Maurizio Guaitoli

Roma, 11 Febbraio 2013

Il futuro dell'educazione accademica? M.O.O.C.

18 maggio 2012 di Matteo Bittanti
I modelli, le formule e i formati dell'insegnamento accademico americano stanno cambiando radicalmente. Negli ultimi mesi, le pi importanti universit statunitensi hanno formato alleanze strategiche per fornire corsi online a costo zero. Dallo scorso aprile, Stanford, Princeton, Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania e University of Michigan offrono numerosi seminari e lecture attraverso Coursera, una startup della Silicon Valley il cui ambizioso tentativo di reinventare la formazione superiore viene seguito da queste parti con particolare attenzione. Coursera offre una dozzina di corsi online, con temi che spaziano dalla poesia all'informatica, dalla teoria dei giochi all'alimentazione, ma il numero destinato a crescere considerevolmente nei prossimi mesi. La risposta della Harvard University e del Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) non si fatta attendere. A maggio le due prestigiose istituzioni hanno dato vita a edX, un progetto altrettanto ambizioso per offrire corsi gratuiti online. Il progetto ha un budget di oltre 60 milioni di dollari. E' questo solo l'inizio di una rivoluzione che ha gi un acronimo: MOOC, massively online open courses.

E' legittimo attendersi che, nel giro di una decade, gli studenti - anche quelli internazionali - potranno laurearsi online selezionando una serie di corsi delle pi prestigiose universit mondiali direttamente dal proprio laptop. Un pacchetto di corsi che include il meglio dell'accademia americana, da Stanford a Yale, dal MIT a NYU. Il presupposto chiave che nel ventunesimo secolo, l'universit, intesa come luogo fisico e concreto, si reinventa come servizio, luogo post-geografico, accessibile 24 ore su 24 da chiunque e da qualunque luogo del mondo. In questo senso, le iniziative digitali dell'Ivy League statunitense rappresentano il punto di arrivo di un processo di diffusione della cultura accademica che si concretizzata in esperimenti di grande successo come OpenCourseware (MIT) e iTunes U, senza dimenticare il brillante lavoro svolto da Salman Khan con la sua Khan School. Il rivoluzionario progetto di Khan ha ispirato, tra i tanti, Sebastian Thrun, docente di Stanford e co-inventore delle automobili automatiche di Google, che quest'anno ha lasciato il college californiano per lanciare Udacity, una start-up che si propone di assumere i top talenti nell'ambito dell'educazione per offrire lo stato-dell-'arte dei corsi online. Ci che accomuna Coursera e Udacity l'imperativo di garantire l'accesso alle lezioni a tutti gli studenti a costo zero. In altre parole, si tratta di progetti open e non-profit, decentralizzati e flessibili. La buona notizia che la qualit e quantit dei corsi online aumentata enormemente rispetto ai primi esperimenti nel settore dell'e-learning, caratterizzati da una tragica incompetenza pedagogica di fondo e da limiti tecnologici non indifferenti. Il vero ostacolo, oggi come ieri, di natura politica, non tecnologica. Nel momento in cui gli studenti potranno convertire i crediti "virtuali" accumulati seguendo le lezioni gratuite in crediti "reali", in veri e propri "diplomi" - ed solo questione di tempo- assisteremo a un vero e proprio cambio di paradigma nel settore dell'educazione universitaria. L'epicentro di questa rivoluzione copernicana il Nord America. Le ragioni sono numerose, ma per semplificare ci limitiamo ad osservare che il sistema universitario americano il pi dinamico, professionale ed avanzato del mondo. Lo conferma il recente studio di Universitas 21, un network globale di ricerca universitaria che misura il livello qualitativo delle istituzioni accademiche mondiali. Il report pubblicato (link al file PDF) qualche settimana fa ha preso in esame le istituzioni pubbliche e private di 48 paesi mondiali, valutandole sulla base di parametri quali risorse (investimenti pubblici e privati), output (l'impatto della ricerca svolta dalle varie istituzioni), connettivit (la

capacit di collaborare con altre nazioni) ed ambiente (la diversit dei campus e opportunit offerte agli studenti). Gli Stati Uniti dominano in settori quali la ricerca, risorse ed impatto extra-accademico. Non una sorpresa, ma la performance dell'Italia pessima su quasi tutti i fronti (unica eccezione: i finanziamenti statali). Questi dati sono particolarmente preoccupanti perch una nazione che non investe in formazione di qualit una nazione senza futuro. La tecnologie digitali potrebbero offrire al Belpaese un'importante opportunit di crescita e sviluppo. Ovviamente, la conditio sine qua non che nella stanza dei bottoni dell'accademia italiana ci siano leader in grado di a) comprendere e b) massimizzare il potenziale pedagogico offerto dalle nuove tecnologie, M.O.O.C. in primis. La domanda sorge spontanea: ci sono?

