elearning_label_learning_and_society
The Next Game Changer: The Historical Antecedents of the MOOC Movement in Education
Though the history of massive open online courses is very short, scholars can gain insights by looking at similar movements in the past. This paper examines several historical moments in education to develop an understanding of MOOCs and their future.
Specifically, this paper explores two developments that resemble the discourse surrounding MOOCs—the emergence of studia particulare and generale in medieval Europe and the monitorial educational systems of the early nineteenth century. It also looks at several other educational innovations that have been seen as disruptive to the status quo of education. These include land-grant institutions in the United States in addition to the University Without Walls and open education movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These previous movements are very instructive as proponents of MOOC educational systems develop strategies for promoting MOOCs and giving them lasting resonance in the digital age.
Barcelona School of Civil Engineering Open CourseWare
Camins OpenCourseWare is an online platform offering free educational materials produced by the Barcelona School of Civil Engineering (ETSECCPB), an institution with one of the most outstanding research records in Spain and among the best European universities in terms of papers published.
The School now shares learning materials (including lecture notes, assignments, labs and exams) related to its Civil Engineering, Construction Engineering and Geological Engineering degrees and its Civil Engineering Master’s, all under a Creative Commons license.
The Impact and Reach of MOOCs: A Developing Countries’ Perspective
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a recent but hugely popular phenomenon in the online learning world. They are hailed by many as a solution for the developing world’s lack of access to education because MOOCs can provide learning opportunities to a massive number of learners from anywhere in the world as long as they can access the course through Internet.
However, a close consideration of the ability of learners from most developing countries to make use of MOOCs seems to contradict this rhetoric. This paper discusses features of MOOCs and looks at them from a developing countries’ perspective to conclude that due to a complicated set of conditions (‘access’, language, computer literacy among others) prevailing in developing countries, MOOCs may not be a viable solution for education for a large proportion of people in these areas of the world. The paper further shows the need for more data on the demographics of MOOC participants from developing countries to form a better understanding of MOOCs role in educating people from developing countries.
Learning from Open Design: Running a Learning Design MOOC
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) give an opportunity for providing access to subjects of mass interest but also allow more niche subjects (Beavon, Commas- Quinn, de los Arcos & Hauck, 2013) to reach a larger audience than the more usual context of small-scale post-graduate courses.
The OLDS-MOOC (Open Learning Design Studio-MOOC) is an example of such a course. Developed with funding from Jisc, in January 2013 a collaborative team from several universities presented a nine-week online course. The subject matter is learning design as an organised approach to online learning. This report considers the way in which the course was structured around as a project-based “pMOOC” in its approach to learning design, while also including alternative lighter routes. The impact it had on the team involved in developing and presenting the course is also briefly reviewed.
OpenStax College
OpenStax College is a non-profit organisation providing students with professional-quality textbooks that are free online and low-cost in print.
Launched in February 2012 with a philanthropic model, the platform ultimately plans to offer free textbooks for 25 of the most-attended college courses in the United States. The first five titles are already available and have been adopted in one year by more than 150 colleges, universities and high schools.
The books offered are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of the courses.
OpenStax College is an initiative of Rice University.
Vision in an Increasingly Mobile World
'Vision in an Increasingly Mobile World', an event organised by the British Machine Vision Association (BMVA), will be held on 15 May 2013 in London, UK.
Modern mobile computing creates interesting opportunities and challenges for computer vision research. This meeting will bring together researchers and practitioners, from both industry and academia, interested in all aspects of mobile computer vision - be it within consumer devices, autonomous/embedded systems or novel deployment domains.
The AlphaMOOC: Building a Massive Open Online Course One Graduate Student at a Time
Traditionally, developing courses in higher education involves a single individual working to build materials that will be implemented by that individual. More rarely, groups work together to build course.
Interdisciplinary collaboration by teams of developers is often seen during online course creation, where teams generally consist of content experts, technologists, and instructional designers, and each takes on and persists in a single role. We propose a different model for team development of online MOOCs, one in which team members take on diverse roles. This approach was implemented in development of a Foundations of Science course, with 28 core team members, consisting of staff and graduate students. The engagement of experts in areas outside their immediate area of expertise allowed developers to take on the role of the novice, ensuring a MOOC that was approachable to learners of diverse abilities.
Game Based Learning MOOC. Promoting Entrepreneurship Education
Promoting entrepreneurship could help society overcome the crisis. At the same time, MOOCs could allow a large number of participants to enrol in entrepreneurship education.
This case study introduces the Introduction to Entrepreneurship MOOC, which takes advantage of Game Based Learning for developing entrepreneurship through an active based methodology in a MOOC open to anyone, anywhere.
ICELW
ICELW works to improve online learning so that it makes a measurable difference in workplace performance and morale. Anyone with an interest or background in workplace eLearning is invited to attend and participate in the conference, which will take place in New York City from the 12-14 of June 2013.
The ICELW program cover a variety of topics relating to e-learning in the workplace and the use of technology to improve job performance, in the form of demonstrations, mini-seminars, case studies, interviews, debates, presentations, and panel discussions.
Realising the Potential of Peer-to-Peer Learning: Taming a MOOC with Social Media
We report on peer-to-peer learning online, describing the role of cooperative, student managed groupings in successful learn-by-MOOC experiences.
We found that to expand learners’ potential in digital culture, it helps to by-pass traditional notions and tools of online learning support, and embrace networked social media.