but that there is simply no way to adequately evaluate the writing of thousands of students—something we would need to be able to do to certify their work.

My first video, which advertises the course, took more than an hour to record. It will run approximately three minutes in edited form.

Massive Open Online Adventure -- Teaching a MOOC is not for the faint-hearted (or the untenured)
April 29, 2013

[machine-grading technologies] remain unable to provide substantive evaluation, and I recommend that those who want to learn more on the subject look into the extensive research done by Les Perelman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While it hasn't been smooth sailing, I still see this as an important adventure. I already see the potential for MOOCs to provide certain supplemental content for my traditional classes, freeing me to do more of the work that only I can do with students. This form of a hybrid classroom excites me very much.

Inside a MOOC in Progress
June 21, 2013

It is exciting to see students forming communities within the discussion forums, to help one another with questions about content or technology. Our more ambitious students have developed study guides. Some self-identified writing-and-communication instructors have formed their own forum, to consider how they can use our course to teach their own students.

The most rewarding aspect of the course is the weekly “Hangout” session, live-streamed using Google Air.

... students (with limited and expensive Internet access) have complained about not being able to complete in-video quizzes when they download the lecture videos. (Those of us with experience of the Internet in developing nations would have predicted this).

My limited ability to make key pedagogical choices is the most frustrating aspect of teaching a MOOC. Because of the way the Coursera platform is constructed, such wide-ranging decisions have been hard-coded into the software—decisions that seem to have no educational rationale and that thwart the intent of our course. (The restrictions she describes regard problems with peer review).

Lessons Learned From a Freshman-Composition MOOC
September 6, 2013, 11:58 am

If we define success by the raw numbers, then I would probably say No, the course was not a success ... only 238 students received a completion certificate—meaning that they completed all assignments and received satisfactory scores.

... if we define success by lessons learned in designing and presenting the course, I would say Yes, it was a success. From a pedagogical perspective, nobody on our team will ever approach course design in the same way. We are especially interested in integrating new technologies into our traditional classes for a more hybrid approach.

With that said, I don’t think any of us (writing and communication instructors) would rush to teach another MOOC soon.

If we define success by a true and complete “open” course, I would say No, the course was not a success. I have major concerns about access and privacy in a MOOC format. In many situations, “free” simply isn’t free.

Our MOOC has ended, but a larger, more positive conversation is just beginning.

(Earlier posts about MOOCs).

San Jose State and Udacity release results for summer pilot courses

San Jose State University (SJSU) and Udacity have run two rounds of trial online courses. The pass rates in the first round were poor, but a press release from SJSU and a blog post from Udacity report improvement in the second trial, which was run this summer.

As you see, the pass rates were better in the summer than the spring for every class and the online students in two of the summer classes had higher pass rates than on-campus students.

Both Udacity and SJSU say they are "encouraged" by these results, but there were differences between the terms that confound the data and make it difficult to explain, say, the improvement in elementary statistics or the poor results in entry level math. The three courses that had been offered in the spring were revised, but the numbers of students in the classes and their backgrounds and motivations were also substantially different.

For example, the spring classes were relatively small and the students were all trying to earn credit. In the summer, there were more students and their motivations varied, as shown here:

This is not surprising. I have noted earlier that college credit motivates relatively few MOOC students and, in fact, non-credit students may turn out to be the most important audience for and customers of online classes.

The results of this trial are far from definitive, but this is a time of rapid innovation and such experiments are to be encouraged.

Speaking of innovation, I cannot bring myself to conclude this note without pointing out that "passing with a grade of C" seems like a poor metric for "success" in a course. That is the traditional university criteria, but the Internet gives us the ability to break courses into fine-grained modules and to provide more precise, informative measures of success.
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Update 9/12/2013

San Jose State has released a report on the Udacity experiment entitled "Preliminary Summary SJSU+ Augmented Online Learning Environment." The report author is not the preliminary investigator for the study, Elaine D. Collins, but was written "for" her by consultants at the RP Group.

