Just in case you don’t know what MOOCs are (massive, open online courses), they are usually courses that use video recordings of lectures from top professors from elite universities, such as Stanford, MIT and Harvard, and computer-marked assessments, sometimes combined with unmonitored online student discussions and peer review. MOOCs are made freely available to anyone who wants to sign up. The main platforms for MOOCs are Coursera, edX, Udacity and FutureLearn.

The first MOOCs attracted over 200,000 enrolments per course, although numbers in recent years are more in the 2,500 range. Nevertheless it is estimated that there are more than 34 million participants worldwide registering in MOOCs each year.

Since the first ones launched in 2008, MOOCs have been rapidly evolving.
MOOCs vs online credit courses

Given all the publicity and hype over MOOCs, you could be forgiven for thinking that MOOCs are all you need to know about online learning. However, you would be sadly mistaken.

Online learning existed as a serious part of education at least 15 years before MOOCs arrived on the scene. The following graph shows the increase in online courses for credit up to 2012 in the USA post-secondary education system, before the first MOOCs were launched:

Via Miloš Bajčetić

Your team's best ideas are scattered across hundreds of messages, emails and notes. Don't let them scroll past and be lost forever. Save them in Milanote and turn them into something great.

Via Nik Peachey

A collection of blockchain news, provided by Blockchainster.com

Digital Identity Trends - The lack of security of the Internet of Things captured public attention this year as massive distributed denial

Sway is an exciting authoring app. It allows you to create and share interactive presentations, projects, and more. Just add your content, and sway will do the…

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC), the leading professional organization devoted to advancing the quality of online learning, today announced the expansion of its Quality Scorecard suite, with the addition of three new scorecards.
The OLC Quality Scorecard uses research-based benchmarks and standards of excellence to help higher education institutions evaluate their online and blended learning programs. Institutions use the scorecard to determine strengths and opportunities for improvement of their programs, and to initiate planning efforts to address areas that require enhancement.
“The OLC Quality Scorecard has become the trusted tool for administrators to identify, measure and quantify elements of quality within their online education programs,” said Kathleen Ives, DM, chief executive officer and executive director, OLC. “Just as educators continue to seek out ideal learning environments and share effective practices for advancing quality, OLC will continue to expand the Quality Scorecard suite to support and guide their efforts.”
In addition to giving an institution a means to convey confidence in the quality of its programs to prospective students, the scorecard can be used to demonstrate the quality of online programs to higher education accrediting bodies. Plus, it can serve as an internal planning tool for institutions launching new programs or transforming mature programs.

Via Inovação Educacional, juandoming

This tweet appeared in my stream yesterday. I used the first photo here (guy with feet on fire) as an example in my evolving course materials on how to trace things to a source on the internet. I also tracked down the other photos as well. It took barely any time at all. Maybe ten…