Documentation:MOOC/Resources

Pedagogy & Design

• Coursera Resources Guide

  This guide from Vanderbilt University details common (and uncommon) teaching practices on the Coursera platform such as setting appropriate learning goals, structuring online lectures, designing automatically- and peer-graded assessments, and Facilitating (massive) online learning communities.

• MOOCs at Illinois Guide

  A comprehensive guide to many of the issues to keep in mind when considering offering a MOOC, developing a syllabus, etc. See also the MOOCs@Illinois site

• What does it take to prepare a Duke Coursera course?

  An overview of the process, preparation, and planning that Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology and Office of Information Technology undertook in getting their Coursera courses off the ground.

• Building a Coursera Course - Duke planning document

  Duke CIT suggested course building process, highlighting areas instructors need to take into consideration when planning their Coursera course.

• MOOC pedagogy: the challenges of developing for Coursera

  In 2012, a team of teachers and researchers associated with the masters in E-learning program at the University of Edinburgh began developing a Coursera course and offering their perspectives on the challenges that MOOCs present for delivering educational experience.

• A Pedagogy of Abundance or a Pedagogy to Support Human Beings? Participant Support on Massive Open Online Courses

  This research paper explores the importance of making connections between learners and fellowlearners and between learners and facilitators in a cMOOC. Meaningful learning occurs if social and teaching presence forms the basis of design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive processes for the realization of personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes.

• MOOCtalk

  Dr. Keith Devlin, a mathematician at Stanford University, chronicles his first Coursera course. Topics include peer assessment, mistakes, challenges, and more.

• Coursera: Teaching to the Masses

  Duke Today article about Walter Sinnott Armstrong and his the work he did preparing for his Coursera course.

• Four Professors Discuss Teaching Free Online Courses for Thousands of Students

  Interviews with four instructors teaching on different MOOC platforms about their thoughts and experiences.

• Research publications on Massive Open Online Courses and Personal Learning Environments

  Listing of research articles on MOOCs (with a focus on cMOOCs)

• MOOC pedagogy and accreditation

  Terry Anderson blog post examining accreditation for MOOCs

• Online learning: pedagogy, technology and opening up higher education

  Interesting panel brought together for an online discussion on MOOCs by the Guardian Education site

Assessments

• What we talk about when we talk about automated assessment

  Brief blog post describing automated assessment models in MOOCs.

• The Problems with Coursera's Peer Assessments

  Blog post by Audrey Watters on Coursera's Peer Assessment capabilities

• MOOCtalk - Peer grading: inventing the light bulb

  Keith Devlin reflects on the peer grading process for his Coursera course..."many of the students were taken aback by just how clunky and buggy the thing was, and the forums sprung alive with exasperated flames."

• Calibrated Peer Review: An Application To Increase Student Reading & Writing Skills

  2001 journal article providing an overview of calibrated peer review

• Getting to Know Coursera Peer Assessments

  Overview of the Coursera Peer Assessment tool from the University of Vanderbilt

Analytics

• The Value of Learning Analytics to Networked Learning on a Personal Learning Environment

  This 2011 NRC paper explores learning analytics and their purpose for learning and education and includes a case study of the use of learning analytics in a Massive Open Online Course.

• Coursera Data Export Documentation

  Coursera’s current working policies for export of raw course data

Copyright

• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare

  A code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law.

• Keeping MOOCs Open

  Article by Creative Commons arguing for open licensing of MOOC content

Student Engagement and Perspectives

• Coursera Fantasy

  Laura Gibbs chronicled her experience in taking the Coursera Fantasy class with Eric Rabkin.

• MOOC Brigade: What I Learned From Learning Online

  Time Magazine article highlighting the author's experience in taking a Coursera course and includes what they would do differently.

• Blogs and Forums as Communication and Learning Tools in a MOOC

  This paper presents the findings of research carried out into the use of blogs and forums as cMOOC that was run between September and December 2008.

• What My 11 Year Old's Stanford Course Taught Me About Online Education

  Forbes article providing an overview of taking Stanford's Game Theory Coursera course.

• How In-Person Meetups Are Fixing The Problem With MOOCs

  An Edudemic Magazine article exploring the emergence of meetups and how real world interaction can lead to community, accountability, and networking.

Flipped Classrooms

• The Flipped Classroom Model: A Full Picture

  Great overview and discussion of the flipped classroom model and some of the challenges in contains from Jackie Gerstein.

• Flipped classroom: The Full Picture for Higher Education

  Further article from Jackie Gersten which provide background for this model of learning with a focus on its use in higher education; identifies some problems with its use and implementation; and proposes a model for implementation based on an experiential cycle of learning model.