Alta Formazione nellet del MOOC: collaborazione e intelligenza collettiva

Linda Finardi - 2 settembre 2012 Articolo per La Civetta de Il Circolo degli Inquieti Di fronte ai nuovi modelli di alta formazione online sarebbe forse contento il pedagogista statunitense John Dewey che in Come pensiamo offre uno spaccato critico dei tradizionali modelli di insegnamento, spesso monotoni e orientati ad una uniformit militare: disposizione fissa di banchi e sedie, organizzazione e ritmi reggimentali, pochi libri se non un unico manuale a cui far riferimento, programmi delle discipline rigidi e ripetizione e memorizzazione come unico metodo a garanzia dellapprendimento. Tutto ci lascia poco posto ad un reale sviluppo delle capacit di riflessione e quindi di apprendimento di ogni singolo discente e ancora di pi limita le motivazioni che stanno alla base della ricerca intellettuale e della conoscenza. Nuove teorie pedagogiche: ad esempio il MOOC Anche se non devono considerarsi come una panacea, le tecnologie attuali e soprattutto i cosiddetti social media se applicati dispiegando le loro potenzialit possono permettere di sperimentare e sviluppare nuovi modelli pedagogici. Ad esempio, il MOOC che arriva fino a noi ora che la competizione tra le piattaforme Coursera, Udacity e lultima Edx definitivamente aperta - potrebbe potenzialmente sostenere il superamento di alcuni limiti della formazione attuale di cui parla Dewey e di altri limiti del sistema universitario, quali la richiesta di molto tempo, laccumulo di un sapere spesso dispersivo e poco mirato al mondo del lavoro, gli alti costi e in molti casi lesclusivit. Il MOOC non si limita pi alla sola messa in rete di materiale cos come confezionato offline, ma si pone lobiettivo di creare corsi ad hoc, dove le tecnologie non sono una semplice appendice ma un ambiente didattico attivo, dove, vale a dire, gli stessi studenti hanno un ruolo attivo a differenza della maggior parte dei contesti di istruzione tradizionali. Ogni studente un collaboratore attivo Modelli di educazione come il MOOC possono dare ordine e indicazioni utili per orientarsi nel mare magnum della produzione, distribuzione e consumo dellenorme mole di informazioni e conoscenza presente nelluniverso del web. Uno degli aspetti pi interessanti che

lega i tre processi produzione, distribuzione e consumo riguarda i valori della condivisione e della collaborazione tipici delle dinamiche dellambiente online legati allapproccio open, cio gratis e accessibile a tutti. Il MOOC include spazi di confronto e scambio sui temi di comune interesse attraverso social, forum e altri strumenti di ultima generazione, e attraverso questi spazi lintelligenza collettiva - di cui parlare Pierre Lvy, uno dei pi brillanti "media philosopher" contemporanei, in riferimento alla popolazione del web e alla loro capacit di mettere in sinergia le proprie conoscenza - viene affinata e incanalata. Educata per dirla alla Dewey. Lo studente passa quindi da una situazione di passivit nel ricevere le informazioni, tipica del modello tradizionale, ad essere collaboratore attivo - coproduttore e coconsumatore - nel processo di apprendimento: oltre a poter scegliere percorsi di studio inerenti i propri interessi ed esigenze e studiare seguendo i propri ritmi di apprendimento, lo studente pu ricercare e selezionare materiali, verificare le fonti, offrire informazioni, creare materiali nuovi da condividere e concorrere con i propri interventi ed il proprio punto di vista alla nascita di nuove idee, alla costruzione di significati e allo sviluppo di progetti. Secondo ci che emerge dalle dichiarazioni di Anant Awarall, presidente della piattaforma EdX e insegnante di Intelligenza Artificiale alla Berkeley, pare che i ragazzi si confrontino e partecipino pi facilmente negli ambienti online, a differenza di ci che ancora spessissimo capita nelle aule: ad una domanda posta da uno studente intervengono immediatamente gli altri studenti e anche se le risposte sono del tutto corrette, si innesca un processo riflessivo che un buon docente deve solo indirizzare. Mooc per lo sviluppo dellintelligenza collettiva. Lambiente online e in particolare piattaforme dedicate allalta formazione basate sul MOOC possono permettere di oltrepassare il limite della disposizione fisica che nelle lezioni tradizionali concorre a separare gli studenti gli uni dagli altri, creando uno stato quasi di immobilit e passivit, e gli studenti dal professore producendo una comunicazione a senso unico. La comunicazione reciproca di tutti con tutti, permessa dalle tecnologie sempre pi umanizzate - forum, community, video chat, blog, social network e social media in generale sospende positivamente i ruoli tradizionalmente intesi e crea lhumus adatto per atteggiamenti di cooperazione che concorrono allo sviluppo del cervello sociale, cio di quella capacit di gestire un gran numero di relazioni con altri essere umani, che fra laltro secondo le recenti scoperte dellantropologo Robin Dunbar concorrerebbe al successo della specie umane. Nel MOOC, attraverso la partecipazione aperta e differenziata di ogni singolo studente, le prospettive singole possono essere guidate alla convergenza, ma non per dominarsi luna con laltra, quanto piuttosto per fondersi in pluri-sintesi e cio quindi, in unottica di intelligenza collettiva, predisporsi per creare valore e innovare.

Leggi il resto: http://www.linkiesta.it/blogs/net-working/alta-formazione-nell-eta-delmooc-collaborazione-e-intelligenza-collettiva#ixzz2KbfEuSY0

OP-ED COLUMNIST By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: January 26, 2013

LORD knows theres a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education. Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the worlds biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms that are being developed by the likes of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies like Coursera and Udacity. Go to Columnist Page

Josh Haner/The New York Times Thomas L. Friedman

Last May I wrote about Coursera co-founded by the Stanford computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng just after it opened. Two weeks ago, I went back out to Palo Alto to check in on them. When I visited last May, about 300,000 people were taking 38 courses taught by Stanford professors and a few other elite universities. Today, they have 2.4 million students, taking 214 courses from 33 universities, including eight international ones. Anant Agarwal, the former director of M.I.T.s artificial intelligence lab, is now president of edX, a nonprofit MOOC that M.I.T. and Harvard are jointly building. Agarwal told me that since May, some 155,000 students from around the world have taken edXs first course: an M.I.T. intro class on circuits. That is greater than the total number of M.I.T. alumni in its 150year history, he said. Yes, only a small percentage complete all the work, and even they still tend to be from the middle and upper classes of their societies, but I am convinced that within five years these

