appunto per il sig

Maurizio Guaitoli
Roma, 11 Febbraio 2013
Il futuro dell'educazione accademica? M.O.O.C.
18 maggio 2012 di Matteo Bittanti
I modelli, le formule e i formati dell'insegnamento accademico americano stanno
cambiando radicalmente. Negli ultimi mesi, le più importanti università statunitensi hanno
formato alleanze strategiche per fornire corsi online a costo zero. Dallo scorso aprile, Stanford,
Princeton, Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania e University of Michigan offrono numerosi
seminari e lecture attraverso Coursera, una startup della Silicon Valley il cui ambizioso tentativo
di reinventare la formazione superiore viene seguito da queste parti con particolare attenzione.
Coursera offre una dozzina di corsi online, con temi che spaziano dalla poesia all'informatica,
dalla teoria dei giochi all'alimentazione, ma il numero è destinato a crescere considerevolmente
nei prossimi mesi. La risposta della Harvard University e del Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) non si è fatta attendere. A maggio le due prestigiose istituzioni hanno dato
vita a edX, un progetto altrettanto ambizioso per offrire corsi gratuiti online. Il progetto ha un
budget di oltre 60 milioni di dollari. E' questo è solo l'inizio di una rivoluzione che ha già un
acronimo: MOOC, massively online open courses.
E' legittimo attendersi che, nel giro di una decade, gli studenti - anche quelli
internazionali - potranno laurearsi online selezionando una serie di corsi delle più prestigiose
università mondiali direttamente dal proprio laptop. Un pacchetto di corsi che include il meglio
dell'accademia americana, da Stanford a Yale, dal MIT a NYU. Il presupposto chiave è che nel
ventunesimo secolo, l'università, intesa come luogo fisico e concreto, si reinventa come
servizio, luogo post-geografico, accessibile 24 ore su 24 da chiunque e da qualunque luogo del
mondo. In questo senso, le iniziative digitali dell'Ivy League statunitense rappresentano il punto
di arrivo di un processo di diffusione della cultura accademica che si è concretizzata in
esperimenti di grande successo come OpenCourseware (MIT) e iTunes U, senza dimenticare il
brillante lavoro svolto da Salman Khan con la sua Khan School. Il rivoluzionario progetto di
Khan ha ispirato, tra i tanti, Sebastian Thrun, docente di Stanford e co-inventore delle
automobili automatiche di Google, che quest'anno ha lasciato il college californiano per lanciare
Udacity, una start-up che si propone di assumere i top talenti nell'ambito dell'educazione per
offrire lo stato-dell-'arte dei corsi online. Ciò che accomuna Coursera e Udacity è l'imperativo di
garantire l'accesso alle lezioni a tutti gli studenti a costo zero. In altre parole, si tratta di progetti
open e non-profit, decentralizzati e flessibili.
La buona notizia è che la qualità e quantità dei corsi online è aumentata enormemente
rispetto ai primi esperimenti nel settore dell'e-learning, caratterizzati da una tragica
incompetenza pedagogica di fondo e da limiti tecnologici non indifferenti. Il vero ostacolo, oggi
come ieri, è di natura politica, non tecnologica. Nel momento in cui gli studenti potranno
convertire i crediti "virtuali" accumulati seguendo le lezioni gratuite in crediti "reali", in veri e
propri "diplomi" - ed è solo questione di tempo- assisteremo a un vero e proprio cambio di
paradigma nel settore dell'educazione universitaria. L'epicentro di questa rivoluzione
copernicana è il Nord America. Le ragioni sono numerose, ma per semplificare ci limitiamo ad
osservare che il sistema universitario americano è il più dinamico, professionale ed avanzato del
mondo. Lo conferma il recente studio di Universitas 21, un network globale di ricerca
universitaria che misura il livello qualitativo delle istituzioni accademiche mondiali. Il report
pubblicato (link al file PDF) qualche settimana fa ha preso in esame le istituzioni pubbliche e
private di 48 paesi mondiali, valutandole sulla base di parametri quali risorse (investimenti
pubblici e privati), output (l'impatto della ricerca svolta dalle varie istituzioni), connettività (la
capacità di collaborare con altre nazioni) ed ambiente (la diversità dei campus e opportunità
offerte agli studenti).
Gli Stati Uniti dominano in settori quali la ricerca, risorse ed impatto extra-accademico.
Non è una sorpresa, ma la performance dell'Italia è pessima su quasi tutti i fronti (unica
eccezione: i finanziamenti statali).
Questi dati sono particolarmente preoccupanti perché una nazione che non investe in
formazione di qualità è una nazione senza futuro. La tecnologie digitali potrebbero offrire al
Belpaese un'importante opportunità di crescita e sviluppo. Ovviamente, la conditio sine qua non
è che nella stanza dei bottoni dell'accademia italiana ci siano leader in grado di a) comprendere
e b) massimizzare il potenziale pedagogico offerto dalle nuove tecnologie, M.O.O.C. in primis.
La domanda sorge spontanea: ci sono?
Alta Formazione nell’età del MOOC: collaborazione e intelligenza collettiva
Linda Finardi - 2 settembre 2012
Articolo per La Civetta de Il Circolo degli Inquieti
Di fronte ai nuovi modelli di alta formazione online sarebbe forse contento il pedagogista
statunitense John Dewey che in “Come pensiamo” offre uno spaccato critico dei tradizionali
modelli di insegnamento, spesso monotoni e orientati ad una uniformità militare: disposizione
fissa di banchi e sedie, organizzazione e ritmi reggimentali, pochi libri se non un unico manuale
a cui far riferimento, programmi delle discipline rigidi e ripetizione e memorizzazione come
unico metodo a garanzia dell’apprendimento. Tutto ciò lascia poco posto ad un reale sviluppo
delle capacità di riflessione e quindi di apprendimento di ogni singolo discente e ancora di più
limita le motivazioni che stanno alla base della ricerca intellettuale e della conoscenza.