It is reviewed in two posts:

1. Chronicle of Higher Education, "Few Surprises in NSF Report on San Jose State U. Test of Udacity Courses article"

2. Inside Higher Ed, "After weeks of delays, San Jose State U. releases research report on online courses"
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Update 11/18/2013

The academic senate at San Jose State is considering a resolution to restrict the power of the administration to unilaterally enter into course contracts -- to keep control with the academic departments.

The Academic Senate is expected to vote on Monday on a proposed policy that would forbid the university to sign contracts with outside technology providers without the approval of tenured and tenure-track faculty members in whatever department would be affected.

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Update 11/25/2013

The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed two leaders on opposite sides of the MOOC debate at San Jose State and they discover common ground. Anti-MOOC professor Peter Hadreas learned that pro-MOOC professor Khosrow Ghadiri has been using MOOC material to run a flipped class -- not merely having students enroll in a MOOC -- and that it is very labor intensive, taking 80 hours per week. They agree that pedagogical innovation and experiments are good things.

I also noted that one of the professors is an engineer and one is a philosopher. Can you guess which is which? Which do you think spends 80 hours per week on his teaching?

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Update 12/13/2013

Georgia Tech designs its Udacity pilot to avoid failure. They distance the themselves from Udacity's debacle at San Jose State University.
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Update 12/18/2013

San Jose State will resume their testing of the material developed for three online courses -- Elementary Statistics, Introduction to Programming and General Psychology in the spring semester. Enrollment will be capped at 70 students for the statistics class, 150 students for the programming course and 35 students for the general psychology class. At least half of the seats for programming and statistics will go to SJSU students and the rest will go to CSU students on other campuses. The course will use SJSU's LMS, Canvas. This sounds like a traditional online class using the material that was developed for the Udacity trial.
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Update 2/2/2014

In the fall of 2012, students in two traditional sections of an introductory electrical-engineering course earned passing grades at rates of 57 percent and 74 percent, respectively. In an experimental third section, which was “flipped” to incorporate the MIT videos, the pass rate was 95 percent, but they did not adhere strictly to the MIT material.

In the spring of 2013 they also ran three sections, one of which used edX content. In the traditional sections, students passed at rates of 79 percent and 82 percent. In the experimental section, the pass rate was 87 percent.

The spring experimental section followed the MIT curriculum than did the fall 2012 section -- they covered more material.

The professor, Khosrow Ghadiri (mentioned above), said the pass rates of the spring-2013 trial should not be compared with those of the fall-2012 trial because the students learned different material and took different examinations. In the fall, he used the MIT content to help teach his own syllabus. In the spring, he used the MIT professor’s content and learning objectives.

A provocative column on Georgia Tech's $7,000 MS in computer science

Astute industry analyst Robert Cringely says that Georgia Tech's $7,000 online MS in computer science is watered down, will cheapen the Georgia Tech brand, will earn Georgia Tech a lot of money, and may be the future of education.

The self-paced (typically three year) program is being developed with Udacity with the help of a $2 million grant from AT&T. They will start with 300 students, many of them AT&T employees, and hope to expand to 10,000 students while hiring only eight new instructors.

Cringley sees this as a recipe for a "crappy" degree, but says it will make a ton of money because professional degree students typically pay for their education while research students provide cheap teaching and research labor funded by grants. He also sees the Georgia taxpayer subsidizing offshore students -- as Cringely puts it "programmers in Bangalore will soon boast Georgia Tech degrees without even having a passport."

It is noteworthy that the courses will be offered as free MOOCs for those not seeking a degree -- only enrolled, degree-seeking students will pay and only they will get tutoring, online office hours, proctored exams, etc. We have talked of the importance of the non-degree MOOC audience in an earlier post. The business model here seems to be counting on for-credit students paying the cost of production, with a by-product of high-quality, free MOOCs.