platforms will reach a much broader demographic. Imagine how this might change U.S. foreign aid. For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic. YOU just have to hear the stories told by the pioneers in this industry to appreciate its revolutionary potential. One of Kollers favorites is about Daniel, a 17-year-old with autism who communicates mainly by computer. He took an online modern poetry class from Penn. He and his parents wrote that the combination of rigorous academic curriculum, which requires Daniel to stay on task, and the online learning system that does not strain his social skills, attention deficits or force him to look anyone in the eye, enable him to better manage his autism. Koller shared a letter from Daniel, in which he wrote: Please tell Coursera and Penn my story. I am a 17-year-old boy emerging from autism. I cant yet sit still in a classroom so [your course] was my first real course ever. During the course, I had to keep pace with the class, which is unheard-of in special ed. Now I know I can benefit from having to work hard and enjoy being in sync with the world. One member of the Coursera team who recently took a Coursera course on sustainability told me that it was so much more interesting than a similar course he had taken as an undergrad. The online course included students from all over the world, from different climates, incomes levels and geographies, and, as a result, the discussions that happened in that course were so much more valuable and interesting than with people of similar geography and income level in a typical American college. Mitch Duneier, a Princeton sociology professor, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in the fall about his experience teaching a class through Coursera: A few months ago, just as the campus of Princeton University had grown nearly silent after commencement, 40,000 students from 113 countries arrived here via the Internet to take a free course in introductory sociology. ... My opening discussion of C. Wright Millss classic 1959 book, The Sociological Imagination, was a close reading of the text, in which I reviewed a key chapter line by line. I asked students to follow along in their own copies, as I do in the lecture hall. When I give this lecture on the Princeton campus, I usually receive a few penetrating questions. In this case, however, within a few hours of posting the online version, the course forums came alive with hundreds of comments and questions. Several days later there were thousands. ... Within three weeks I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas than I had in a career of teaching, which significantly influenced each of my subsequent lectures and seminars.

COMMENTI
APPARSO NEL BLOG (GESTITO DA PROFESSORI UNIVERSITARI AMERICANI)

GlobalHigherEd

27 January 2013 Dear [hypothetical] colleagues, I am sure you, or some of your fellow trustees, noticed Thomas Friedmans op-ed (Revolution Hits the Universities) in this weekends Sunday New York Times. Friedman, author of The World is Flat, did a characteristically effective job in raising attention about a phenomenon (Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs) worth thinking about. If you have not already pushed your senior leadership to respond regarding the MOOCs idea, Im sure this op-ed will become the straw that broke the camels back, so to speak. The questions you might initially ask include, no doubt, are we in the MOOCs game? If so, whats on offer, or in the pipeline? And if not, why not, or whats the hold-up or valid counterargument. This is, after all one of the issues that stirred up last summers brouhaha over governance at the University of Virginia. To be sure, it is an opportune time to engender a broader debate about the MOOCs phenomenon. This is an era of significant change in the nature and futures of higher ed. Moodys, for example, downgraded the entire US higher education sector on 16 January and released a report that included this striking time-series [where tuition is diverging from the government funding. Ndr]. As Moodys also pointed in the same report, MOOCs are partially an outcome of a: fundamental shift in strategy by industry leaders to embrace technological changes that have threatened to destabilize the residential college and universitys business model over the long run. Thus MOOCs can be perceived of as a threat; a private authority-enabled mechanism that may lead to the unbundling and separating out of the provision of some teaching services from the faculty base at your institution, as well as many aspects of the direct and indirect credentialing process. For those in the MOOCs game, are there at least some benefits for universities? In the same report Moodys notes that there are, for some types of universities at least (the types Friedman praises in his op-ed), and these could include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. New revenue opportunities through fees for certificates, courses, degrees, licensing or advertisement Improved operating efficiencies due to the lower cost of course delivery on a per student basis Heightened global brand recognition, removing geographic campus-based barriers to attracting students and faculty Enhanced and protected core residential campus experience for students at traditional notfor-profit and public universities Longer term potential to create new networks of much greater scale across the sector, allowing more colleges and universities to specialize while also reducing operating costs

6.

New competitive pressure on for-profit, and some not-for-profit, universities that fail to align with emerging high-reputation networks to find a viable independent niche

There are some major caveats, though, to factor in when it comes to the Thomas Friedman/Moodys/et al, argument; the one buzzing and humming through the system right now, propelled as it were by people, firms and organizations with vested yet often unstated interests in making you feel concerned, if not agitated. The first caveat is that Friedman has seized upon the MOOCs platform as it serves as a defacto metaphor for his long held world is flat argument. Friedman revels in the collapse of time and space brought on by MOOCs and notes, for example: Yes, only a small percentage complete all the work, and even they still tend to be from the middle and upper classes of their societies, but I am convinced that within five years these platforms will reach a much broader demographic. Imagine how this might change U.S. foreign aid. For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic. However, as pointed out by economic geographers, and well known social scientists like Richard Florida and Saskia Sassen, we actually live in a spiky world. This spikiness is a pattern associated with most factors of production and consumption, including internet access and the production and circulation of knowledge. Moreover, forms of knowledge do not travel in an uncontextualized nor uncontested manner; they are built upon societally-specific assumptions, depend upon years of prior learning to make sense of, and sometimes rely upon geographically- and historically-specific case studies to ensure effective transmission and learning. So yes MOOCs can jump scale, but they face the same problems most of our other technologies and knowledge transmission systems have had for decades. It is arguably ineffective to legitimize MOOCs at your university by implying theyll help you save the (nonWestern) world like Friedman does. Second, while Friedmans article implies a relatively easy Yes or No decision re. going ahead (we are, after all, supposed to be in the middle of a revolution) the direct and indirect resource base required to establish and maintain MOOCs is nothing to be sneezed at. For example, it was good to see that he profiled Mitchell Duneiers Coursera course. What Friedman failed to note was that Princeton is an extraordinarily wealthy private university that has the capacity to provide undoubtedly brilliant and hard working Duneier with sufficient support to run his MOOC, including via designated assistants. Online teaching can scale more easily than in-person teaching, but the creation of the institutional space and support infrastructure to produce a series of quality MOOCs takes time, attention, resources, TLC, and so on. The production process also has to be preceded by the creation of a formal or informal governance pathway, as well as an assessment if your university has the technological and organizational capabilities to coordinate a legitimate MOOCs initiative. Third, Friedman is portraying a phenomenon that is being deliberately stirred up by more than just an interest in enhancing innovation and global access via a scale jumping technology there is also a complicated and fast evolving political economy to MOOCs (and online education more generally). Narrowly, the phenomenon is well worth experimenting with, in my humble opinion. I would agree with Friedman that this is an amazing time to innovate and take advantage of the platforms and learning management and analytic processes engendered by the backers of platforms like Coursera, Udacity and edX. Yet some firms and political

