Noluthando moocs presentation

PERSONAL DETAILSNAME :NOLUTHANDO NKOSI

WHAT ARE MOOCS?

A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets. MOOCs provide interactive user fora that help build a community for students, professors, and teaching assistants . MOOCs are a recent development in distance education.

WHAT WAY IS A MOOC MASSIVE?

The massiveness of a MOOC is a natural result of being an online course open for anyone to enter. What counts as massive varies quite a bit.

Some MOOCs have a few hundred students and a few have had more than 100,000 students. But one way to look at it is to consider a course massive when it has more students than the teachers and assistants can themselves interact with.

When machine grading, peer assessment and other peer support become not only desirable but necessary, that counts as massive from the teacher’s perspective, and a few thousand more or less doesn’t make much difference

MASSIVE AND GLOBAL……

WHEN DID THE MOOCS START?

Although we cannot date back as to when MOOCS started but they date back to as far as the arrival of electronic media. It grew as people got more into electronic and by the help of the media and so on.

Though moocs were there they lacked content and still the lectures and students could not interact Videotape was used by many distance learning initiatives but was criticized because of its passivity. The multimedia generation had popularized distance learning and allowed new possibilities, but only computers and the web could unite forces to provide a new e-learning infrastructure, mainly built upon networks and communities on-line.

The evolution of technology and of new learning experiences have always been closely related. As distance learning specialists affirm, the field of distance-learning had three main generations:

Correspondence study Multimedia Computer-mediated

The first of these distance learning models grew exponentially in Europe and United States after the Industrial Revolution, especially because a more qualified work force was needed for the factories. In addition, postal services were becoming faster, cheaper and more reliable. For example, in the 19th century, students from Australia were already able take correspondence courses from prestigious universities, such as the London School of Economics, one of the first in the United Kingdom to offer distance education.

WHY MOOCS WERE STARTED?MOOCs were started to offer knowledge without borders which is a great advantage for many, and the absolute numbers are impressive. This was because a person could learn in the comfort of her own home and learn from lectures outside his country of origin.

There has been an exponential growth in the number of MOOC providers. But some see MOOCs as a disruptive technology in higher education.

MOOCs have a global impact. They have created a wider and more engaged audience, but there are still a number of challenges just like any other form of learning Some of the challenges include:

Low completion rates (meaning that the courses aren't really "Massive")

Varying time zones.Meetings can sometimes go on too long.

A lack of face to face contact which is no good .

There are currently no regulating agencies for MOOCs which can monitor quality.

There is a potential for academic dishonesty.

DISADVANTAGES

The what, when ,how and why moocs were created has been answered now there have been uncertainties about the moocs that will be discussed as follows.

Individual Instruction MOOCs require course delivery to a large number of learners. They attract a wide variety of students with different learning styles from all around the world. It is a challenge for instructors to engage students, maintain their interest in the course, and tailor the learning environment to fit the need of each student.

Student Performance Assessment One of the biggest challenges of MOOCs is the assessment of student performance (Rodriguez, 2012). Cheating presents a major challenge of online education (Carr, 2012). How to validate original work to prevent or detect plagiarism is one of the widely discussed challenges in online education (Cooper & Sahami, 2013). Some solutions for the challenge are being proposed by institutions that offer MOOCs. For example, Udacity and edX use test centres for their online courses. However, the cost to students presents a barrier. Coursers attempted to use plagiarism-detection software in detecting cheating. Also, machine learning has been proposed to identify cheating by the analysis of learner behaviour.

Long-Term Administration and Oversight Those on the front lines of MOOC development and implementation warn that, although MOOC’s might be open and free to participants, the costs to institutions can be significant. For

example, course development assistance through edX can reach upwards of R250,000 per course with an additional R50,000 fee each time the course is offered (Kolowich, 2013b). For instructors who develop their own courses, human resource needs include course development (typically 100 hours) and course management (8-10 hours per week) in addition to existing professorial duties. Make discussion a challenge. It’s impossible to facilitate meaningful conversation

in a classroom with 150,000 students. There are electronic alternatives: message boards, forums, chat rooms, etc., but the intimacy of face-to-face communication is lost, emotions often misunderstood. This is a particular challenge for humanities courses. Heller writes, "When three great scholars teach a poem in three ways, it isn't inefficiency. It is the premise on which all humanistic inquiry is based.“

Make it easier for students to drop out. Heller reports that when MOOCS are strictly online, not a blended experience with some classroom time, "dropout rates are typically more than 90%.“

l shrink faculties, eventually eliminating them. Heller writes that Burgard sees MOOCS as destroyers of traditional higher education. Who needs professors when a school can hire an adjunct to manage a MOOC class? Fewer professors will mean fewer Ph.D.s granted, smaller graduate programs, fewer fields and subfields taught, the eventual death of entire "bodies of knowledge."