What do you think? Is programmers in Bangalore getting low-cost degrees a bug or a feature? Will students pay $7,000 for certification from Georgia Tech when they can get the same content in a free MOOC? Will the free MOOCs turn out to be the most important part of this experiment -- particularly in developing nations? How will prospective employers value the credit and non-credit completion of the courses? Can eight faculty adequately serve 10,000 students? Will other universities follow suit?

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Update 7/15/2013

Laura Gibbs pointed me to an in-depth discussion of the Georgia Tech MS CS program. Christopher Newfield challenged the economic projections in the Georgia Tech contract, and Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun answered in a blog post to which Newfield replied.

Thrun said a couple of things that caught my eye. One was that they predict that the majority of the income will come from non-degree students. We've written about the non-degree student market being potentially much more lucrative than that for degree programs. This venture will provide data on that hypothesis, but it will be a while before we know the results.

Thrun also said that data on the for-credit collaboration between Udacity and San Jose State University (SJSU) had been collected and would be released in a few weeks (from June 24). That should shed some light on the disagreement between Thrun and Newfield in spite of the fact that the students and the introductory undergraduate courses in the SJSU trial differ significantly from those of a graduate computer science degree at Georgia Tech.

We are just starting to innovate in online education after years of textbook facsimiles. Georgia Tech, SJSU and Udacity are experimenting with new models of certification and education financing, as opposed to teaching material and pedagogy. These are early, important experiments.

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Update 7/18/2013

SJSU Provost Ellen Junn reported that students in three online classes did significantly worse than those in conventional classes.  A preliminary presentation showed that 74 percent or more of the students in traditional classes passed, while no more than 51 percent of Udacity students passed any of the three courses.  Junn emphasized that the results were preliminary and they plan to start working with Udacity again in spring 2014.

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Update 7/29/2013

Slate takes a look at Georgia Tech’s Computer Science MOOC -- says it could change American higher education. - Slate Magazine (http://slate.me/1e67VzV).
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Update 8/18/2013

The New York Times says the masters degree is the "new frontier" of study online (http://nyti.ms/1eUs7Fr).  They go on to highlight the Georgia Tech offering and discuss the future of MOOCs more broadly. Enthusiasts and skeptics are quoted. I've also revised the original post -- stressing the inclusion of free MOOCs for non-credit students.
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Update 12/13/2013

Georgia Tech designs its Udacity pilot to avoid failure.
http://bit.ly/1hRnZf8
They distance the themselves from Udacity's debacle at San Jose State University.

Four ways we can experiment with MOOCs -- Blackboard joins the fray

Provosts of 13 universities recently announced that they would be working together to take advantage of "new technologies and course redesign" to "improve instructional quality, enhance student learning outcomes, and extend the reach of campus instructional offerings."

It sounds like they want to keep open the option of remaining independent of the currently-dominant, well-funded, expensive MOOC platforms Udacity, Coursera and edX. How might a university do that? There are at least four alternative platforms, two of which are offered as hosted services:

• Blackboard just announced that they will be hosting a new MOOC platform, which would be available free to existing Blackboard customers.
• Blackboard competitor Canvas has a hosted MOOC platform that allows teachers to build modular courses with video lectures, quizzes, analytics, groups (inside the system or using external resources like Google Docs or Skype), etc.

There are also two open source platforms, which could be hosted by a university or other organization:

• EdX from MIT and Stanford
• Course Builder from Google

I do not know of any sites hosting Course Builder or EdX, but would not be surprised to see some in the future. For example, I can imagine (wish for) Google integrating Course Builder with some of their other services -- Docs, YouTube, Plus with hangouts on air, and Groups -- and offering a significant platform for developing and delivering courses.

We need these and other do-it-yourself alternatives to the major MOOC platforms -- the industry will eventually consolidate, but it is too soon to do so now. In the meantime, let a thousand flowers bloom.

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7/12/2013

In this interview, Jay Bhatt, Blackboard CEO says they will up spending on software development and sees MOOCs as one point on a contiuim, with support for on campus degree programs at the other. He welcomes competition from Google and others as it will push the entire industry to improve.