actors/advocates in the US have deemed online education and MOOCs, in particular, as an answer to fiscal constraints; a silver bullet of sorts to ensure taxation levels do not budge, or indeed go down. But look again at the graph from the Moodys report I pasted in above: this shift in financing is nothing short of a structural change that has moved beyond the notion that austerity is a response to a cyclical crisis. We are now in a new (normalized) normal, at least in the US, where austerity is accepted and indeed viewed positively for it can be perceived as a mechanism to restructure higher education systems and institutions. In short, we are arguably (as noted by Dean Martin McQuillan in an article in Times Higher Education magazine) not in a state of crisis as crisis infers a cyclical dimension to the challenges facing the financing of higher ed. Austerity (the strategic and systematic reduction of state-financing levels), in combination with the contradictory/ironic desire to ramp up state governance power (including about online education and associated credentialing), is the new normal and this is what Friedman, amidst all his hype about MOOCs and online education, utterly fails to flag. You obviously will have your own views about the validity of my argument and please feel free to disagree. But regardless of your view, let me point our that there is a real risk in the US higher education context that MOOCs will become a politicized platform: if they start to be perceived as a Trojan horse to dismantle the public university, or as a rope to strangle ourselves, the baby may get thrown out with the bathwater and the positive features of MOOCs (and there are many!) will be lost amidst the associated conflict. In short, there are political and economic machinations associated with the stirring of interest in, and coverage of, MOOCs. Given this, and given the stakes at hand, it is important to address the MOOCs phenomenon is a serious, sustained, and reflective way, not in a knee jerk fashion, one way or the other. My next memo will focus on the international dimensions of MOOCs, an issue also grappled with in two earlier entries in GlobalHigherEd. Kris Olds
APPARSO NEL NEW YORK TIMES, ED. 2 NOV. 2012
By LAURA PAPPANO

IN late September, as workers applied joint compound to new office walls, hoodie-clad colleagues who had just met were working together on deadline. Film editors, code-writing interns and edX fellows grad students and postdocs versed in online education were translating videotaped lectures into MOOCs, or massive open online courses. As if anyone needed reminding, a row of aqua Post-its gave the dates the courses would go live. Go to Education Life Related
The Big Three, at a Glance(November 4, 2012)

The paint is barely dry, yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses. Thats nothing. Coursera, founded just last January, has reached more than 1.7 million

growing faster than Facebook, boasts Andrew Ng, on leave from Stanford to run his for-profit MOOC provider. This has caught all of us by surprise, says David Stavens, who formed a company called Udacity with Sebastian Thrun and Michael Sokolsky after more than 150,000 signed up for Dr. Thruns Introduction to Artificial Intelligence last fall, starting the revolution that has higher education gasping. A year ago, he marvels, we were three guys in Sebastians living room and now we have 40 employees full time. I like to call this the year of disruption, says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, and the year is not over yet. MOOCs have been around for a few years as collaborative techie learning events, but this is the year everyone wants in. Elite universities are partnering with Coursera at a furious pace. It now offers courses from 33 of the biggest names in postsecondary education, including Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke. In September, Google unleashed a MOOC-building online tool, and Stanford unveiled Class2Go with two courses. Nick McKeown is teaching one of them, on computer networking, with Philip Levis (the one with a shock of magenta hair in the introductory video). Dr. McKeown sums up the energy of this grand experiment when he gushes, Were both very excited. Casually draped over auditorium seats, the professors also acknowledge that they are not exactly sure how this MOOC stuff works. We are just going to see how this goes over the next few weeks, says Dr. McKeown. WHAT IS A MOOC ANYWAY? Traditional online courses charge tuition, carry credit and limit enrollment to a few dozen to ensure interaction with instructors. The MOOC, on the other hand, is usually free, credit-less and, well, massive. Because anyone with an Internet connection can enroll, faculty cant possibly respond to students individually. So the course design how material is presented and the interactivity counts for a lot. As do fellow students. Classmates may lean on one another in study groups organized in their towns, in online forums or, the prickly part, for grading work. The evolving form knits together education, entertainment (think gaming) and social networking. Unlike its antecedent, open courseware usually written materials or videotapes of lectures that make you feel as if youre spying on a class from the back of the room the MOOC is a full course made with you in mind.