Discussion & Critiques

• Napster, Udacity, and the Acadamy - Clay Shirky

  The possibility MOOCs hold out is that the educational parts of education can be unbundled. MOOCs expand the audience for education to people ill-served or completely shut out from the current system...Open systems are open. For people used to dealing with institutions that go out of their way to hide their flaws, this makes these systems look terrible at first. But anyone who has watched a piece of open source software improve, or remembers the Britannica people throwing tantrums about Wikipedia, has seen how blistering public criticism makes open systems better. And once you imagine educating a thousand people in a single class, it becomes clear that open courses, even in their nascent state, will be able to raise quality and improve certification faster than traditional institutions can lower cost or increase enrollment."

• What’s the Matter With MOOCs?

  General criticism from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

• What’s the “problem” with MOOCs?

  An overview of some of the criticism leveled against MOOCs... "some MOOCs and college courses are going to continue to have problems if people create them without learning more about how people learn and how to design effective learning experiences."

• What’s right and what’s wrong about Coursera-style MOOCs

  A blog post by Tony Bates highlighting what he sees as the primary myths of MOOCs

• MOOCS are Marekting - The question is, can they be more?

  Blog post positing how MOOCs are marketing based but could be more... "Coursera is marketing. Buying in associates an institution with a vague signal of futurism and reinvention, associates a purportedly "elite" institution with its elite brethren, and buys some time while the whole thing shakes out...If it's immediate attention we're after, then there's another way to get it, by doing something that's not just new and me-too but also thoughtful and different and right. "

• Stanford for All

  Article from the Stanford Alumni article discussing the impact of MOOCs on the institution..."But should worldwide online education now be a part of Stanford's mission? Should Stanford encourage more of its faculty to produce these so-called massive open online courses, or MOOCs? Should anyone profit from their distribution? And if the University does invest more heavily in online education, how might that affect students—and professors—on the home campus?

• The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years

  Article from the MIT Technology Review discussing if online learning will become the most important innovation in education.

• Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university?

  Guardian article that provides a history of various MOOC platform, highlights interviews from students and Coursera course creators, and discusses the students’ various motivations for taking these online courses.

Overview

• Online Educational Delivery Models: A Descriptive View

  An Educause Review article providing a in-depth more descriptive view of the growing number of approaches enabled by educational technology.

• What Campus Leaders Need to Know About MOOCs

  Educause executive briefing article providing summary of features and issues of MOOCs.

• MOOCs: What role do they have in higher education?

  Article from Duke's Center for Instructional Technology that provides a good overview of MOOCs and their role in higher ed

• MOOC Directory

  Directory of free higher education MOOC providers and platforms

• The Massive Open Online Professor

  Journal of Higher Education article that provides a review of the key characteristics that MOOCs share in an attempt to better understand what opportunities they offer to universities and professors.

• Daphne Koller's Ted Talk: What we're learning from online education

  Daphne Koller, a founder of Coursera, discusses what can be learned from MOOCs.

• Peter Norvig's Ted Talk: The 100,000-student classroom

  Peter Norvig provides an overview of his Stanford/Udacity AI course

• What are the different types of MOOC? xMOOCs and cMOOCs

  Blog post explaining the differences between xMOOCs and cMOOCs

• What is a cMOOC?

  2010 Youtube video by Dave Cormier explaining the concept of connectivist MOOCS

• MOOCs and the AI-Stanford like Courses: Two Successful and Distinct Course Formats for Massive Open Online Courses

  This paper examines courses in x-MOOC and c-MOOC formats. It posits that although they share the use of distributed networks the format associated with c-MOOCs, which are defined by a participative pedagogical model, are unique and different from x-MOOCs.

• College is Dead. Long Live College!

  Time Magazine article on the impact of MOOCs

• What is the theory that underpins our moocs?

  George Siemens article on the differences between xMOOCs and cMOOCs

• Disruptive Pedagogies and Technologies in Universities

  This paper provides and examination of the cost centers associated with campus-based and online education systems and suggests that disaggregation may prove to be a cost-effective way to reduce tuition payments. The paper suggests that discount service models, such as MOOCs, may also be attractive in new models of higher education.

Campus Engagement

• MOOCs@Illinois

  A resource for campus instructors and support staff to learn about MOOCs, apply to get involved, etc

• The Place of Coursera in our Overall Campus E-learning Plan

  Presentation slides from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign describing the context and scope of their Coursera efforts.

• Exploring the MOOC format as a pedagogical approach for mLearning

  This paper takes a look at the MOOC format as a possible pedagogical approach to fit mobile learning (mLearning) based on mutual affordances of both contemporary learning/teaching formats.

• Everybody Wants to MOOC the World

  A blog post from Michael Feldstein asking twhat it means for the traditional LMS players to be marketing themselves as platforms for MOOCs and other open courses.

• Networked Learning - Learning Networks

  Peter B. Sloep's Scoop.it aggregation and comment space for MOOC articles