Following on from the Flipped Classroom session at the recent SALT Conference, I’ve been watching the video below that shows Daphne Koller talking about Coursera. Here she is, according to the blurb, “enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free — not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. Each keystroke, comprehension quiz, peer-to-peer forum discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed and, most importantly, absorbed.”
Some of her arguments are nothing new – large lectures don’t work very well and students learn more if they are actively involved. However, there are some interesting points about the use of technology and the role of peer marking. I’m not sure how long they can go on giving there courses away for free. What happens when the project funding stops? What’s their revenue model? Tony Bates also has some interesting questions as does Stephen Downes
Are there questions in all of this for us here at Swansea?
Interestingly, much of this is simlisar to a project I worked on called eBig3 at Riga Technical University 3 years ago
In opposition, some things students don’t like about online learning
http://www.geteducated.com/elearning-education-blog/5-things-real-students-hate-about-online-learning-degrees/
More from on this via ALT from the Edinburgh involvement in Coursera http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/2012/08/mooc-pedagogy-the-challenges-of-developing-for-coursera/