The medium is still the lecture. Thanks to Khan Academys free archive of snappy instructional videos, MOOC makers have gotten the memo on the benefit of brevity: 8 to 12 minutes is typical. Then this is key videos pause perhaps twice for a quiz to make sure you understand the material or, in computer programming, to let you write code. Feedback is electronic. Teaching assistants may monitor discussion boards. There may be homework and a final exam. The MOOC certainly presents challenges. Can learning be scaled up this much? Grading is imperfect, especially for nontechnical subjects. Cheating is a reality. We found groups of 20 people in a course submitting identical homework, says David Patterson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who teaches software engineering, in a tone of disbelief at such blatant copying; Udacity and edX now offer proctored exams. Some students are also ill prepared for the university-level work. And few stick with it. Signing up for a class is a lightweight process, says Dr. Ng. It might take just five minutes, assuming you spend two devising a stylish user name. Only 46,000 attempted the first assignment in Dr. Ngs course on machine learning last fall. In the end, he says, 13,000 completed the class and earned a certificate from him, not Stanford. Thats still a lot of students. The shimmery hope is that free courses can bring the best education in the world to the most remote corners of the planet, help people in their careers, and expand intellectual and personal networks. Three-quarters of those who took Dr. Pattersons Software as a Service last winter on Coursera (its now on edX) were from outside the United States, though the opposite was true of a course on circuits and electronics piloted last spring by Dr. Agarwal. But both attracted highly educated students and both reported that over 70 percent had degrees (more than a third had graduate degrees). And in a vote of confidence in the form, students in both overwhelmingly endorsed the quality of the course: 63 percent who completed Dr. Agarwals course as well as a similar one on campus found the MOOC better; 36 percent found it comparable; 1 percent, worse. Ray Schroeder, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at the University of Illinois, Springfield, says three things matter most in online learning: quality of material covered, engagement of the teacher and interaction among students. The first doesnt seem to be an issue most professors come from elite campuses, and so far most MOOCs are in technical subjects like computer science and math, with straightforward content. But providing instructor connection and feedback, including student interactions, is trickier. Whats frustrating in a MOOC is the instructor is not as available because there are tens of thousands of others in the class, Dr. Schroeder says. How do you make the massive feel intimate?

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Thats what everyone is trying to figure out. Many places offer MOOCs, and more will. But Coursera, Udacity and edX are defining the form as they develop their brands. THE FLAVOR OF THE MOOC Coursera casts itself as a hub Dr. Ngs word for learning and networking. The learning comes gratis from an impressive roster of elites offering a wide range of courses, from computer science to philosophy to medicine. Not all are highbrow or technical; Listening to World Music from the University of Pennsylvania aims to broaden your iPod playlist. While Coursera will make suggestions, Dr. Ng says, ultimately all pedagogical decisions are made by the universities. Most offerings are adapted from existing courses: a Princeton Coursera course is a Princeton course. But the vibe is decidedly Facebook build a profile, upload your photo with tools for students to plan meet-ups with Courserians in about 1,400 cities worldwide. These gatherings may be bona fide study groups or social sessions. Membership may be many or sparse. No one showed at the meet-up that Stacey Brown, an information technology manager at a Hartford insurance company, scheduled for a 14th-floor conference room on a Thursday after work, despite R.S.V.P.s from a few classmates in the area. Hes taking three Coursera MOOCs, including Gamification from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. In addition to the learning and dropping to bosses that hes taking a Wharton course Mr. Brown says, I hope to get a network. Others like the discipline a group offers. Kimberly Spillman, a software engineer, started taking seven MOOCs and completed three. The ones I have study groups with people, those are the ones I finish, Ms. Spillman says. She first joined a group for Dr. Thruns artificial intelligence course, and then ran one for a Udacity course on building a search engine, organizing Thursday-evening discussions of the weeks material followed by a social hour at a nearby pub. Fifteen people met each week at the Ansir Innovation Center, a community space with big tables and comfortable chairs, in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood of San Diego. Udacity has stuck close to its math and computer science roots and emphasizes applied learning, like How to Build a Blog or Building a Web Browser. Job placement is part of the Udacity package. The type of skills taught in computer science, even at elite universities, can be very theoretical, Dr. Stavens explains. Udacity courses are designed and produced in-house or with companies like Google and Microsoft. In a poke at its university-based competition, Dr. Stavens says they pick instructors

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not because of their academic research, as universities do, but because of how they teach. We reject about 98 percent of faculty who want to teach with us, he says. Just because a person is the worlds most famous economist doesnt mean they are the best person to teach the subject. Dr. Stavens sees a day when MOOCs will disrupt how faculty are attracted, trained and paid, with the most popular compensated like a TV actor or a movie actor. He adds that students will want to learn from whoever is the best teacher. That means you dont need a Ph.D. While there are traditional academics like David Evans of the University of Virginia, Landmarks in Physics, a first-year college-level course, is taught by Andy Brown, a 2009 M.I.T. graduate with a B.S. in physics. We think the future of education is guys like Andy Brown who produce the most fun, Dr. Stavens says. Mr. Browns course is an indie version of Bill Nye the Science Guy filmed in Italy, the Netherlands and England, with opening credits for director of photography and second camera and editor. Whether explaining what the ancients believed about the shape of the earth or, in Dr. Thruns statistics course, why you are unpopular, statistically speaking, voice-overs are as nonthreatening as a grade school teacher. You feel like you are sitting next to someone and they are tutoring you, says Jacqueline Spiegel, a mother of three from New Rochelle, N.Y., with a masters in computer science from Columbia who has enrolled in MOOCs from Udacity and Coursera. While taking Artificial Intelligence, she discovered she liked puzzling through assignments in online study groups. The class was tough and took an embarrassing amount of time, says Ms. Spiegel, who found that consuming lectures by smartphone during her 14-year-olds 6 a.m. ice skating sessions worked less well than being parked at a desktop. I would listen to the lectures, then I would listen to them again. Her effort was huge some 22 hours a week but rewarding. Ms. Spiegel befriended women in India and Pakistan through Facebook study groups and started an online group, CompScisters, for women taking science and technology MOOCs. If Udacity favors stylish hands-on instruction, edX aims to be elite, smart and rigorous; dont expect a gloss of calculus if you need it but never took it. Some 120 institutions have been in touch; only Berkeley and the University of Texas system have been admitted to the club. EdXs M.I.T. roots show in its staffs geeky passion for building and testing online tools. They collect your clicks. Feedback from the MOOC taught last spring by Dr. Agarwal (who, students learn, is obsessed with chain saws) revealed that participants would rather watch a hand writing an equation or sentence on paper than stare at the same paper with writing already on it.

12

The focus is on making education logical. Someone who is consuming the course should know it is not serendipity that the course is chunked in a certain way, but that there is intentionality to sequencing video, says Howard A. Lurie, vice president for content development. With mini-notebook in hand, he has been leading the daily stand-up meeting (so called because attendees lean against walls) to keep course development on schedule. After one meeting, Lyla Fischer, a 2011 M.I.T. graduate and edX fellow, sat at her computer, a tag still dangling from the chair, and edited the answers for problem sets in Dr. Agarwals course. Last spring, students could download PDFs with brief answers. Now, she says, there is a full explanation of how to do it, here are the steps, right on the site. We are trying to use the magic of all the tool sets we have, Mr. Lurie says. Students control how fast they watch lectures. Some like to go at nearly double the speed; others want to slow down and replay. Coming: If you get a wrong answer, the software figures out where you went wrong and offers a correction. WORKING OUT THE KINKS Assignments that cant be scored by an automated grader are pushing MOOC providers to get creative, especially in courses that involve writing and analysis. Coursera uses peer grading: submit an assignment and five people grade it; in turn, you grade five assignments. But what if someone is a horrible grader? Coursera is developing software that will flag those who assign very inaccurate grades and give their assessment less weight. Mitchell Duneier, a Princeton professor, is conducting a study that compares peer grading of the final exam in his sociology MOOC on Coursera last summer with the grades he and his course assistants would have given the students. Mr. Brown, the Hartford I.T. manager, does not have confidence in peer feedback. This could be a 14-year-old kid in South Africa answering me, he says, thinking of his 14-year-old. The challenge is not just in grading. The diversity of MOOC takers teenagers to retirees, and from across the globe means classmates lack a common knowledge base and educational background. Out-of-their-league students, especially in highly technical courses, can drag down discussions. Which course is right for you? What prerequisites are really needed to perform well? Princetons Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes on Coursera recommends basic linear algebra and multivariable calculus but the instructor will see if part of the course material can be presented without requiring this mathematical background. Introduction to Computer

13

Science from Harvard lists prerequisites as none as long as youre Harvard-ready. Where are the Yelp reviews? We desperately need crowdsourcing, says Cathy N. Davidson, a Duke professor of English and interdisciplinary studies. We need a MOOCE massive open online course evaluation. Most important, what do you get for your effort? Do you earn a certificate? A job interview? Or just the happy feeling of learning something? If one is going for the knowledge, its a boon, says Dr. Schroeder of the University of Illinois. If one is looking for credit, that is one of the challenges. How do we fit this into the structure of higher education today? Dr. Agarwal predicts that a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with edX certificates. He expects students will one day arrive on campus with MOOC credits the way they do now with Advanced Placement. The line between online and on campus is already blurring. This spring Dr. Davidson will teach a class called Surprise Endings: Social Science and Literature at Duke and as a MOOC, with her Duke students running the online discussions. This fall, San Jose State students are taking Dr. Agarwals course on circuits and electronics, with professors and teaching assistants on campus leading discussions. They add their own content, including exams. In the spring, Massachusetts Bay Community College in Wellesley will use an edX MOOC in introductory computer science. Dr. Stavens promises more change, and more disruption: We are only 5 to 10 percent of the way there. Laura Pappano is author of Inside School Turnarounds and writer in residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: November 11, 2012 An article last Sunday about massive open online courses, using information from the MOOC provider Coursera, included several errors. The source of a study of peer grading in a Princeton sociology MOOC was Mitchell Duneier, the teacher, not Coursera. The student work was regraded by Professor Duneier and his teaching assistants, not by Princeton instructors. And

14

it is not the case that the results have been released. The article also misspelled the surname of a co-founder of another MOOC provider, Udacity. He is Michael Sokolsky, not Sokolosky. IN late September, as workers applied joint compound to new office walls, hoodie-clad colleagues who had just met were working together on deadline. Film editors, code-writing interns and edX fellows grad students and postdocs versed in online education were translating videotaped lectures into MOOCs, or massive open online courses. As if anyone needed reminding, a row of aqua Post-its gave the dates the courses would go live. Go to Education Life Related
The Big Three, at a Glance(November 4, 2012)

The paint is barely dry, yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses. Thats nothing. Coursera, founded just last January, has reached more than 1.7 million growing faster than Facebook, boasts Andrew Ng, on leave from Stanford to run his for-profit MOOC provider. This has caught all of us by surprise, says David Stavens, who formed a company called Udacity with Sebastian Thrun and Michael Sokolsky after more than 150,000 signed up for Dr. Thruns Introduction to Artificial Intelligence last fall, starting the revolution that has higher education gasping. A year ago, he marvels, we were three guys in Sebastians living room and now we have 40 employees full time. I like to call this the year of disruption, says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, and the year is not over yet. MOOCs have been around for a few years as collaborative techie learning events, but this is the year everyone wants in. Elite universities are partnering with Coursera at a furious pace. It now offers courses from 33 of the biggest names in postsecondary education, including Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke. In September, Google unleashed a MOOC-building online tool, and Stanford unveiled Class2Go with two courses. Nick McKeown is teaching one of them, on computer networking, with Philip Levis (the one with a shock of magenta hair in the introductory video). Dr. McKeown sums up the energy of this grand experiment when he gushes, Were both very excited. Casually draped over auditorium seats, the professors also acknowledge that they are not exactly sure how this MOOC stuff works. We are just going to see how this goes over the next few weeks, says Dr. McKeown.