Nuove teorie pedagogiche: ad esempio il MOOC
Anche se non devono considerarsi come una panacea, le tecnologie attuali e soprattutto i
cosiddetti “social media” se applicati dispiegando le loro potenzialità possono permettere di
sperimentare e sviluppare nuovi modelli pedagogici. Ad esempio, il MOOC – che arriva fino a
noi ora che la competizione tra le piattaforme Coursera, Udacity e l’ultima Edx è
definitivamente aperta - potrebbe potenzialmente sostenere il superamento di alcuni limiti della
formazione attuale di cui parla Dewey e di altri limiti del sistema universitario, quali la richiesta
di molto tempo, l’accumulo di un sapere spesso dispersivo e poco mirato al mondo del lavoro,
gli alti costi e in molti casi l’esclusività. Il MOOC non si limita più alla sola “messa in rete” di
materiale così come confezionato “offline”, ma si pone l’obiettivo di creare corsi ad hoc, dove
le tecnologie non sono una semplice appendice ma un ambiente didattico attivo, dove, vale a
dire, gli stessi studenti hanno un ruolo attivo a differenza della maggior parte dei contesti di
istruzione tradizionali.
Ogni studente è un collaboratore attivo
Modelli di educazione come il MOOC possono dare ordine e indicazioni utili per
orientarsi nel mare magnum della produzione, distribuzione e consumo dell’enorme mole di
informazioni e conoscenza presente nell’universo del web. Uno degli aspetti più interessanti che
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lega i tre processi – produzione, distribuzione e consumo – riguarda i valori della condivisione e
della collaborazione tipici delle dinamiche dell’ambiente online legati all’approccio “open”,
cioè gratis e accessibile a tutti. Il MOOC include spazi di confronto e scambio sui temi di
comune interesse attraverso social, forum e altri strumenti di ultima generazione, e attraverso
questi spazi l’intelligenza collettiva - di cui parlare Pierre Lévy, uno dei più brillanti "media
philosopher" contemporanei, in riferimento alla popolazione del web e alla loro capacità di
mettere in sinergia le proprie conoscenza - viene affinata e incanalata. “Educata” per dirla alla
Dewey.
Lo studente passa quindi da una situazione di passività nel ricevere le informazioni, tipica
del modello tradizionale, ad essere collaboratore attivo - coproduttore e coconsumatore - nel
processo di apprendimento: oltre a poter scegliere percorsi di studio inerenti i propri interessi ed
esigenze e studiare seguendo i propri ritmi di apprendimento, lo studente può ricercare e
selezionare materiali, verificare le fonti, offrire informazioni, creare materiali nuovi da
condividere e concorrere con i propri interventi ed il proprio punto di vista alla nascita di nuove
idee, alla costruzione di significati e allo sviluppo di progetti.
Secondo ciò che emerge dalle dichiarazioni di Anant Awarall, presidente della
piattaforma EdX e insegnante di Intelligenza Artificiale alla Berkeley, pare che i ragazzi si
confrontino e partecipino più facilmente negli ambienti online, a differenza di ciò che ancora
spessissimo capita nelle aule: ad una domanda posta da uno studente intervengono
immediatamente gli altri studenti e anche se le risposte sono del tutto corrette, si innesca un
processo riflessivo che un buon docente deve solo indirizzare.
Mooc per lo sviluppo dell’intelligenza collettiva.
L’ambiente online e in particolare piattaforme dedicate all’alta formazione basate sul
MOOC possono permettere di oltrepassare il limite della disposizione fisica che nelle lezioni
tradizionali concorre a separare gli studenti gli uni dagli altri, creando uno stato quasi di
immobilità e passività, e gli studenti dal professore producendo una comunicazione a senso
unico. La comunicazione reciproca di tutti con tutti, permessa dalle tecnologie sempre più
“umanizzate” - forum, community, video chat, blog, social network e social media in generale sospende positivamente i ruoli tradizionalmente intesi e crea l’humus adatto per atteggiamenti
di cooperazione che concorrono allo sviluppo del cervello sociale, cioè di quella capacità di
gestire un gran numero di relazioni con altri essere umani, che fra l’altro secondo le recenti
scoperte dell’antropologo Robin Dunbar concorrerebbe al successo della specie umane. Nel
MOOC, attraverso la partecipazione aperta e differenziata di ogni singolo studente, le
prospettive singole possono essere guidate alla convergenza, ma non per dominarsi l’una con
l’altra, quanto piuttosto per fondersi in pluri-sintesi e cioè quindi, in un’ottica di intelligenza
collettiva, predisporsi per creare valore e innovare.
Leggi il resto: http://www.linkiesta.it/blogs/net-working/alta-formazione-nell-eta-delmooc-collaborazione-e-intelligenza-collettiva#ixzz2KbfEuSY0
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 26, 2013
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LORD knows there’s a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is
one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the
budding revolution in global online higher education. Nothing has more potential to lift more
people out of poverty — by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in
the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the
world’s biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher
education than the massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms that are being developed
by the likes of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies like
Coursera and Udacity.
Go to Columnist Page »
Josh Haner/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Last May I wrote about Coursera — co-founded by the Stanford computer scientists
Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng — just after it opened. Two weeks ago, I went back out to Palo
Alto to check in on them. When I visited last May, about 300,000 people were taking 38 courses
taught by Stanford professors and a few other elite universities. Today, they have 2.4 million
students, taking 214 courses from 33 universities, including eight international ones.
Anant Agarwal, the former director of M.I.T.’s artificial intelligence lab, is now president
of edX, a nonprofit MOOC that M.I.T. and Harvard are jointly building. Agarwal told me that
since May, some 155,000 students from around the world have taken edX’s first course: an
M.I.T. intro class on circuits. “That is greater than the total number of M.I.T. alumni in its 150year history,” he said.
Yes, only a small percentage complete all the work, and even they still tend to be from
the middle and upper classes of their societies, but I am convinced that within five years these
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platforms will reach a much broader demographic. Imagine how this might change U.S. foreign
aid. For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two
dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and
invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world,
subtitled in Arabic.