WILL SHRINK FACULTIES, EVENTUALLY ELIMINATING THEM. HELLER WRITES THAT BURGARD SEES MOOCS AS DESTROYERS OF TRADITIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION. WHO NEEDS PROFESSORS WHEN A SCHOOL CAN HIRE AN ADJUNCT TO MANAGE A MOOC CLASS? FEWER PROFESSORS WILL MEAN FEWER PH.D.S GRANTED, SMALLER GRADUATE PROGRAMS, FEWER FIELDS AND SUBFIELDS TAUGHT, THE EVENTUAL DEATH OF ENTIRE "BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE." WE DO WANT CHANGE BUT IS IT WISE TO ELIMINATE PEOLPLE AND REPLACE THEM WITH MECHINES.THINK OF ALL THE PROFFESSORS WHO ARE GOING TO LOOSE THEIR JOBS DUE TO MMOCS CUMIMNG IN AT A FAST PACE.

Are free. Right now, most MOOCs are free or nearly free, a definite plus for the student. This is likely to change as universities look for ways to defray the high cost of creating MOOCs.THINK OF WHAT YOU PAY WHERE YOU ARE .

Force professors to improve lectures. Because the best MOOCS are short, usually an hour at the most, addressing a single topic, professors are forced to examine every bit of material as well as their teaching methods.

Are designed to ensure that students keep up. MOOCS are real college courses, complete with tests and grades. They are filled with multiple choice questions and discussions that test comprehension.

Allow teachers to make the most of classroom time in blended classes. In what is called a "flipped classroom," teachers send students home with assignments to listen to or watch a recorded lecture, or read it, and return to the classroom for more valuable discussion time or other interactive learning.

ADVANTAGES

THINK ABOUT THIS

One of the largest problems with MOOCs is their impersonal nature. In many cases, thousands of students enroll in a single section with a single instructor. Sometimes the instructor is only a "facilitator" rather than the course creator, and other times the instructor is absent all together. Assignments designed to be interactive such as group discussions can reinforce the impersonal nature of these large courses. It's hard enough for a class of 30 to get to know each other, forget learning the names of your 500 peers.

In traditional classrooms, the point of instructor feedback isn't just to rank students. Ideally, students are able to learn from feedback and catch future mistakes. Unfortunately, in-depth feedback simply isn't possible in most MOOCs. Many instructors teach unpaid and even the most generous simply aren't capable of correcting hundreds or thousands of papers a week. In some cases, MOOCs provide automatic feedback in the form of quizzes or interactives. However, without a mentor, some students find themselves repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

MOOCS: Many will try but few will pass. Those high enrollment numbers may be deceiving. When enrollment is nothing more than a few mouse clicks, getting a class of 1000 can be simple. People find out through social media, blog posts, or internet surfing and enroll in just a couple minutes. But, they soon fall behind or forget to login to the course from the beginning.

In many cases, this isn't a negative. It gives student the chance to try out a subject without risk and allows access to materials for those that may not be willing to make a larger time commitment. However, for some students, the low completion rate means that they just weren't able to stay on top of the work. The self-motivated, work-as-you-please atmosphere doesn't work for everyone. Some students thrive in a more structured environment with set deadlines and in-person motivation.

When professors become expected to do more for free, one of two things will happen: colleges will need to adjust salaries accordingly or many of the most talented academics will find work elsewhere. Students benefit when they learn from the best and brightest, so this is a concern that will increasingly effect everyone in the academic sphere.

How will we deal with unemployment? Teaching is the mother of all professions but teaching does not teach one to create imbalances moocs are generally here to create them a lot of our already qualified professors will loose jobs .

The quality of education will not be measured due to its incompetency our students will lack focus and online dishonesties will occur.moocs are more like a walk in the park and an invitation to students to say “welcome to the free degree course”.

the future of higher education and frankly, the future of our culture. The key problem is not even MOOCs so much as it is with the reduction of knowledge to that which can be tested by a multiple-choice exam or similar methods. It is the “massive” aspect of MOOCs that raises the deepest problems. MOOCs pose a great threat to the most important value of higher education: “literacy.” By “literacy” I mean, very broadly, the ability to read, think about, and intelligently respond (both orally and in writing) to the literature of any field of study. Thus, implementation of MOOCs for university credit is bad because it is bad for our students.

WHAT'S YOUR THOUGHT?

REFERENCES

http://bostonreview.net/us/are-moocs-good-students

http://www.fractuslearning.com/2013/03/12/why-moocs-matter/

http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/moocs-and-hype-again/

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/20/130520fa_fact_heller

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml