Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Open Ed 13: Emancipating Learning: a Journey to MOOCs and Beyond

"Some may think that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a fad, but they are raising some interesting questions about the scalability, accessibility and quality of online learning, as well as new thoughts about the higher education landscape. While a number of institutions have started to offer MOOCs, many are still wondering if and how to participate, as well as how these learning experiences relate to other online teaching and learning plans.

Are your institutional leaders tasking you what finding out more and determining what they should do about MOOCs? Are you wondering if and how you should get started? Are you curious about what it is like to develop and facilitate a MOOC and if it's worth the effort? Whether you?ve run a MOOC or are considering running one, this participants on the panel will provide the perspective and journey of three institutions which have run one more MOOCs: Cuyahoga Community College; State University of New York; and University of Illinois Springfield; on their MOOC journey. They will share insights, best practices, pitfalls and research results.

- Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) recently became the first community college in the nation to launch a MOOC -- free online classes to help students of all ages, including high school students preparing for college readiness, middle-aged workers returning to college to prepare for a new career and to middle-school students working ahead at Pre-Algebra pass developmental math, also known as remedial math, before they enter college. This course was developed using an innovative design to improve student engagement. The MOOC leverages game mechanics to motivate students? progress through the course. Sandy Moses and Sasha Thackaberry will provide highlights of the design, development and delivery process, along with results of their data analysis into course activity and student performance.

- State University of New York (SUNY) is hosting an open community course on Open Educational Resources and members of the team who designed the course will discuss the collaborative project. The team includes SUNY faculty, librarians, and instructional designers from several campuses who worked on the creation of an open course on OER designed for SUNY faculty and staff. The project has been designed to build critical thinking skills needed for creating, selecting, and evaluating open educational resources in the context of the online environment

- University of Illinois Springfield held a MOOC entitled "The Emancipation Proclamation: What Came Before, How It Worked, and What Followed" in early 2013. This was the second MOOC offered by UIS, following the eduMOOC of Fall 2011. Ray Schroeder, Michele Gribbins, Carrie Levin and Emily Boles will share their experiences and lessons learned in developing and delivering the MOOCs. Discussions will range from the effectiveness of technologies and activities used in the two MOOCs to insights from students regarding their motivation for participating in the MOOCs."

Sasha Thackaberry: Their MOOC is an xMOOC. They are using Mozilla Open Badges and game mechanics - a low-risk failure factor - the students can take and retake tests.  MOOC data: 1372 enrolled, 809 participated, 147 successfully completed. Students had to complete a survey in order to get to the content. The survey gathered demographics and learning history.

Michelle Gribbens: Their second MOOC- it is on the Emancipation Proclamation. All of their problems were overcome by using Coursesites. I am interested in the Terms of Service from Blackboard which typically licenses all content. They used a lot of the Blaclboard tools in their courses. The MOOC was 8 weeks but she thinks that a 6 week MOOC would have been better. Most of the participants were over 50. sites.google.com/sites/openedmooc

opensuny.coursesites.com is an online course with a badge system.
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