YOU just have to hear the stories told by the pioneers in this industry to appreciate its
revolutionary potential. One of Koller’s favorites is about “Daniel,” a 17-year-old with autism
who communicates mainly by computer. He took an online modern poetry class from Penn. He
and his parents wrote that the combination of rigorous academic curriculum, which requires
Daniel to stay on task, and the online learning system that does not strain his social skills,
attention deficits or force him to look anyone in the eye, enable him to better manage his autism.
Koller shared a letter from Daniel, in which he wrote: “Please tell Coursera and Penn my story.
I am a 17-year-old boy emerging from autism. I can’t yet sit still in a classroom so [your course]
was my first real course ever. During the course, I had to keep pace with the class, which is
unheard-of in special ed. Now I know I can benefit from having to work hard and enjoy being in
sync with the world.”
One member of the Coursera team who recently took a Coursera course on sustainability
told me that it was so much more interesting than a similar course he had taken as an undergrad.
The online course included students from all over the world, from different climates, incomes
levels and geographies, and, as a result, “the discussions that happened in that course were so
much more valuable and interesting than with people of similar geography and income level” in
a typical American college.
Mitch Duneier, a Princeton sociology professor, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of
Higher Education in the fall about his experience teaching a class through Coursera: “A few
months ago, just as the campus of Princeton University had grown nearly silent after
commencement, 40,000 students from 113 countries arrived here via the Internet to take a free
course in introductory sociology. ... My opening discussion of C. Wright Mills’s classic 1959
book, ‘The Sociological Imagination,’ was a close reading of the text, in which I reviewed a key
chapter line by line. I asked students to follow along in their own copies, as I do in the lecture
hall. When I give this lecture on the Princeton campus, I usually receive a few penetrating
questions. In this case, however, within a few hours of posting the online version, the course
forums came alive with hundreds of comments and questions. Several days later there were
thousands. ... Within three weeks I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas than I
had in a career of teaching, which significantly influenced each of my subsequent lectures and
seminars.”
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COMMENTI
APPARSO NEL BLOG (GESTITO DA PROFESSORI UNIVERSITARI AMERICANI)
GlobalHigherEd
27 January 2013
Dear [hypothetical] colleagues,
I am sure you, or some of your fellow trustees, noticed Thomas Friedman’s op-ed
(‘Revolution Hits the Universities’) in this weekend’s Sunday New York Times. Friedman,
author of The World is Flat, did a characteristically effective job in raising attention about a
phenomenon (Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs) worth thinking about.
If you have not already pushed your senior leadership to respond regarding the MOOCs
idea, I’m sure this op-ed will become the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. The
questions you might initially ask include, no doubt, are we in the MOOCs game? If so, what’s
on offer, or in the pipeline? And if not, why not, or what’s the hold-up or valid counterargument. This is, after all one of the issues that stirred up last summer’s brouhaha over
governance at the University of Virginia.
To be sure, it is an opportune time to engender a broader debate about the MOOCs
phenomenon. This is an era of significant change in the nature and futures of higher ed.
Moody’s, for example, downgraded the entire US higher education sector on 16 January and
released a report that included this striking time-series [where tuition is diverging from the
government funding. Ndr].
As Moody’s also pointed in the same report, MOOCs are partially an outcome of a:
fundamental shift in strategy by industry leaders to embrace technological changes that
have threatened to destabilize the residential college and university’s business model over the
long run.
Thus MOOCs can be perceived of as a threat; a private authority-enabled mechanism that
may lead to the unbundling and separating out of the provision of some teaching services from
the faculty base at your institution, as well as many aspects of the direct and indirect
credentialing process.
For those in the MOOCs game, are there at least some benefits for universities? In the
same report Moody’s notes that there are, for some types of universities at least (the types
Friedman praises in his op-ed), and these could include:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
New revenue opportunities through fees for certificates, courses, degrees, licensing or
advertisement
Improved operating efficiencies due to the lower cost of course delivery on a per student
basis
Heightened global brand recognition, removing geographic campus-based barriers to
attracting students and faculty
Enhanced and protected core residential campus experience for students at traditional notfor-profit and public universities
Longer term potential to create new networks of much greater scale across the sector,
allowing more colleges and universities to specialize while also reducing operating costs
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6.
New competitive pressure on for-profit, and some not-for-profit, universities that fail to
align with emerging high-reputation networks to find a viable independent niche
There are some major caveats, though, to factor in when it comes to the Thomas
Friedman/Moody’s/et al, argument; the one buzzing and humming through the system right
now, propelled as it were by people, firms and organizations with vested yet often unstated
interests in making you feel concerned, if not agitated.
The first caveat is that Friedman has seized upon the MOOCs platform as it serves as a
defacto metaphor for his long held ‘world is flat’ argument. Friedman revels in the collapse of
time and space brought on by MOOCs and notes, for example:
Yes, only a small percentage complete all the work, and even they still tend to be from the
middle and upper classes of their societies, but I am convinced that within five years these
platforms will reach a much broader demographic. Imagine how this might change U.S. foreign
aid. For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two
dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator,
and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the
world, subtitled in Arabic.
However, as pointed out by economic geographers, and well known social scientists like
Richard Florida and Saskia Sassen, we actually live in a ‘spiky world.’ This spikiness is a
pattern associated with most factors of production and consumption, including internet access
and the production and circulation of knowledge. Moreover, forms of knowledge do not travel
in an uncontextualized nor uncontested manner; they are built upon societally-specific
assumptions, depend upon years of prior learning to make sense of, and sometimes rely upon
geographically- and historically-specific case studies to ensure effective transmission and
learning. So yes MOOCs can jump scale, but they face the same problems most of our other
technologies and knowledge transmission systems have had for decades. It is arguably
ineffective to legitimize MOOCs at your university by implying they’ll help you save the (nonWestern) world like Friedman does.
Second, while Friedman’s article implies a relatively easy Yes or No decision re. going
ahead (we are, after all, supposed to be in the middle of a “revolution”) the direct and indirect
resource base required to establish and maintain MOOCs is nothing to be sneezed at. For
example, it was good to see that he profiled Mitchell Duneier’s Coursera course. What
Friedman failed to note was that Princeton is an extraordinarily wealthy private university that
has the capacity to provide undoubtedly brilliant and hard working Duneier with sufficient
support to run his MOOC, including via designated assistants. Online teaching can scale more
easily than in-person teaching, but the creation of the institutional space and support
infrastructure to produce a series of quality MOOCs takes time, attention, resources, TLC, and
so on. The production process also has to be preceded by the creation of a formal or informal
governance pathway, as well as an assessment if your university has the technological and
organizational capabilities to coordinate a legitimate MOOCs initiative.
