SOBA: How are MOOCs Changing Science Education? > December 10 2012 > 4PM - 5:30 PM ET

Tue Dec 4 17:26:03 EST 2012

Hi Steven

Thanks for sharing your MOOC experience - I found it really valuable and have been thinking about immersing myself in one for the same overarching reason as you - to find out what it's like.

I'd encourage anyone else on the list to share any firsthand experiences.

Next question - what will it mean for library resources and services?

Alan Cockerill
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From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Steven E. Patamia, Ph.D.
Sent: Wednesday, 5 December 2012 5:52 AM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] SOBA: How are MOOCs Changing Science Education? > December 10 2012 > 4PM - 5:30 PM ET

Hello,

I actually took that headline-making Stanford course on artificial intelligence.  I did it partly for the content and mostly to see how it was done.  It was a massive undertaking with some rough edges and there is much to say about it both positive and negative.

What I wanted to jump in and say to this audience is that this kind of education delivery is certainly not for everyone or every situation.  It is a taste of things to come at this stage primarily as a proof of concept demonstration.  I chose to participate in it at a time when I did knew I would not genuinely and reliably have the time to fully immerse myself in it.  I was nevertheless able to periodically devote enough time to get perfect scores on many assignments and high, but not perfect, scores on some of the exams.  It was, overall, like a giant take-home exam spread over the whole term.

Among those with enough available time, there was an enormous amount of collaboration. Collaboration is good, but not all participants had equal opportunity to indulge.  While I did not directly participate in any collaboraions, I peeked in on the two forums set up for it to see how it was done and even went back a few time to see if anyone else had noticed errors in the presentations, assignments or tests which I did (usually they did).  It was clear to me, however, that those forums revealed the presence of some students with lots of time on their hands and strong backgrounds.  Those advantages were amplified by the availability of lots of people to have discussions with provided one had the time to really do that, of course.  My recollection at the moment is that the percentage of students active in the collaborations was quite small ... maybe a few percent.   Perhaps Gerry knows or can find out.

Here is one of several possible punch lines:

I have been a graduate student and taught at the undergraduate level in a university.  A student immersed in a full class load in a major university is very unlikely to have the kind of time it takes to achieve a perfect performance in this kind of course presentation.  Out of 160,000 participants there are bound to be some very intelligent people who are also obsessive enough to achieve that goal and also have enough available time to achieve it.  So what?  It is what it is, but the observation that the top performers were not even enrolled at Stanford is not a measure of anything useful or new in this case.

I now find myself with very little time again, but I could not pass up contributing this particular observation.  I wish I had time to go over more in detail as I think there are useful things to notice about all this.

 Cheers!
On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:14 AM, McKiernan, Gerard [LIB] <gerrymck at iastate.edu<mailto:gerrymck at iastate.edu>> wrote:
*** Spoiler Alert > Possible Duplicate Posting ***

Colleagues/

Free Streamed Event

/Gerry

Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence made headlines from the New York Times to the Huffington Post for having 160,000 students sign up, but did you know that none of the 248 students getting a perfect grade were actually enrolled at Stanford? Clearly, the role of the classroom in higher education is changing and Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are leading the way. How will extending high-quality science education to more people change how research is done? Will MOOCs less to more factual discussions of controversial scientific topics like climate change and genetically modified organisms? Will the "flipped classroom" enable schools to get the spiraling cost of higher education under control and train more scientists? Join Relly Brandman, Keith E. Grant, and Kristin Sainani  for a discussion of these questions and more at this month's SOBA.

Presentations are followed by a panel discussion moderated by Christian Simm, swissnex San Francisco's Executive Director. The audience Q&A will be followed by a conversation at a nearby bar (to be announced at the event). During the discussion portion of the evening, we'll probe the challenges and opportunities of MOOCs. Bring your questions!

*Presentations and discussion livestreamed. Follow the event on Twitter (@sciobayarea and #sobay), and like SOBA on Facebook.

Date: December 10th, 2012
Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm PT
Location: swissnex San Francisco, 730 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94111

Source and Speaker Profiles and Registration and Streaming Links Available At

http://alternative-educate.blogspot.com/2012/12/soba-how-are-moocs-changing-science.html

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
and
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University
152 Parks Library
Ames IA 50011

http://alternative-educate.blogspot.com/
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Steven E. Patamia, Ph.D., J.D.
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