15

WHAT IS A MOOC ANYWAY? Traditional online courses charge tuition, carry credit and limit enrollment to a few dozen to ensure interaction with instructors. The MOOC, on the other hand, is usually free, credit-less and, well, massive. Because anyone with an Internet connection can enroll, faculty cant possibly respond to students individually. So the course design how material is presented and the interactivity counts for a lot. As do fellow students. Classmates may lean on one another in study groups organized in their towns, in online forums or, the prickly part, for grading work. The evolving form knits together education, entertainment (think gaming) and social networking. Unlike its antecedent, open courseware usually written materials or videotapes of lectures that make you feel as if youre spying on a class from the back of the room the MOOC is a full course made with you in mind. The medium is still the lecture. Thanks to Khan Academys free archive of snappy instructional videos, MOOC makers have gotten the memo on the benefit of brevity: 8 to 12 minutes is typical. Then this is key videos pause perhaps twice for a quiz to make sure you understand the material or, in computer programming, to let you write code. Feedback is electronic. Teaching assistants may monitor discussion boards. There may be homework and a final exam. The MOOC certainly presents challenges. Can learning be scaled up this much? Grading is imperfect, especially for nontechnical subjects. Cheating is a reality. We found groups of 20 people in a course submitting identical homework, says David Patterson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who teaches software engineering, in a tone of disbelief at such blatant copying; Udacity and edX now offer proctored exams. Some students are also ill prepared for the university-level work. And few stick with it. Signing up for a class is a lightweight process, says Dr. Ng. It might take just five minutes, assuming you spend two devising a stylish user name. Only 46,000 attempted the first assignment in Dr. Ngs course on machine learning last fall. In the end, he says, 13,000 completed the class and earned a certificate from him, not Stanford. Thats still a lot of students. The shimmery hope is that free courses can bring the best education in the world to the most remote corners of the planet, help people in their careers, and expand intellectual and personal networks. Three-quarters of those who took Dr. Pattersons Software as a Service last winter on Coursera (its now on edX) were from outside the United States, though the opposite was true of a course on circuits and electronics piloted last spring by

16

Dr. Agarwal. But both attracted highly educated students and both reported that over 70 percent had degrees (more than a third had graduate degrees). And in a vote of confidence in the form, students in both overwhelmingly endorsed the quality of the course: 63 percent who completed Dr. Agarwals course as well as a similar one on campus found the MOOC better; 36 percent found it comparable; 1 percent, worse. Ray Schroeder, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at the University of Illinois, Springfield, says three things matter most in online learning: quality of material covered, engagement of the teacher and interaction among students. The first doesnt seem to be an issue most professors come from elite campuses, and so far most MOOCs are in technical subjects like computer science and math, with straightforward content. But providing instructor connection and feedback, including student interactions, is trickier. Whats frustrating in a MOOC is the instructor is not as available because there are tens of thousands of others in the class, Dr. Schroeder says. How do you make the massive feel intimate? Thats what everyone is trying to figure out. Many places offer MOOCs, and more will. But Coursera, Udacity and edX are defining the form as they develop their brands. THE FLAVOR OF THE MOOC Coursera casts itself as a hub Dr. Ngs word for learning and networking. The learning comes gratis from an impressive roster of elites offering a wide range of courses, from computer science to philosophy to medicine. Not all are highbrow or technical; Listening to World Music from the University of Pennsylvania aims to broaden your iPod playlist. While Coursera will make suggestions, Dr. Ng says, ultimately all pedagogical decisions are made by the universities. Most offerings are adapted from existing courses: a Princeton Coursera course is a Princeton course. But the vibe is decidedly Facebook build a profile, upload your photo with tools for students to plan meet-ups with Courserians in about 1,400 cities worldwide. These gatherings may be bona fide study groups or social sessions. Membership may be many or sparse. No one showed at the meet-up that Stacey Brown, an information technology manager at a Hartford insurance company, scheduled for a 14th-floor conference room on a Thursday after work, despite R.S.V.P.s from a few classmates in the area. Hes taking three Coursera MOOCs, including Gamification from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. In addition to

17

the learning and dropping to bosses that hes taking a Wharton course Mr. Brown says, I hope to get a network. Others like the discipline a group offers. Kimberly Spillman, a software engineer, started taking seven MOOCs and completed three. The ones I have study groups with people, those are the ones I finish, Ms. Spillman says. She first joined a group for Dr. Thruns artificial intelligence course, and then ran one for a Udacity course on building a search engine, organizing Thursday-evening discussions of the weeks material followed by a social hour at a nearby pub. Fifteen people met each week at the Ansir Innovation Center, a community space with big tables and comfortable chairs, in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood of San Diego. Udacity has stuck close to its math and computer science roots and emphasizes applied learning, like How to Build a Blog or Building a Web Browser. Job placement is part of the Udacity package. The type of skills taught in computer science, even at elite universities, can be very theoretical, Dr. Stavens explains. Udacity courses are designed and produced in-house or with companies like Google and Microsoft. In a poke at its university-based competition, Dr. Stavens says they pick instructors not because of their academic research, as universities do, but because of how they teach. We reject about 98 percent of faculty who want to teach with us, he says. Just because a person is the worlds most famous economist doesnt mean they are the best person to teach the subject. Dr. Stavens sees a day when MOOCs will disrupt how faculty are attracted, trained and paid, with the most popular compensated like a TV actor or a movie actor. He adds that students will want to learn from whoever is the best teacher. That means you dont need a Ph.D. While there are traditional academics like David Evans of the University of Virginia, Landmarks in Physics, a first-year college-level course, is taught by Andy Brown, a 2009 M.I.T. graduate with a B.S. in physics. We think the future of education is guys like Andy Brown who produce the most fun, Dr. Stavens says. Mr. Browns course is an indie version of Bill Nye the Science Guy filmed in Italy, the Netherlands and England, with opening credits for director of photography and second camera and editor. Whether explaining what the ancients believed about the shape of the earth or, in Dr. Thruns statistics course, why you are unpopular, statistically speaking, voice-overs are as nonthreatening as a grade school teacher. You feel like you are sitting next to someone and they are tutoring you, says Jacqueline Spiegel, a mother of three from New Rochelle, N.Y., with a masters in computer science from Columbia who has enrolled in MOOCs from Udacity and Coursera. While taking Artificial Intelligence, she discovered she liked puzzling through assignments in online study groups.