Third, Friedman is portraying a phenomenon that is being deliberately stirred up by more
than just an interest in enhancing innovation and global access via a scale jumping technology
— there is also a complicated and fast evolving political economy to MOOCs (and online
education more generally). Narrowly, the phenomenon is well worth experimenting with, in my
humble opinion. I would agree with Friedman that this is an amazing time to innovate and take
advantage of the platforms and learning management and analytic processes engendered by the
backers of platforms like Coursera, Udacity and edX. Yet some firms and political
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actors/advocates in the US have deemed online education and MOOCs, in particular, as an
answer to fiscal constraints; a ‘silver bullet’ of sorts to ensure taxation levels do not budge, or
indeed go down. But look again at the graph from the Moody’s report I pasted in above: this
shift in financing is nothing short of a structural change that has moved beyond the notion that
austerity is a response to a cyclical crisis.
We are now in a new (normalized) normal, at least in the US, where austerity is accepted
and indeed viewed positively for it can be perceived as a mechanism to restructure higher
education systems and institutions. In short, we are arguably (as noted by Dean Martin
McQuillan in an article in Times Higher Education magazine) not in a state of ‘crisis’ as ‘crisis’
infers a cyclical dimension to the challenges facing the financing of higher ed. Austerity (the
strategic and systematic reduction of state-financing levels), in combination with the
contradictory/ironic desire to ramp up state governance power (including about online education
and associated credentialing), is the new normal and this is what Friedman, amidst all his hype
about MOOCs and online education, utterly fails to flag.
You obviously will have your own views about the validity of my argument and please
feel free to disagree. But regardless of your view, let me point our that there is a real risk in the
US higher education context that MOOCs will become a politicized platform: if they start to be
perceived as a Trojan horse to dismantle the public university, or as a ‘rope‘ to strangle
ourselves, the ‘baby’ may get thrown out with the ‘bathwater’ and the positive features of
MOOCs (and there are many!) will be lost amidst the associated conflict. In short, there are
political and economic machinations associated with the stirring of interest in, and coverage of,
MOOCs. Given this, and given the stakes at hand, it is important to address the MOOCs
phenomenon is a serious, sustained, and reflective way, not in a knee jerk fashion, one way or
the other.
My next memo will focus on the international dimensions of MOOCs, an issue also
grappled with in two earlier entries in GlobalHigherEd.
Kris Olds
APPARSO NEL NEW YORK TIMES, ED. 2 NOV. 2012
By LAURA PAPPANO
IN late September, as workers applied joint compound to new office walls, hoodie-clad
colleagues who had just met were working together on deadline. Film editors, code-writing
interns and “edX fellows” — grad students and postdocs versed in online education — were
translating videotaped lectures into MOOCs, or massive open online courses. As if anyone
needed reminding, a row of aqua Post-its gave the dates the courses would “go live.”
Go to Education Life »
Related
 The Big Three, at a Glance(November 4, 2012)
The paint is barely dry, yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses.
That’s nothing. Coursera, founded just last January, has reached more than 1.7 million —
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growing “faster than Facebook,” boasts Andrew Ng, on leave from Stanford to run his for-profit
MOOC provider.
“This has caught all of us by surprise,” says David Stavens, who formed a company
called Udacity with Sebastian Thrun and Michael Sokolsky after more than 150,000 signed up
for Dr. Thrun’s “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” last fall, starting the revolution that has
higher education gasping. A year ago, he marvels, “we were three guys in Sebastian’s living
room and now we have 40 employees full time.”
“I like to call this the year of disruption,” says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, “and the
year is not over yet.”
MOOCs have been around for a few years as collaborative techie learning events, but this
is the year everyone wants in. Elite universities are partnering with Coursera at a furious pace. It
now offers courses from 33 of the biggest names in postsecondary education, including
Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke. In September, Google unleashed a MOOC-building
online tool, and Stanford unveiled Class2Go with two courses.
Nick McKeown is teaching one of them, on computer networking, with Philip Levis (the
one with a shock of magenta hair in the introductory video). Dr. McKeown sums up the energy
of this grand experiment when he gushes, “We’re both very excited.” Casually draped over
auditorium seats, the professors also acknowledge that they are not exactly sure how this
MOOC stuff works.
“We are just going to see how this goes over the next few weeks,” says Dr. McKeown.
WHAT IS A MOOC ANYWAY?
Traditional online courses charge tuition, carry credit and limit enrollment to a few dozen
to ensure interaction with instructors. The MOOC, on the other hand, is usually free, credit-less
and, well, massive.
Because anyone with an Internet connection can enroll, faculty can’t possibly respond to
students individually. So the course design — how material is presented and the interactivity —
counts for a lot. As do fellow students. Classmates may lean on one another in study groups
organized in their towns, in online forums or, the prickly part, for grading work.
The evolving form knits together education, entertainment (think gaming) and social
networking. Unlike its antecedent, open courseware — usually written materials or videotapes
of lectures that make you feel as if you’re spying on a class from the back of the room — the
MOOC is a full course made with you in mind.
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The medium is still the lecture. Thanks to Khan Academy’s free archive of snappy
instructional videos, MOOC makers have gotten the memo on the benefit of brevity: 8 to 12
minutes is typical. Then — this is key — videos pause perhaps twice for a quiz to make sure
you understand the material or, in computer programming, to let you write code. Feedback is
electronic. Teaching assistants may monitor discussion boards. There may be homework and a
final exam.
The MOOC certainly presents challenges. Can learning be scaled up this much? Grading
is imperfect, especially for nontechnical subjects. Cheating is a reality. “We found groups of 20
people in a course submitting identical homework,” says David Patterson, a professor at the
University of California, Berkeley, who teaches software engineering, in a tone of disbelief at
such blatant copying; Udacity and edX now offer proctored exams.
