Thinking about MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses. India is the second largest consumer of MOOCs after the US. In February, ANU joined edX (founded in May 2012 by MIT & Harvard), the only Australian university so far. Courses start in 2014 (Astrophysics by Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt and Engaging India by McComas Taylor). Schmidt also believes ANUx could help high school students who may not have had access to highly qualified teachers in some subject areas, due to shortages.
http://news.anu.edu.au/2013/02/21/anu-joins-edx-online-education-revolution/
The US Dept of Education meta-analysis of 46 studies in online learning (mostly in higher education), showed that the most powerful learning outcomes resulted from blended learning – a combination of face-to-face with online learning.
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf
Public good or playing markets? The real reason for MOOCs – Prof. Thomas Clarke, UTS.
Interesting article. Enrolment figures are highly speculative, with high reported drop-out rates (up to 90%). Are they committed to providing mass education as a public good or are they more interested in global domination of education markets? Will they start out free and end up with advertisements and fees? Even with the availability of MOOCs, “universities are gradually morphing into mass online campuses in their own right, though maintaining the wonder of face to face encounters, and retaining a role for the most flexible, interactive, intelligent and responsive pedagogic technology of all – the teacher in the classroom”. Nice quote.
http://theconversation.com/public-good-or-playing-markets-the-real-reason-for-moocs-13055
What college students really think about online courses
A US study of college students shows that students want to be involved in the online learning conversation – blended learning models are valued rather than everything being online. They want courses that match their learning style and technology integration that improves learning.
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/College-Students-Online-Courses.html
Why we should never return to the 3 Rs – Stewart Riddle, USQ.
Some politicians are calling for more didactic teaching methods and the traditional curriculum. But – “the 3 Rs will not help young people to use computers efficiently, search the internet and access electronic texts for information and then have effective tools to analyse, critique and synthesise that information…..(one for the TLs!). On the question of prizing knowledge over skills, one only has to consider the information processing power of the humble smart phone sitting in our pockets or bags, which contains the capacity to access more information than we could ever hope to store in our memory by rote learning, to see the pointlessness in such a cause”. http://theconversation.com/why-we-should-never-return-to-the-three-rs-13179
The iPhone killed my creativity – Brian Hall.
Yes it’s true! With smartphones we are never bored, sitting around with nothing to do. And our creativity suffers – we need to be bored to allow our minds to drift & wander, to have the time and space to think about things. Using all the fun stuff on our smartphones is also lowering impulse buys at the checkout!
http://readwrite.com/2013/03/29/the-iphone-killed-my-creativity