Tag Archives: Charles Severance

My MOOC Life (So Far): Part 2

My Coursera Courses

So far I have taken three MOOCs, and I am currently taking another two (and I am enrolled in a Udacity course that I believe is study at your own pace – Introduction to Computer Science CS101, which I will look at way later in the year):

  • Information Security and Risk Management in Context
    • Ends 5th December, 2012
    • Taught via Coursera
  • Social Network Analysis
    • Ends 19th November, 2012
    • Taught via Coursera
  • Internet History, Technology, and Security
    • Completed – waiting for certificate
    • Taught via Coursera
  • Power Searching with Google
    • Completed – received certificate (image)
    • Taught via Google’s Course Builder
  • Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success

My purpose in enrolling in these MOOCS has been twofold:

  1. To continue my education
  2. To investigate MOOCs
    • Is there a business model?
    • Do they “work?”
    • What instructional design strategies are employed?
    • How will they compete with traditional education?
    • Is assessment possible on a large scale
    • etc.

So here are some more observations…. (Part 1 can be found here)

Internet History, Technology, and Security

The instructor (Charles Severance) has been very good at communicating with students since the course has officially ended. There have been several email updates sent out to the group alerting us to the certificate status. This is good in of itself, but what is even better is that he recorded a “reflection / summary lecture” which he had planned to:

“talk about how the class went, what worked and how I would improve the class, and share some of the data about the class with you”

This is fantastic, and demonstrates what I find most powerful about the MOOCs – the way in which the large number of students combine with the open nature of the MOOC philosophy to rapidly iterate improvements (providing faculty, instructional designers, technologists, etc. are willing and prepared to make changes).

Coursera Student Map

Data on where the Coursera students came from

Chuck shared some data on where the students came from, which can be seen by following this link to Google Maps.

The reflection video shared some great data on the student population, but this data I found particularly interesting:

  • Number of students signed up: 45572
  • Number of students completing week 1: 1164
  • Number of students who took the Final: 5401
  • Number of certificates: 4595

Chuck then shared his thoughts on what went well, and what he would do differently. I don’t think he will mind me repeating this here given his adherance to openness and transparency:

Worked Well

  • Using Twitter as the way to contact me
  • Discussion tool is outstanding
  • Multi-take quizzes with automorphing questions
  • Lecture video format with me looking at the Cintiq
  • Discussion forums and their voting
  • Cognitive load from the forums to me was manageable
  • Mail to the class needed to come from me
  • Office hours as small focus groups to help me improve the course

Things He Would Do Differently

  • Better Welcome Lecture
  • How to use the software lecture from Coursera (i.e. like resources)
  • How and when to use the “flag” icon
  • How do Late Days work?????
  • Describe community communication guidelines – when we will delete a thread
  • Delete threads more often
  • Faster lecture translating
  • All writing assignments are extra credit (because this is an intro class)
  • I still don’t get reputation points and how I should use them
  • More student editable spaces
  • Better way to identify natural leaders in the community and give them ways to communicate broadly other than “+1 votes” in the discussion
  • Split lectures at week boundaries (oops)
  • Add a “breath/pause” during lecture recording to allow me to later decide where to put a question.
  • Come up with an extensive preview so people don’t register just to peek
  • Tell late entrants that after week 3 they will not likely get a certificate – perhaps even close registration – you can go on a wait list and see the materials but not take the quizzes
  • I would like to come up with a selfpaced version – but the software would need to be different

This really gets to why the course was so successful – a professor who felt passionate about making improvements to the course as it was being taught, and then applying longer-term changes for the future. He also was extremely approachable using Twitter, the discussion boards, and traveling office hours to communicate.

I was lucky enough to participate in the Chicago office hours, and found this to give me more of a connection to the course.

It gets even better – Chuck is intending to build a sequence of MOOC courses that build upon each other, and he is personally signing all certificates sent to him.

It has been a definite pleasure taking the course.

Social Network Analysis

This looks to be the more “hands-on” of the various MOOCs, with applications to install and data to process. I have some assignments to complete and need to dig in deeper. I am happy with the way the course is going, and know that this will stretch me.