Some students are also ill prepared for the university-level work. And few stick with it.
“Signing up for a class is a lightweight process,” says Dr. Ng. It might take just five minutes,
assuming you spend two devising a stylish user name. Only 46,000 attempted the first
assignment in Dr. Ng’s course on machine learning last fall. In the end, he says, 13,000
completed the class and earned a certificate — from him, not Stanford.
That’s still a lot of students. The shimmery hope is that free courses can bring the best
education in the world to the most remote corners of the planet, help people in their careers, and
expand intellectual and personal networks. Three-quarters of those who took Dr. Patterson’s
“Software as a Service” last winter on Coursera (it’s now on edX) were from outside the United
States, though the opposite was true of a course on circuits and electronics piloted last spring by
Dr. Agarwal. But both attracted highly educated students and both reported that over 70 percent
had degrees (more than a third had graduate degrees). And in a vote of confidence in the form,
students in both overwhelmingly endorsed the quality of the course: 63 percent who completed
Dr. Agarwal’s course as well as a similar one on campus found the MOOC better; 36 percent
found it comparable; 1 percent, worse.
Ray Schroeder, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at the
University of Illinois, Springfield, says three things matter most in online learning: quality of
material covered, engagement of the teacher and interaction among students. The first doesn’t
seem to be an issue — most professors come from elite campuses, and so far most MOOCs are
in technical subjects like computer science and math, with straightforward content. But
providing instructor connection and feedback, including student interactions, is trickier.
“What’s frustrating in a MOOC is the instructor is not as available because there are tens
of thousands of others in the class,” Dr. Schroeder says. How do you make the massive feel
intimate?
10
That’s what everyone is trying to figure out.
Many places offer MOOCs, and more will. But Coursera, Udacity and edX are defining
the form as they develop their brands.
THE FLAVOR OF THE MOOC
Coursera casts itself as a “hub” — Dr. Ng’s word — for learning and networking. The
learning comes gratis from an impressive roster of elites offering a wide range of courses, from
computer science to philosophy to medicine. Not all are highbrow or technical; “Listening to
World Music” from the University of Pennsylvania aims to broaden your iPod playlist.
While Coursera will make suggestions, Dr. Ng says, “ultimately all pedagogical decisions
are made by the universities.” Most offerings are adapted from existing courses: a Princeton
Coursera course is a Princeton course. But the vibe is decidedly Facebook — build a profile,
upload your photo — with tools for students to plan “meet-ups” with Courserians in about 1,400
cities worldwide. These gatherings may be bona fide study groups or social sessions.
Membership may be many or sparse.
No one showed at the meet-up that Stacey Brown, an information technology manager at
a Hartford insurance company, scheduled for a 14th-floor conference room on a Thursday after
work, despite R.S.V.P.’s from a few classmates in the area. He’s taking three Coursera MOOCs,
including “Gamification” from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. In addition to
the learning — and dropping to bosses that he’s taking a Wharton course — Mr. Brown says, “I
hope to get a network.”
Others like the discipline a group offers. Kimberly Spillman, a software engineer, started
taking seven MOOCs and completed three. “The ones I have study groups with people, those
are the ones I finish,” Ms. Spillman says. She first joined a group for Dr. Thrun’s artificial
intelligence course, and then ran one for a Udacity course on building a search engine,
organizing Thursday-evening discussions of the week’s material followed by a social hour at a
nearby pub. Fifteen people met each week at the Ansir Innovation Center, a community space
with big tables and comfortable chairs, in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood of San Diego.
Udacity has stuck close to its math and computer science roots and emphasizes applied
learning, like “How to Build a Blog” or “Building a Web Browser.” Job placement is part of the
Udacity package. “The type of skills taught in computer science, even at elite universities, can
be very theoretical,” Dr. Stavens explains.
Udacity courses are designed and produced in-house or with companies like Google and
Microsoft. In a poke at its university-based competition, Dr. Stavens says they pick instructors
11
not because of their academic research, as universities do, but because of how they teach. “We
reject about 98 percent of faculty who want to teach with us,” he says. “Just because a person is
the world’s most famous economist doesn’t mean they are the best person to teach the subject.”
Dr. Stavens sees a day when MOOCs will disrupt how faculty are attracted, trained and paid,
with the most popular “compensated like a TV actor or a movie actor.” He adds that “students
will want to learn from whoever is the best teacher.”
That means you don’t need a Ph.D. While there are traditional academics like David
Evans of the University of Virginia, “Landmarks in Physics,” a first-year college-level course,
is taught by Andy Brown, a 2009 M.I.T. graduate with a B.S. in physics. “We think the future of
education is guys like Andy Brown who produce the most fun,” Dr. Stavens says. Mr. Brown’s
course is an indie version of “Bill Nye the Science Guy” — filmed in Italy, the Netherlands and
England, with opening credits for “director of photography” and “second camera and editor.”
Whether explaining what the ancients believed about the shape of the earth or, in Dr.
Thrun’s statistics course, why you are unpopular, statistically speaking, voice-overs are as
nonthreatening as a grade school teacher.
“You feel like you are sitting next to someone and they are tutoring you,” says Jacqueline
Spiegel, a mother of three from New Rochelle, N.Y., with a master’s in computer science from
Columbia who has enrolled in MOOCs from Udacity and Coursera. While taking “Artificial
Intelligence,” she discovered she liked puzzling through assignments in online study groups.
The class was tough and took “an embarrassing amount of time,” says Ms. Spiegel, who
found that consuming lectures by smartphone during her 14-year-old’s 6 a.m. ice skating
sessions worked less well than being parked at a desktop. “I would listen to the lectures, then I
would listen to them again.” Her effort was huge — some 22 hours a week — but rewarding.
Ms. Spiegel befriended women in India and Pakistan through Facebook study groups and
started an online group, CompScisters, for women taking science and technology MOOCs.
If Udacity favors stylish hands-on instruction, edX aims to be elite, smart and rigorous;
don’t expect a gloss of calculus if you need it but never took it. Some 120 institutions have been
in touch; only Berkeley and the University of Texas system have been admitted to the club.
