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Good afternoon. My colleague Betha Whitlow just discussed new technologies associated with the classroom. For my presentation, I’m going to focus on technologies for teaching and learning and provide examples of tools that can be used in these new learning spaces or…
Throughout the years, the Engaging New Technologies presentations have encouraged us to think about our professional mission of keeping up-to-date--not only for our sake, but for the sake of our users--be they faculty, curators, or students.
as is more and more likely, for use in the massive expanded classroom of online courses (ok, this isn’t really an online course--it’s a Genesis concert, but you get the idea).
And I think now more than ever, our educators, who are struggling to keep all theplates spinning at once, are depending on us for help. As information professionals, it's our role to promote literacy of digital tools among our users and help them understand the potential of these new technologies.
It’s about bridging the divide between what technologies are available and what are useful. Basically, we’re circus performers in cardigans.
So, while other presentations during this session focus on what we need to know, this presentation will focus the teaching/learning trends that are important to our faculty, instructors, and educators.
One of the biggest trends in (or perhaps outside) the classroom is MOOCs. And while you might think that a MOOC is a character on Sesame Street (so, this is a tweet from one of my favorite Twitter accounts “Fake Library Stats, so obviously this is fake---yet so true)…
So, imagine you’re sitting at your desk and a faculty members comes in and asks:Tell me about these MOOC things.
or perhaps a character on the Fraggles…
..the word is actually an acronym for Massive Open Online Courses. Let’s break that word down a bit. Massive: With these courses, the goal is large-scale enrollment and participation. It’s not always the case, but it’s the goal. Students can work at own pace.Open: In the beginning, these courses were put together using open available resources and offered free over the Internet. This has morphed into “no charge” rather than the using of open resources.Online: Hence, online. Having materials online, moves the education experience away from a location based endeavor. Now a student in India can take a class from Harvard (and vice versa).Courses: And finally, these platforms provide access to structured courses with learning goals and objectives, assignments and tests. In other words, courses.
So what do MOOCs tend to include? Well, there is a repository or hub where course materials are located--this includes syllabus, course readings, etc. There are usually recorded lectures. Sometimes there is a collaborative aspect: online forums or study groups through Google Hangouts, for example. And then assessment is done through easy to grade quizzes and tests.
There are a number of MOOC platforms and each works slightly different from the other. Certain MOOCs partner with institutions, for example Coursera and EdX.Coursera: A for-profit company founded by two computer-science professors from Stanford. The model is to sign contracts with colleges (Princeton, U of Virginia, University of Michigan) that agree to use the platform to offer free courses. There are over 200 courses with 2 million enrolled students.EdX: A nonprofit effort run jointly by MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley. EdX plans to give away software platform to offer free courses (so anyone can use it to run online courses). A smaller effort with 23 courses and 500,000 students.
Other companies work directly with faculty/educators:Udacity: Another for-profit company founded by a Stanford computer-science professor. Udacity works with individual faculty instead of institutions and focuses on computer science and related fields--not really a player in the humanities game.Udemy (U-de-me): A for-profit platform that allows anyone to set up a course. The company encourages instructors to charge a small fee, with revenue split between instructor and company.P2PU: Peer 2 Peer University is an open education project with educational resources., courses and study groups.
And by the way, online courses aren’t just a higher education thing.....museums, such as the Tate and MOMA, are also creating online courses as well.
So, a curator walks into your office and says:I want to get on the Internet. Can you help me?
One idea is to start small and create microlectures. Microlectures are short recorded audio/video presentations on a single, tightly defined topic. Microlectures can be used as a component of online courses or as supplemental materials for face-to-face instruction. Short lectures focus on a single topic and can be used to explain key concepts, demonstrate techniques. It's about providing students options for on-demand playback of information.
Of course, the other option is to go big and create an online course.
Testimonials from faculty about the process of creating an online course either talk about the mystical transformation that occurred and made them a much-improved instructor. Or they talk about how it was an absolute pain in the ass and made them lose faith in humanity. Online courses are a lot of work to design and represent a dramatic change in instructional design. How do you design a course for an audience in the thousands? How to you create assignments that can be graded by robots? Let’s not even talk about copyright and the use of images.