It turns out MOOC activity declines year-over-year in similar fashion to course participation per week, based on new research from MIT and Harvard.
MIT
A Moment of Clarity on the Role of Technology in Teaching
This following excerpt is based on a post first published at The Chronicle of Higher Education. With all of the discussion around the role of online education for traditional colleges and universities, over the past month we have seen reminders that key concerns are about people and pedagogy, not technology. And we can thank two […]
Miami, Harvard and MIT: Disability discrimination lawsuits focused on schools as content providers
In the discussions at Google+ based on last week’s post about the Miami University of Ohio disability discrimination lawsuit1, George Station made two important points that deserve more visibility. It’s been a-coming for several years now. Cal State has some pretty strong rules in place for compliance with ADA and state-level disability laws. Still, [Universal Design for […]
The Quotable Justin Reich: MOOC research needs to reboot
Thanks to Audrey Watters I just read a new article in Science Magazine and publicly posted here by Justin Reich, the lead researcher for HarvardX (Harvard’s implementation of edX and associated research team)1. Justin calls out the limitations of current MOOC research that focuses on A/B testing and engagement instead of learning, single-course context, and post hoc analysis with […]
No, I don’t believe that Harvard or MIT are hiding edX data
Since my Sunday post What Harvard and MIT could learn from the University of Phoenix about analytics, there have been a few comments with a common theme about Harvard and MIT perhaps withholding any learner-centered analytics data. As a recap, my argument was: Beyond data aggregated over the entire course, the Harvard and MIT edX […]
What Harvard and MIT could learn from the University of Phoenix about analytics
Last week Harvard and MIT released de-identified data from their edX-based MOOCs. Rather than just produce a summary report, the intent of this release was to open up the data and share it publicly. While it is good to see this approach to Open Data, unfortunately the data set is of limited value, and it actually illustrates […]
Two MOOC curriculum announcements in one week
In two apparently unrelated announcements, both MIT and Wharton announced they were moving beyond just courses and putting significant parts of their curriculum into MOOC platforms, both with identity verification. MIT is putting several undergraduate sequences online through MITx (their implementation of edX), while Wharton business school is putting a “foundation series” of first-year courses […]