EdX’s M.I.T. roots show in its staff’s geeky passion for building and testing online tools.
They collect your clicks. Feedback from the MOOC taught last spring by Dr. Agarwal (who,
students learn, is obsessed with chain saws) revealed that participants would rather watch a hand
writing an equation or sentence on paper than stare at the same paper with writing already on it.
12
The focus is on making education logical. “Someone who is consuming the course should
know it is not serendipity that the course is chunked in a certain way, but that there is
intentionality to sequencing video,” says Howard A. Lurie, vice president for content
development.
With mini-notebook in hand, he has been leading the “daily stand-up” meeting (so called
because attendees lean against walls) to keep course development on schedule. After one
meeting, Lyla Fischer, a 2011 M.I.T. graduate and edX fellow, sat at her computer, a tag still
dangling from the chair, and edited the answers for problem sets in Dr. Agarwal’s course. Last
spring, students could download PDFs with brief answers. Now, she says, “there is a full
explanation of how to do it, here are the steps,” right on the site.
“We are trying to use the magic of all the tool sets we have,” Mr. Lurie says. Students
control how fast they watch lectures. Some like to go at nearly double the speed; others want to
slow down and replay. Coming: If you get a wrong answer, the software figures out where you
went wrong and offers a correction.
WORKING OUT THE KINKS
Assignments that can’t be scored by an automated grader are pushing MOOC providers to
get creative, especially in courses that involve writing and analysis. Coursera uses peer grading:
submit an assignment and five people grade it; in turn, you grade five assignments.
But what if someone is a horrible grader?
Coursera is developing software that will flag those who assign very inaccurate grades
and give their assessment less weight. Mitchell Duneier, a Princeton professor, is conducting a
study that compares peer grading of the final exam in his sociology MOOC on Coursera last
summer with the grades he and his course assistants would have given the students.
Mr. Brown, the Hartford I.T. manager, does not have confidence in peer feedback. “This
could be a 14-year-old kid in South Africa answering me,” he says, thinking of his 14-year-old.
The challenge is not just in grading. The diversity of MOOC takers — teenagers to retirees, and
from across the globe — means classmates lack a common knowledge base and educational
background. Out-of-their-league students, especially in highly technical courses, can drag down
discussions.
Which course is right for you? What prerequisites are really needed to perform well?
Princeton’s “Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes” on Coursera recommends basic linear
algebra and multivariable calculus but the “instructor will see if part of the course material can
be presented without requiring this mathematical background.” “Introduction to Computer
13
Science” from Harvard lists prerequisites as “none” — as long as you’re Harvard-ready. Where
are the Yelp reviews?
“We desperately need crowdsourcing,” says Cathy N. Davidson, a Duke professor of
English and interdisciplinary studies. “We need a MOOCE — massive open online course
evaluation.”
Most important, what do you get for your effort? Do you earn a certificate? A job
interview? Or just the happy feeling of learning something?
“If one is going for the knowledge, it’s a boon,” says Dr. Schroeder of the University of
Illinois. “If one is looking for credit, that is one of the challenges. How do we fit this into the
structure of higher education today?”
Dr. Agarwal predicts that “a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with
edX certificates.” He expects students will one day arrive on campus with MOOC credits the
way they do now with Advanced Placement.
The line between online and on campus is already blurring. This spring Dr. Davidson will
teach a class called “Surprise Endings: Social Science and Literature” at Duke and as a MOOC,
with her Duke students running the online discussions. This fall, San Jose State students are
taking Dr. Agarwal’s course on circuits and electronics, with professors and teaching assistants
on campus leading discussions. They add their own content, including exams. In the spring,
Massachusetts Bay Community College in Wellesley will use an edX MOOC in introductory
computer science.
Dr. Stavens promises more change, and more disruption: “We are only 5 to 10 percent of
the way there.”
Laura Pappano is author of “Inside School Turnarounds” and writer in residence at the
Wellesley Centers for Women.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 11, 2012
An article last Sunday about massive open online courses, using information from the
MOOC provider Coursera, included several errors. The source of a study of peer grading in a
Princeton sociology MOOC was Mitchell Duneier, the teacher, not Coursera. The student work
was regraded by Professor Duneier and his teaching assistants, not by Princeton instructors. And
14
it is not the case that the results have been released. The article also misspelled the surname of a
co-founder of another MOOC provider, Udacity. He is Michael Sokolsky, not Sokolosky.
IN late September, as workers applied joint compound to new office walls, hoodie-clad
colleagues who had just met were working together on deadline. Film editors, code-writing
interns and “edX fellows” — grad students and postdocs versed in online education — were
translating videotaped lectures into MOOCs, or massive open online courses. As if anyone
needed reminding, a row of aqua Post-its gave the dates the courses would “go live.”
Go to Education Life »
Related
 The Big Three, at a Glance(November 4, 2012)
The paint is barely dry, yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses.
That’s nothing. Coursera, founded just last January, has reached more than 1.7 million —
growing “faster than Facebook,” boasts Andrew Ng, on leave from Stanford to run his for-profit
MOOC provider.
“This has caught all of us by surprise,” says David Stavens, who formed a company
called Udacity with Sebastian Thrun and Michael Sokolsky after more than 150,000 signed up
for Dr. Thrun’s “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” last fall, starting the revolution that has
higher education gasping. A year ago, he marvels, “we were three guys in Sebastian’s living
room and now we have 40 employees full time.”
“I like to call this the year of disruption,” says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, “and the
year is not over yet.”
MOOCs have been around for a few years as collaborative techie learning events, but this
is the year everyone wants in. Elite universities are partnering with Coursera at a furious pace. It
now offers courses from 33 of the biggest names in postsecondary education, including
Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke. In September, Google unleashed a MOOC-building
online tool, and Stanford unveiled Class2Go with two courses.
Nick McKeown is teaching one of them, on computer networking, with Philip Levis (the
one with a shock of magenta hair in the introductory video). Dr. McKeown sums up the energy
of this grand experiment when he gushes, “We’re both very excited.” Casually draped over
auditorium seats, the professors also acknowledge that they are not exactly sure how this
MOOC stuff works.