18

The class was tough and took an embarrassing amount of time, says Ms. Spiegel, who found that consuming lectures by smartphone during her 14-year-olds 6 a.m. ice skating sessions worked less well than being parked at a desktop. I would listen to the lectures, then I would listen to them again. Her effort was huge some 22 hours a week but rewarding. Ms. Spiegel befriended women in India and Pakistan through Facebook study groups and started an online group, CompScisters, for women taking science and technology MOOCs. If Udacity favors stylish hands-on instruction, edX aims to be elite, smart and rigorous; dont expect a gloss of calculus if you need it but never took it. Some 120 institutions have been in touch; only Berkeley and the University of Texas system have been admitted to the club. EdXs M.I.T. roots show in its staffs geeky passion for building and testing online tools. They collect your clicks. Feedback from the MOOC taught last spring by Dr. Agarwal (who, students learn, is obsessed with chain saws) revealed that participants would rather watch a hand writing an equation or sentence on paper than stare at the same paper with writing already on it. The focus is on making education logical. Someone who is consuming the course should know it is not serendipity that the course is chunked in a certain way, but that there is intentionality to sequencing video, says Howard A. Lurie, vice president for content development. With mini-notebook in hand, he has been leading the daily stand-up meeting (so called because attendees lean against walls) to keep course development on schedule. After one meeting, Lyla Fischer, a 2011 M.I.T. graduate and edX fellow, sat at her computer, a tag still dangling from the chair, and edited the answers for problem sets in Dr. Agarwals course. Last spring, students could download PDFs with brief answers. Now, she says, there is a full explanation of how to do it, here are the steps, right on the site. We are trying to use the magic of all the tool sets we have, Mr. Lurie says. Students control how fast they watch lectures. Some like to go at nearly double the speed; others want to slow down and replay. Coming: If you get a wrong answer, the software figures out where you went wrong and offers a correction. WORKING OUT THE KINKS Assignments that cant be scored by an automated grader are pushing MOOC providers to get creative, especially in courses that involve writing and analysis. Coursera uses peer grading: submit an assignment and five people grade it; in turn, you grade five assignments. But what if someone is a horrible grader?

19

Coursera is developing software that will flag those who assign very inaccurate grades and give their assessment less weight. Mitchell Duneier, a Princeton professor, is conducting a study that compares peer grading of the final exam in his sociology MOOC on Coursera last summer with the grades he and his course assistants would have given the students. Mr. Brown, the Hartford I.T. manager, does not have confidence in peer feedback. This could be a 14-year-old kid in South Africa answering me, he says, thinking of his 14-year-old. The challenge is not just in grading. The diversity of MOOC takers teenagers to retirees, and from across the globe means classmates lack a common knowledge base and educational background. Out-of-their-league students, especially in highly technical courses, can drag down discussions. Which course is right for you? What prerequisites are really needed to perform well? Princetons Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes on Coursera recommends basic linear algebra and multivariable calculus but the instructor will see if part of the course material can be presented without requiring this mathematical background. Introduction to Computer Science from Harvard lists prerequisites as none as long as youre Harvard-ready. Where are the Yelp reviews? We desperately need crowdsourcing, says Cathy N. Davidson, a Duke professor of English and interdisciplinary studies. We need a MOOCE massive open online course evaluation. Most important, what do you get for your effort? Do you earn a certificate? A job interview? Or just the happy feeling of learning something? If one is going for the knowledge, its a boon, says Dr. Schroeder of the University of Illinois. If one is looking for credit, that is one of the challenges. How do we fit this into the structure of higher education today? Dr. Agarwal predicts that a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with edX certificates. He expects students will one day arrive on campus with MOOC credits the way they do now with Advanced Placement. The line between online and on campus is already blurring. This spring Dr. Davidson will teach a class called Surprise Endings: Social Science and Literature at Duke and as a MOOC, with her Duke students running the online discussions. This fall, San Jose State students are taking Dr. Agarwals course on circuits and electronics, with professors and teaching assistants on campus leading discussions. They add their own content, including exams. In the spring,

20

Massachusetts Bay Community College in Wellesley will use an edX MOOC in introductory computer science. Dr. Stavens promises more change, and more disruption: We are only 5 to 10 percent of the way there. Laura Pappano is author of Inside School Turnarounds and writer in residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: November 11, 2012 An article last Sunday about massive open online courses, using information from the MOOC provider Coursera, included several errors. The source of a study of peer grading in a Princeton sociology MOOC was Mitchell Duneier, the teacher, not Coursera. The student work was regraded by Professor Duneier and his teaching assistants, not by Princeton instructors. And it is not the case that the results have been released. The article also misspelled the surname of a co-founder of another MOOC provider, Udacity. He is Michael Sokolsky, not Sokolosky.

21