Information Security and Risk Management in Context

There has been an undercurrent (and sometimes more than that) of dissatisfaction in the discussion boards the past week. The areas that several of my fellow students feel less than happy are:

  • Announcements that the videos cannot be downloaded.
  • Reuse of older classroom videos.
  • Promotion of the certificate programs ($1,025 for noncredit or $2,055 for graduate credit). Here the wording and frequency of this information seems to have rubbed people the wrong way.
  • A feeling that the course was rushed to meet a deadline, rather than waiting to release something more polished later in the year.
These are all fixable issues, and this is the first time this course has been taught, so it will be interesting to see what approaches are taken to meet these student comments. 

This is the first Coursera course where textbooks have been required/recommended. What I think would have worked better here would have been:

  • Selecting entirely digital required reading (rather than having to find and order a physical book).
  • Providing the required/recommended reading information earlier in the course.

However, I am finding the content in this course particularly relevant to my interests, and look forward to future weeks.

 

Coursea Course Statistics

Coursera

I am in the final weeks of a Cousera course (Internet History, Technology, and Security), and the instructor has kindly shared the demographic data provided (via a survey) for the students in the MOOC. As Charles Severance says:

Of course the caveat is that it is not scientific, it is partial, incomplete, your results may vary, void where prohibited, etc etc etc. It is anecdotal at best but certainly interesting. This is not all the data but the other items like country need some coding as they were fill-in-the-blank and folks filled it in a lot of ways.

Is this your first online class?

  • 1611 Yes
  • 1942 No

Is this your first large, free, online course (i.e. MOOC)?

  • 2232 Yes
  • 1319 No

Which best describes your motivation for taking this class? Check all that apply:

  • 2677 General interest in the topic
  • 2215 Extending current knowledge of the topic
  • 442 Supplement other college/university classes courses
  • 203 Decide if I want to take college/university classes on the topic
  • 1539 Professional development
  • 1437 Interest in how these courses are taught

Are you currently a student in a school or college?

  • 972 Yes
  • 2572 No

What is your highest level of education?

  • 81 Some high school
  • 298 High school
  • 363 Some college
  • 207 Associate’s degree (2 years of college)
  • 1234 Bachelor’s degree (BA/BS, 4 years of college)
  • 1016 Master’s degree
  • 186 Doctoral degree
  • 174 Professional degree (MD, JD)

Are you currently a teacher?

  • 451 Yes
  • 3088 No

If you are a teacher, are you thinking about reusing some of the material in this course for your own course?

  • 510 Yes
  • 1496 No

What is your gender?

  • 2387 Male
  • 1121 Female
  • 31 Decline to state

What is your age?

  • 75 I prefer not to answer
  • 757 18-24
  • 1189 25-34
  • 621 35-44
  • 491 45-54
  • 420 55+

My MOOC Life (So Far)

I have cautiously been circling MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) recently. The educational media has been all over the trend to create an appropriate platform and populate with courses, and “mainstream media” has started to pay attention too. My fear is that MOOCs will be viewed as a silver bullet to the plethora of problems that education in general faces. Most likely there will be a MOOC bubble. 
However, MOOCs are moving education in the right direction. Faculty, instructional designers, software engineers, and students are generously donating their time and attention to craft courses and reusable learning objects that are intended to be easily understood and utilized in a scalable fashion. Things could of course become too commoditized and homogenous, but MOOCs are starting to deliver the promise that opencourseware failed to deliver.

Anyway, my firm belief is that you only truly learn from doing (and making mistakes), so I signed up for some MOOCs. 

I started with Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success. Here I really appreciated and enjoyed the content (from Curt Bonk), but met some frustration with the delivery system. In working through the material I felt that my view that Desire2Learn is a superior LMS to Blackboard was validated. I felt that Blackboard constrained navigation and communication. I felt that Blackboard was more of a document repository than a system that facilitated teaching and Learning.

Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success

Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success

The course had an accelerated schedule, a five-week duration rather than eleven weeks or longer. This was to be my undoing as I got really, really ill twice during the course. I lost two weeks, and with other commitments I could not catch up. However, the course is still open, and I will endeavor to finish all of the assignments. The content and readings in the course were very helpful. I also made some new contacts via Twitter and Google+ along the way.

Power Searching With Google

Power Searching With Google

My next MOOC was Google’s “Power Searching With Google.” Google is a company that I like and admire, but it sometimes frustrates me immensely. My frustration in this situation was that the course was unnecessarily ugly. The content, videos, transcripts and exercises were great, but the aesthetic was like an out-of-town factory store -a functional big box that was effective and efficient, but depressing to view. Google’s relentlessly puritan view of engineered effectiveness depresses me. I wish that the company would sometimes make their products look beautiful.

As with many other MOOCs, entering into the discussion area had a tendency to be overwhelming – just keeping track of the conversations was impossible. However, judicious use of search and tags was of use.

Internet History, Technology, and Security

Internet History, Technology, and Security

My current MOOC is Coursera’sInternet History, Technology, and Security,” taught by Charles Severance (@drchuck). This is a seven-week course, one in which I arrived late (but not too late). This is a course in which the professor is (by his own admission) inventing along the way, but the structure and material works very well. I have not taken any other Coursera courses, so I don’t know if the instructional design of this course is used in other Coursera courses, but here are a few of the things that have impressed me:

  • The LMS used supports the vast number of students exceedingly well. Video is streamed  and downloaded without a hitch. The navigational scheme is well designed, I have not experienced any disorientation looking for materials.
  • Video is available in both streaming and downloadable versions.
  • Video is generally short, and has embedded quizzes.
  • Students are collaborating on providing transcripts (in multiple languages).
  • The course looks nice. This might sound like a trivial statement, but many online courses are ugly. A pleasant environment is, to my mind, helpful in learning.
  • There are physical office hours. The instructor is travelling around the U.S., and posts office hours for various coffee shops along the way. This is an excellent way for students to actually get to meet each other and their instructor. Luckily Chicago was one of the destinations, and I got to participate.
Cousera Office Hours

Cousera Office Hours

Like other MOOCS there is the inherent issue of assessing learning. So far there have been two strategies employed:

  1.  Automatically graded quizzes. Ten questions are posed for each assessment, which are based on the week’s materials. The questions are drawn randomly from a larger pool of questions, and students can take the quiz multiple times (highest score is preserved). However, students have to wait ten minutes after taking a quiz to retake.
  2. Peer assessment. So far there has been one written assignment. After submitting the written assignment, students are provided with five assignments to grade via a structured rubric. The rubric is largely binary, which simplifies grading. Students are able to provide written feedback and suggestions to their peers. The system works well. There has been at least one instance of a student plagiarizing extensively from Wikipedia – I am interested to see if a plagiarism detection system (like Turn-it-In) could be added.
Next and Continue

Next and Continue

There is one minor flaw that I have encountered in the MOOC, and that is the “Continue” and “Next” buttons in the videos. The videos have embedded quizzes – these pause the video and present the student with questions. After successfully answering the question the student can proceed by clicking on “Continue.” However, the “Continue” button is very close to the “Next” button…. The “Next” button is part of the video player, and Fits Law being what it is, I have a tendency to click on this rather than “Continue.” This results in me navigating to the next video in that week’s content, rather than continuing through the video that I was watching. I silently curse and backtrack when this happens (I think others have encountered the same issue, so the “Continue” button is in green).

Charles Severance has thoughtfully provided some statistics on student participation. I found this information to be very interesting:

  • Enrolled: 42935
  • Watched at least one lecture: 22651
  • Took Quiz 1: 11402
  • Submitted the Peer-Graded Assignment: 5808

My views on MOOCs at the moment are that they are here to stay. A business model has not been established, but I am sure one will evolve. I don’t think traditional universities are going to be hurt by MOOCs, but this may hurt the publishing industry. A MOOC is essentially an interactive book, so why buy a textbook or manual when you can take a MOOC that covers the topic for free?