“We are just going to see how this goes over the next few weeks,” says Dr. McKeown.
15
WHAT IS A MOOC ANYWAY?
Traditional online courses charge tuition, carry credit and limit enrollment to a few dozen
to ensure interaction with instructors. The MOOC, on the other hand, is usually free, credit-less
and, well, massive.
Because anyone with an Internet connection can enroll, faculty can’t possibly respond to
students individually. So the course design — how material is presented and the interactivity —
counts for a lot. As do fellow students. Classmates may lean on one another in study groups
organized in their towns, in online forums or, the prickly part, for grading work.
The evolving form knits together education, entertainment (think gaming) and social
networking. Unlike its antecedent, open courseware — usually written materials or videotapes
of lectures that make you feel as if you’re spying on a class from the back of the room — the
MOOC is a full course made with you in mind.
The medium is still the lecture. Thanks to Khan Academy’s free archive of snappy
instructional videos, MOOC makers have gotten the memo on the benefit of brevity: 8 to 12
minutes is typical. Then — this is key — videos pause perhaps twice for a quiz to make sure
you understand the material or, in computer programming, to let you write code. Feedback is
electronic. Teaching assistants may monitor discussion boards. There may be homework and a
final exam.
The MOOC certainly presents challenges. Can learning be scaled up this much? Grading
is imperfect, especially for nontechnical subjects. Cheating is a reality. “We found groups of 20
people in a course submitting identical homework,” says David Patterson, a professor at the
University of California, Berkeley, who teaches software engineering, in a tone of disbelief at
such blatant copying; Udacity and edX now offer proctored exams.
Some students are also ill prepared for the university-level work. And few stick with it.
“Signing up for a class is a lightweight process,” says Dr. Ng. It might take just five minutes,
assuming you spend two devising a stylish user name. Only 46,000 attempted the first
assignment in Dr. Ng’s course on machine learning last fall. In the end, he says, 13,000
completed the class and earned a certificate — from him, not Stanford.
That’s still a lot of students. The shimmery hope is that free courses can bring the best
education in the world to the most remote corners of the planet, help people in their careers, and
expand intellectual and personal networks. Three-quarters of those who took Dr. Patterson’s
“Software as a Service” last winter on Coursera (it’s now on edX) were from outside the United
States, though the opposite was true of a course on circuits and electronics piloted last spring by
16
Dr. Agarwal. But both attracted highly educated students and both reported that over 70 percent
had degrees (more than a third had graduate degrees). And in a vote of confidence in the form,
students in both overwhelmingly endorsed the quality of the course: 63 percent who completed
Dr. Agarwal’s course as well as a similar one on campus found the MOOC better; 36 percent
found it comparable; 1 percent, worse.
Ray Schroeder, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at the
University of Illinois, Springfield, says three things matter most in online learning: quality of
material covered, engagement of the teacher and interaction among students. The first doesn’t
seem to be an issue — most professors come from elite campuses, and so far most MOOCs are
in technical subjects like computer science and math, with straightforward content. But
providing instructor connection and feedback, including student interactions, is trickier.
“What’s frustrating in a MOOC is the instructor is not as available because there are tens
of thousands of others in the class,” Dr. Schroeder says. How do you make the massive feel
intimate?
That’s what everyone is trying to figure out.
Many places offer MOOCs, and more will. But Coursera, Udacity and edX are defining
the form as they develop their brands.
THE FLAVOR OF THE MOOC
Coursera casts itself as a “hub” — Dr. Ng’s word — for learning and networking. The
learning comes gratis from an impressive roster of elites offering a wide range of courses, from
computer science to philosophy to medicine. Not all are highbrow or technical; “Listening to
World Music” from the University of Pennsylvania aims to broaden your iPod playlist.
While Coursera will make suggestions, Dr. Ng says, “ultimately all pedagogical decisions
are made by the universities.” Most offerings are adapted from existing courses: a Princeton
Coursera course is a Princeton course. But the vibe is decidedly Facebook — build a profile,
upload your photo — with tools for students to plan “meet-ups” with Courserians in about 1,400
cities worldwide. These gatherings may be bona fide study groups or social sessions.
Membership may be many or sparse.
No one showed at the meet-up that Stacey Brown, an information technology manager at
a Hartford insurance company, scheduled for a 14th-floor conference room on a Thursday after
work, despite R.S.V.P.’s from a few classmates in the area. He’s taking three Coursera MOOCs,
including “Gamification” from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. In addition to
17
the learning — and dropping to bosses that he’s taking a Wharton course — Mr. Brown says, “I
hope to get a network.”
Others like the discipline a group offers. Kimberly Spillman, a software engineer, started
taking seven MOOCs and completed three. “The ones I have study groups with people, those
are the ones I finish,” Ms. Spillman says. She first joined a group for Dr. Thrun’s artificial
intelligence course, and then ran one for a Udacity course on building a search engine,
organizing Thursday-evening discussions of the week’s material followed by a social hour at a
nearby pub. Fifteen people met each week at the Ansir Innovation Center, a community space
with big tables and comfortable chairs, in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood of San Diego.
Udacity has stuck close to its math and computer science roots and emphasizes applied
learning, like “How to Build a Blog” or “Building a Web Browser.” Job placement is part of the
Udacity package. “The type of skills taught in computer science, even at elite universities, can
be very theoretical,” Dr. Stavens explains.
Udacity courses are designed and produced in-house or with companies like Google and
Microsoft. In a poke at its university-based competition, Dr. Stavens says they pick instructors
not because of their academic research, as universities do, but because of how they teach. “We
reject about 98 percent of faculty who want to teach with us,” he says. “Just because a person is
the world’s most famous economist doesn’t mean they are the best person to teach the subject.”
Dr. Stavens sees a day when MOOCs will disrupt how faculty are attracted, trained and paid,
with the most popular “compensated like a TV actor or a movie actor.” He adds that “students
will want to learn from whoever is the best teacher.”
