Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education

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Many of you will have seen this; it was new to me.

Have a great Sunday.

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Comment by John Birnie on September 21, 2012 at 11:29: Kia ora Hazel - thanks for the update from Edsurge. Interesting to look at the wider implications.

Comment by Hazel Owen on September 20, 2012 at 8:30: Kia ora, John. I just received this update from Edsurge about Coursera (the organisation that Daphne Koller speaks about), and thought you may be interested.

A taster from their update:

Coursera is on a roll, announcing that a second round of top-tier universities have signed up to use its platform to run online courses. Five of the 17 new additions are outside of the U.S. (stretching from Israel to Hong Kong to Australia); domestic partners include Columbia, UC Irvine, Ohio State, Brown, Wesleyan and others. The ever-popular startup (named one of Time's "50 Best Websites of 2012") now boasts over 200 courses from 33 universities around the world and more than a million registered users. See the full list here.

Not everyone, though, is stoked. The Brown Daily Herald, the campus newspaper, reports concerns that "the courses could represent shoddy imitation...." Some worry that running a MOOC will mean less time with on-campus (and paying) students. Perhaps rightly so: each of its three faculty member who will offer Coursera courses will be teaching one less in-person class at Brown.

You can read the full report from Edsurge here.

Comment by Hazel Owen on August 19, 2012 at 18:09: Kia ora, John - and thank you for sharing. It's a popular video - Nigel Bailey recently the same video with me by email :-) It dovetails quite nicely with another TED Talk Thoughts on design: The 100,000-student classroom.

Some interesting implications for the future - for example, it feels ironic that more personlisation is possible with these larger numbers of learners...I wonder though if the two underlying points are acknowledgement that the content is only a fraction of what is needed for learning, and that choice and empowerment are partly why there is a greater sense of personalisation and freedom. What do you reckon? Also, how does it compare with a blended approach? What are / could be the benefits of a mix of face-to-face and online as opposed to purely distance learning? Are there any? :-)