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OUT WITH THE OLD: Coursera is planning to terminate access to its old platform on June 30, which will remove access to more than 450 courses hosted there. The majority of the MOOCs will transfer to the new platform, which Coursera began building in 2014 and which accommodates self-paced courses. The
MOOCs U Michigan Scales up MOOC Missions By Dian Schaffhauser10/07/15 The University of Michigan is expanding its MOOC presence. The institution, which was a founding partner in Coursera, will now be offering its massive, open, online courses on edX too, the first to begin in April 2016. The university also has ties to a third MOOC platform, NovoEd, which runs both educator and corporate operations. Under the edX agreement, U Michigan will launch "MichiganX," and promises to deliver "at least" 20 courses on the platform over the next two years. Three of the early ones will cover finance, learning analytics and data science ethics. The institution is also anteing up on Coursera at the same time, asserting that it will grow from 20 MOOCs on that platform to "more than 50" by December. A major appeal of the edX platform, however, noted the school, was its open source nature. "This new partnership aligns closely with our mission and values. Our core commitment is about experimenting, learning and adapting in order to shape the future of higher education," said James Hilton, vice provost for the Office of Digital Education & Innovation (DEI), in a prepared statement. "EdX and Coursera provide very different models with different sweet spots for experimentation. We are thrilled that our faculty will be able to take advantage of both platforms to push the boundaries of discovery." James DeVaney, associate vice provost in that same division, said the university has already reached 3.6 million learners through MOOCs since 2012. "If we continue to harness the best technology and deepen our use of learning analytics, we know the ripple effect of Michigan's academic excellence and alumni network will be felt around the world." The first new course will be "Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision-Making," launched on April 5 and taught by Gautam Kaul, professor of finance in the school of business. That lasts for six weeks and is expected to take five to six hours of "effort" each week. A verified certificate will be available for $49 to students who successfully complete the class. Kaul, who serves as DEI's first "Innovator in Residence," has become a proponent of MOOCs for online learners and students on campus. "With the help of strategic investments U-M has made in digital learning, I've been able to reach nearly a million global learners through MOOCs while transforming the way I engage students on campus. I'm excited to experiment with the edX platform to continue our quest to redefine residential learning." A second new course will focus on learning analytics and will be taught by Timothy McKay, a professor of physics and astronomy and a DEI "Academic Innovation Fellow." McKay's experiences with personalized learning in his physics classes have influenced other courses at the university. Now he'll have the chance to experiment with personalization "at scale," he said. "With edX, we will continue to employ personalization and learning analytics to improve the effectiveness of student learning, our teaching and the design of courses and curricula." A third course will address data science ethics, specifically to help learners "think about the ethical questions surrounding the use, integration and analysis of data," said H V Jagadish, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who will be teaching the program. Neither of the latter two courses has been added to the edX catalog yet. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.
Hand-picked list of 80+ most outstanding MOOC course providers from around the world.
New qualitative research reveals students may know more about MOOCs than institutions think; have doubts on reliability. MOOCs have the potential to reach learners who otherwise may not have access to postsecondary education, but they have a long way to go in proving reliability of information and quality of content. That may sound like a researcher or wary administrator’s perspective, but these sentiments are strongly expressed by today’s college students. In a new qualitative data report, Communication Instructor Dr. Andrew Cole at Waukesha County Technical College and Dr. C. Erik Timmerman, associate professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, reveal the thoughts of one large university’s current college students toward MOOCs.
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There are ways to allow your institution to experiment with online courses, even if they're not intended to be "massive." An online program manager shares advice.
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Udacity offers the first fully accredited, massive, and open Online Master of Science in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in collaboration with AT&T.
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Registration now open for new Metaliteracy MOOC: Empowering Yourself in a Connected World
Online courses may not be changing colleges as their boosters claimed they would, but they can prove valuable in surprising ways.
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MicroMasters programs are a series of graduate level courses from top universities designed to advance your career. They provide deep learning in a specific career field and are recognized by employers for their real job relevance. Students may apply to the university offering credit for the MicroMasters certificate and, if accepted, can pursue an accelerated and less expensive Master’s Degree.
The 2016 Learning with MOOCs Conference will be held at the University of Pennsylvania this October.
Most students don’t finish a MOOC, a Massive Open Online Course, and the statistics are consistent on this point across platforms. There are lots of different ideas about what MOOCs are and how they might be used in the future. But the notion that they might further accelerate access to higher education on a trulyContinue reading...
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As massive open online courses move toward version 2.0, libraries are in a unique position to guide and support the future of blended learning.
The University of Central Florida (UCF) has teamed with two partners to reboot a massive open online course (MOOC) for educators focused on blended learning in higher ed and K-12. The university has partnered with Educause, a nonprofit focused on technology in higher education, and ed tech company Instructure to launch "BlendKit2015: Becoming a Blended Learning Designer." The course is intended to build on the success of BlendKit2014, a similar MOOC released last year that also covered blending learning and was Educause's first.
Via Kim Flintoff
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The pros and cons of MOOCs are interesting but who can really predict?