That means you don’t need a Ph.D. While there are traditional academics like David
Evans of the University of Virginia, “Landmarks in Physics,” a first-year college-level course,
is taught by Andy Brown, a 2009 M.I.T. graduate with a B.S. in physics. “We think the future of
education is guys like Andy Brown who produce the most fun,” Dr. Stavens says. Mr. Brown’s
course is an indie version of “Bill Nye the Science Guy” — filmed in Italy, the Netherlands and
England, with opening credits for “director of photography” and “second camera and editor.”
Whether explaining what the ancients believed about the shape of the earth or, in Dr.
Thrun’s statistics course, why you are unpopular, statistically speaking, voice-overs are as
nonthreatening as a grade school teacher.
“You feel like you are sitting next to someone and they are tutoring you,” says Jacqueline
Spiegel, a mother of three from New Rochelle, N.Y., with a master’s in computer science from
Columbia who has enrolled in MOOCs from Udacity and Coursera. While taking “Artificial
Intelligence,” she discovered she liked puzzling through assignments in online study groups.
18
The class was tough and took “an embarrassing amount of time,” says Ms. Spiegel, who
found that consuming lectures by smartphone during her 14-year-old’s 6 a.m. ice skating
sessions worked less well than being parked at a desktop. “I would listen to the lectures, then I
would listen to them again.” Her effort was huge — some 22 hours a week — but rewarding.
Ms. Spiegel befriended women in India and Pakistan through Facebook study groups and
started an online group, CompScisters, for women taking science and technology MOOCs.
If Udacity favors stylish hands-on instruction, edX aims to be elite, smart and rigorous;
don’t expect a gloss of calculus if you need it but never took it. Some 120 institutions have been
in touch; only Berkeley and the University of Texas system have been admitted to the club.
EdX’s M.I.T. roots show in its staff’s geeky passion for building and testing online tools.
They collect your clicks. Feedback from the MOOC taught last spring by Dr. Agarwal (who,
students learn, is obsessed with chain saws) revealed that participants would rather watch a hand
writing an equation or sentence on paper than stare at the same paper with writing already on it.
The focus is on making education logical. “Someone who is consuming the course should
know it is not serendipity that the course is chunked in a certain way, but that there is
intentionality to sequencing video,” says Howard A. Lurie, vice president for content
development.
With mini-notebook in hand, he has been leading the “daily stand-up” meeting (so called
because attendees lean against walls) to keep course development on schedule. After one
meeting, Lyla Fischer, a 2011 M.I.T. graduate and edX fellow, sat at her computer, a tag still
dangling from the chair, and edited the answers for problem sets in Dr. Agarwal’s course. Last
spring, students could download PDFs with brief answers. Now, she says, “there is a full
explanation of how to do it, here are the steps,” right on the site.
“We are trying to use the magic of all the tool sets we have,” Mr. Lurie says. Students
control how fast they watch lectures. Some like to go at nearly double the speed; others want to
slow down and replay. Coming: If you get a wrong answer, the software figures out where you
went wrong and offers a correction.
WORKING OUT THE KINKS
Assignments that can’t be scored by an automated grader are pushing MOOC providers to
get creative, especially in courses that involve writing and analysis. Coursera uses peer grading:
submit an assignment and five people grade it; in turn, you grade five assignments.
But what if someone is a horrible grader?
19
Coursera is developing software that will flag those who assign very inaccurate grades
and give their assessment less weight. Mitchell Duneier, a Princeton professor, is conducting a
study that compares peer grading of the final exam in his sociology MOOC on Coursera last
summer with the grades he and his course assistants would have given the students.
Mr. Brown, the Hartford I.T. manager, does not have confidence in peer feedback. “This
could be a 14-year-old kid in South Africa answering me,” he says, thinking of his 14-year-old.
The challenge is not just in grading. The diversity of MOOC takers — teenagers to retirees, and
from across the globe — means classmates lack a common knowledge base and educational
background. Out-of-their-league students, especially in highly technical courses, can drag down
discussions.
Which course is right for you? What prerequisites are really needed to perform well?
Princeton’s “Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes” on Coursera recommends basic linear
algebra and multivariable calculus but the “instructor will see if part of the course material can
be presented without requiring this mathematical background.” “Introduction to Computer
Science” from Harvard lists prerequisites as “none” — as long as you’re Harvard-ready. Where
are the Yelp reviews?
“We desperately need crowdsourcing,” says Cathy N. Davidson, a Duke professor of
English and interdisciplinary studies. “We need a MOOCE — massive open online course
evaluation.”
Most important, what do you get for your effort? Do you earn a certificate? A job
interview? Or just the happy feeling of learning something?
“If one is going for the knowledge, it’s a boon,” says Dr. Schroeder of the University of
Illinois. “If one is looking for credit, that is one of the challenges. How do we fit this into the
structure of higher education today?”
Dr. Agarwal predicts that “a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with
edX certificates.” He expects students will one day arrive on campus with MOOC credits the
way they do now with Advanced Placement.
The line between online and on campus is already blurring. This spring Dr. Davidson will
teach a class called “Surprise Endings: Social Science and Literature” at Duke and as a MOOC,
with her Duke students running the online discussions. This fall, San Jose State students are
taking Dr. Agarwal’s course on circuits and electronics, with professors and teaching assistants
on campus leading discussions. They add their own content, including exams. In the spring,
20
Massachusetts Bay Community College in Wellesley will use an edX MOOC in introductory
computer science.
Dr. Stavens promises more change, and more disruption: “We are only 5 to 10 percent of
the way there.”
Laura Pappano is author of “Inside School Turnarounds” and writer in residence at the
Wellesley Centers for Women.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 11, 2012
An article last Sunday about massive open online courses, using information from the
MOOC provider Coursera, included several errors. The source of a study of peer grading in a
Princeton sociology MOOC was Mitchell Duneier, the teacher, not Coursera. The student work
was regraded by Professor Duneier and his teaching assistants, not by Princeton instructors. And
it is not the case that the results have been released. The article also misspelled the surname of a
co-founder of another MOOC provider, Udacity. He is Michael Sokolsky, not Sokolosky.
21