At edX, Distance Learning Moves to an Open-Source Honors Track

[Renew Deal]

Last edited Thu Dec 20, 2012, 02:18 AM - Edit history (1)

I can't excerpt anything on this. This article is about MIT and Harvard online courses being run through a non-profit called Edx. They are only offering 8 courses. Only 4% complete the course.

This is an expensive experiment in online and distance learning. They also call it MOOC (Massively Open Online Courses).

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/digitalissues/computerpoweruser/CP____1212__/files/90.html

[jody]

1. I've taught Distance Learning college courses. IMO an acceptable procedure as a MINIMUM would

require the student to take a proctored comprehensive exam over all the material for a course for a grade.

I personally know of colleges that offer courses where instructors never see a student, students take online multiple choice or true-false tests, and receive a grade. That from a college that is regionally accredited.

That's a diploma-mill, a scam, and leaves graduates with debt, a worthless degree, and no prospects for a job.

Today it's too easy for human-resource managers who expect job applications to be on-line to filter out applicants with such degrees.

I expect MIT and Harvard have higher standards but the lower end colleges are despicable.

[TheDebbieDee]

2. Careful! Everytime online education comes up, the thread turns into a bloodbath!

Teachers will accuse YOU of hating your days in school and being traumatized.

Some people will swear that YOU are stupid and that it is't possible to learn anything online.

Still others will state that YOU are trying to cheat young people out of the positive social experience that brick and mortar schools can be.

But I've said it before and I'll say it again - I think in the near future some public school districts will give online education a try out of a willingness to cut expenses.

[Renew Deal]

3. Thanks for telling me

I wasn't aware of that. There's plenty to learn and the internet is one way to learn some of it.

[TheDebbieDee]

5. I expect you to be clobbered any minute by a roving band of posters with teaching credentials...

To them, there's only ONE acceptable way of teaching and learning and that's in a brick and mortar school.

Why do you want to take their jobs away? Why do you HATE teachers?

[HiPointDem]

8. I don't think you're reporting accurately. I think teachers are pretty open to using computers

for education.

They're just not so open to using computers in place of education. Or of slobbering over things like Khan academy as 'innovative,' etc.

There are already kids doing completely computerized schooling (K12 Inc for one). It's been an abject failure.

Districts who go computerized 'to save money' are supposed to be some kind of exemplar? I think not.

[jody]

4. Addendum to #1

Traditional classroom colleges are an anachronism because distance education is just as effective, cheaper and more accessible except perhaps for rigorous topics like sciences, mathematics and technologies.

Nationally recognized accrediting agencies have already established required courses and rigorous topics for most degrees with job opportunities.

Students should choose one degree with job opportunities, and taxpayers should fund only required courses for that degree, classroom courses for rigorous topics and distance education for all others. Students should pay for all general studies courses.

Accredited colleges, public or private, could offer courses at an established price like Medicare rates. Students could choose from those courses and taxpayers would pay only if a grade of “C” or better is earned.

A student’s state university system would award a degree when required courses are completed regardless of where they are taken.

[HiPointDem]

9. "distance education is just as effective" -- for who? the largest test of computerized k12

education (K12 Inc) has proved to be an abject failure, so far as actual educating students goes.

[NYC_SKP]

11. Completely different models. MOOCs aren't designed for K12 deployment.

The model is more like, "Hey, would you like to try learning something this way?"

No threat to the status quo, though it may lead to dual credit or college credit courses for high schoolers.

I hope.

[HiPointDem]

14. which is why i asked "for who"? but of course, distance learning is already being used at the

university level as well. and for credit.

but it *is* a threat to the status quo -- because even though distance learning could be used otherwise, all these things are being deployed in a way that threatens the entire structure of education.

[jody]

17. Threatens! Good. nt

[HiPointDem]

18. yes, we know. but be careful what you wish for. because what you're likely to get is something

much worse than the status quo for the majority of students.

and most certainly worse for the majority of teachers & professors -- or aspirants to the professoriate or the university culture generally.

[jody]

19. Doesn't matter, IMO distance learning is the future for most degrees other than STEM and

similar programs that are difficult.

Cost and convenience will drive that.

Problem is preventing diploma mills.

[HiPointDem]

20. It doesn't matter? Of course it matters. FYI, STEM classes are already done totally on-line for

K12 students enrolled in on-line schools. You have to buy all the equipment for the experiments & do them at home. It's not significantly cheaper (you'd be amazed what they charge, say, for a couple of plastic bowls, measuring spoons, and a couple of baggies of corn starch or whatever).

Also, STEM classes are routinely done on-line at colleges and universities throughout the nation.

Cost (& supposed 'convenience') will drive it all -- for all but elite students. Because the rest aren't going to be doing anything 'important' anyway.

[jody]

21. Key is your last sentence re "elite students". Those few are the ones

who will become the scientists and mathematicians who will lead us into the future.

[HiPointDem]

22. and they'll be educated at real universities, not online.

[jody]

23. Agree and society should pay the entire cost plus give those students a stipend.

[HiPointDem]

24. Society should pay the entire cost of educating *all* its children. and not online.

you miss the point. Elite students -- maybe the top 10% -- will be educated in a traditional rich university setting.

Other students, if they can pay the cost, will make due with an impoverished online education, suitable for their increasingly impoverished circumstances and their mindless jobs.

