MOOCs and Quality- A new project by EFQUEL

 

The MOOC Quality Project,launched by EFQUEL is designed to bring together a global group of experts and first movers in the field of MOOCs and with some different perspectives in the field of MOOC. During a period of 12 weeks, started the 8th of May 2013 they will write blog posts  to challenge on on how to discuss MOOC quality. The language of MOOC quality will be invented in this project - join us and see where it is leading. The initiators for the MOOC quality project are Ulf Ehlers, Ebba Ossiannilsson and Alastair Creelman, who will follow up the blogposts in the next couple of weeks

When Dave Cormier coined the term MOOC already in 2008 he described it as a moving target.  Together with Downes and Siemens they focused on creating mass communication and interaction with what today is known as cMOOC (connectivist MOOC) where the main set of characteristics is described as aggregation, remixing, repurposing and feed forward. At the same time other types of MOOCs were emerging, often referred to as xMOOCs. These are  usually by far more massive than cMOOCs and focus on content, often featuring famous professors from highly reputed universities, and are open to online participants who learn autonomously without (necessarily) much focus on creating social interaction. A MOOC offers at a base free access to a collection of educational resources that together form a logically linked progression. Quality here is the value and relevance of the resources and how they are linked. Many MOOCs have little or no qualified tutoring or guidance, only offering online arenas for student communication. These arenas can be quality assessed for their functionality but little more since what goes on there is out of the control of the organisers. Maybe the real quality issues of the MOOC phenomenon lies in the value-added services that are on higher layers than the course material. If tutoring, guidance, validation and examination are available at a price then these add-ons can be more easily assessed and quality guidelines set up (The MOOC quality project 2013). Donald Clark has listed the diversity of MOOC models where he describes eight types  MOOCs. The eight types are:

• transferMOOCs
• madeMOOCs
• synchMOOCs
• asynchMOOCs
• adaptiveMOOCs
• groupMOOCs
• connectivistMOOCS 
• miniMOOCSs

Androulla Vassiliou, (European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, 25th April 2013) express it like:

"MOOC is an exciting development and I hope it will open up education to tens of thousands of students and trigger our schools and universities to adopt more innovative and flexible teaching methods. The MOOCs movement has already proved popular, especially in the US, but this pan-European launch takes the scheme to a new level. It reflects European values such as equity, quality and diversity and the partners involved are a guarantee for high-quality learning. We see this as a key part of the Opening up Education strategy which the Commission will launch this summer "

As with all learning innovations, MOOCs first raised a lot of interest and hopes for a new approach to educatiion. MOOCs can also be seen as social innovation. Now the focus must change to evaluating if those promises can be delivered in the long term and on a sustainable basis. One aspect which, due to the infancy of MOOCs as learning innovation, has not yet been analysed and that is  the aspect of quality in MOOCs.

The MOOC quality project would like to challenge quality questions together with the international pool of  experts.

• What are Moocs actually aiming at?
• Can we judge the quality of MOOCs in the same way than we can judge any defined university course with traditional degree awarding processes - or do we have to take into account a different type of objecive with MOOC learners? 
• Are the target groups mostly interested in only small sequences of learning, just made fit for their own individual purpose and then sign off,  and mybe jump into another MOOC because the own individual learning objective was fulfilled (The MOOC quality project 2013).

How can we think about quality, which are the dimensions to employ for a MOOC quality model, can we think of quality assurance methods in this field -  since MOOCs differ significantly from "regular" courses? So how can quality be discussed and defined. First as there are so many different types and there are a variety in between them it might be  difficult to discuss quality in MOOCs in general terms as it depends on which type of MOOC is discussed. Secondly the target group attending MOOCs worldwide is very broad, with an enormous difference in aims, interests, pre-understanding, and the list can be very long. Third, there area many stakeholders  who have interests in MOOCs, as is illustrated by   HOLDAWAY an  HAWTIN  where  all knowledge—and all the cash—are coming from?

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5 Big Education Technology Trends for 2013

5 Big Education Technology Trends of 2013 by edudemic

inShaChanges to the way we approach education are also peppered throughout the various innovations and advances. iPads revolutionizing the textbook economy, high speed internet shrinking the world and even the incorporation (successfully, even) of mobile into the classroom. Even if it is  basically impossible to know what to expect for 2013 as they say themselves. Edudemic anticipates five trends for 2013:

 
1. Use SMS Marketing to Connect Education with Life
2. Social Media Enables Students to Educate Communities
3. Universities Offer Free Non Credit On-Line Courses
4. Unused Resources Contribute to Social Impact Projects
5. 3-D Printing Hits the Road

Terms: 2013 New Year by christmasstockimages.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. 