Perhaps you wouldn't mind living in that kind of world. Others would.

IMO, nothing those elite students discovered would make up for it.

Just like there's nothing that's been discovered in the last 30 years that makes up for the increasing meanness of social life for the majority of the population.

[jody]

25. I didn't miss your point. I added to it. IMO "elite" students you address should have all the

benefits cadets receive at West Point, Annapolis, Coast Guard Academy, Merchant Marine Academy, and Air Force Academy.

The military services already select their best officers and send them to the best universities for graduate degrees including PhDs from the most respected universities.

We need to create federal programs that identify "elite" students and offer them university programs from undergraduate to Post Doctoral without the obligation of military duty.

Someone will post that we already have them but I already know that. They're piecemeal, not focused on math & science as I propose.

Perhaps we could create a Department of Peace at the same time and focus on economy building instead of nation building with all its abuses.

[jody]

16. College. nt

[CreekDog]

26. For companies who think it's more important to profit than educate

The students? Ha! They aren't even shareholders!

[mbperrin]

6. I don't know why you think it is particularly expensive.

I teach both online and in a brick setting. As always, differentiation benefits all students, so some do better in some courses online, while others do better in some courses in a brick setting.

Some do better with an emphasis on text, some on visual, some on projects, and some on various mixtures of all these. Some of my brick courses have an online component, as well.

As usual, no one thing is the best answer, and now we have more tools to benefit each student, if we will.

I hold a double bachelor's degree in English and Economics from a brick school, and I also have a master's in adult and distance education from an online school. This has changed and benefited my teaching tremendously, and that means my students get better service from me, as well.

If the 4% benefit, what's the problem?

[TheDebbieDee]

7. Wow! I'm surprised that no one has come into this thread

and lost it yet (other than me).

Maybe we're growing up here at DU.

[HiPointDem]

10. do grown ups makes loaded remarks about other adults 'growing up"? i think not.

[HiPointDem]

13. do adults tell people to stfu & go get laid? i think not.

[NYC_SKP]

15. I'm a proponent of open educational resources and MOOCs. Excerpt below:

Without peerless grades, record setting SATs, and about $60,000 a year in tuition and fees, the closest many of us will get to seeing the inside of a Harvard or MIT classroom is to rent “The Social Network,” “Good Will Hunting” or “21.” But this fall, the opportunity to experience for yourself what it takes to pass a class at these prestige college brands got real—or virtual, to be more precise. Whether in a bedroom in Lincoln, Neb., on a commuter bus in Atlanta, or an office in New Delhi, anyone with an Internet connection can not only sit in on lectures of PH207 at Harvard or CS184.1 at University of California at Berkley, but can go through chronologically during the terms all of the same tests, assignments, and interactions with faculty as the freshmen and sophomores at these otherwise selective institutions. This is distance learning taken to a new level. Welcome to edX.

In a bold and costly experiment in new educational techniques, Harvard and nearby MIT in Cambridge, Mass., invested $30 million each last spring to launch edX. This not-for-profit group has built a software platform that aims to bring the classroom experience even closer to students than distance learning has in the past, and to do so for free. Enrollees view the same lectures as their high-paying classmates at the schools, take the same tests, get grades and even share ideas with classmates. But these students aren’t paying (at least not yet), and they aren’t getting formal college credit. Many of the classes will offer “certificates of mastery” upon completion of the course, but the edX experiment is grounded for now in the notion that a great education does not necessarily need to lead to a degree.

The two schools were joined soon after by UC Berkeley and will welcome the University of Texas in the Summer of 2013. edX began as an “MITx” experiment to bring Professor Anant Agarwal’s electrical engineering class to a broad audience for free. After 150,000 students from 160 countries registered for the course, other schools took notice. The platform for edX is based on the original MITx system but the organization regards it as open source. A base of tools for self-paced learning, wiki-based collaborations, grading, etc. are already in place, but the enterprise is expecting the platform to grow as new professors and institutions add and share features. In addition to being free virtualizations of real courses taught by some of the best professors at the leading schools in the world, edX is also designed as a lab for online learning. The institutions are trying to learn how students learn online, with the goal of creating better hybrid models of live and virtual learning environments for students actually attending the schools, as well. In the CS50 course we started, for instance, the professor and his teaching team created new video modules expressly for the edX implementation that also benefited the 700+ live students in the lecture hall.

Because all edX work is done remotely, at massive scale, and without direct contact between instructors and students, the platform has in place special tools and procedures for managing the unique experience. Many of the classes such as Agarwal’s engineering course, use “autograding” that automates in real time the grading of quizzes. Students get immediate feedback on whether they are getting the answers right. Also, enrollment requires that all users agree to an online “Honor Code” to ensure against abusing the virtuality of the system. Enrollees pledge at the outset that all the work they submit is their own, that they do not share their account username and password with anyone else and that they do not post any answers to testing materials publicly for others to use. Finally, and perhaps a nod to the possibility of artful hackers, the pledge includes a promise “not to engage in any activity that would dishonestly improve my results, or improve or hurt the results of others.” And in a new feature that will launch in 2013, edX is hoping to enhance the legitimacy of the remote experience by offering live final exams. In partnership with educational technology and testing company Pearson VUE, at least one course in the edX curriculum will offer a proctored live exam at testing facilities the company runs in 110 countries.