The list can be contiuned with ( a mix from my networks):
1. Mobile
2. Personalisation
3. Video
4. Integration
5. Bring your own device
6. Social learning 7. Gamification
8. Learner analytics
9. Performance support
10. The evolving role of L&D
11. The badge movement

Trends of 2012

Trends for 2012 was highlighted both by Hack Education and Tony Bates as below. Most of them have really been a hype as for example MOOC and the flipped classroom


Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012 Hack Education by Audrey Watters 
1. The Business of Ed-Tech
The most notable ed-tech trends was: iPads, Khan Academy, social media (the good and the bad), online learning, and MOOCs
2. The Maker Movement
Why Maker Faire? Why make? In his talk at Maker Faire this spring, Mythbusters' Adam Savage explains:


3. Learning to Code
Codecademy encouraged people to make this the year they learned to program. Sign up for an email newsletter, the startup said, and it would send you one a lesson from the Codeacademy site per week for the entire year
4. The Flipped Classroom

Flipping the classroom is hardly new. But with all the hype surrounding both Khan Academy and MOOCs, it’s hardly surprising that the practice became incredibly popular this year.

Indeed, in his 2011 TED Talk (which has been watched over 2 million times on YouTube), Salman Khan talked about the ways in which his videos are used by teachers to “flip the classroom. Flipping the classroom also became part of the argument that Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller makes about how massive open online classes or MOOCs ( another huge ed-tech trend of 2012) will change the offline university experience.

5. MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs. This was, without a doubt, the most important and talked-about trend in education technology this year. Audrey Watters describes a brief timeline of the what the New York Times has called “The Year of the MOOC”:

6. The Battle to Open Textbooks

As for the other trends as well textbooks and libraries goes open. Of course there are many reasons for that, costs, accessibility,  culture of sharing etc. Despite this movement there is the battle with publishers.

7. Education Data and Learning Analytics

Audrey Watters said already in 2011 that more and more of our activities involve computers and the Internet, whether it’s for work, for school, or for personal purposes. Thus, our interactions and transactions can be tracked. As we click, we leave behind a trail of data–something that’s been dubbed “data exhaust.” It’s information that’s ripe for mining and analysis, and thanks to new technology tools, we can do so in real time and at a massive, Web scale. There’s incredible potential for data analytics to impact education. The trends with edcuational data and learning analytics  were increased fro 2012 and will so do for 2013 as well.

8. The Platforming of Education
Platform use to be referred to everything from software to hardware, from applications to operating systems, from websites to the Web and the Internet itself. In tech-marketing-speak, “platform” is often meant to invoke greatness or aspirations thereof. 
9. Automation and Artificial Intelligence
 It was Thrun’s Artificial Intelligence class offered in the Fall of 2011 that’s often credited for the whole MOOC craze
10. The Politics of Ed-Tech 

Audrey Watters state that education is political. Education is political not simply because of the governmental role, but also  because of the connections between education and community. Education is political because learning is at once personal and social; it is both private and public. Of course, if education is political, then ed-tech must be as well. As such, the politics of ed-tech isn’t really a trend; it’s a truism.

Besides the top ten list Audrey Watters is aslo mentioned the student (youth) voice; #Occupy; BYOD (bring your own device); gaming; badges and credentials; the globalization of ed-tech; cheating; crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. 

Tony Bates predicted for 2012

1. The year of the tablet: 99% probability
2. Learning analytics: 90% probability
3. Growth of open education: 70% probability (depending on definition of open education)
4. Disruption of the LMS market: 60% probability
5. Integration of social media into formal learning: 66% probability
6. The digital university: 10% probability
7. Watch India
8. The great unknown: 10% probability

 He also refered to tehe blogpost by Watter and also stress that MOOC, tablets, lerning analytics and disruptive education  maybe are some of the most   important.

Creative Commons 10 years

This year is Creative Commons’ 10th Birthday! Started Friday, December 7, was launching into a 10-day frenzy of celebrations leading up to 16 December – the day the first CC license suite was launched in 2002.The celebrations was wide ranging, including more than 20 celebrations worldwide, a dedicated website (http://10.creativecommons.org), with interviews and featured resources, a social media campaign and the usual annual fundraising campaign.

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There are  many very nice videos and information resources on how to use cc. Besides the ones from creative commons this was one which I found very instructive. It is about copyright and schools and how to do very concreate when you would like to use different kind of online resources. CommonCraft has produced another one, which is very much of interest.




One can easily underatand why teachers are not very found or excited of allowing recording or mobiles in classrooms, especialyy when you have to face how students are takong notes nowadays. The photo shows students taking pictures with their smartphones of a projection screen. It doesn’t get much more ‘connected’ than that to be sure. Do your students use their camera phone to snap photos for note-taking purposes? Would you encourage or discourage this type of behavior? Maybe a matter of conscience