Author: IBL News

There are many ways to film and produce MOOCs and instructional videos. It seems that a fully scripted video seems to be the preferred approach by many educators. But there are another ways to gain subject-related knowledge.

Meet the University of Hong Kong, an edX Consortium university, and its latest filming experiment. They have adopted three different approaches when recording MOOCs.

• Talking head videos.  These two courses (Epidemics and Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought) were recorded with professors on a green screen; motion graphics and still images were added later.
• Panel Discussions. This course The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia adopts a round-table format to discuss main issues.
• Location Filming. It is the best choice for some courses such as this one in Vernacular Architecture.

Far beyond creating a nice and engaging input, there is always the possibility of creating –or at least trying to create– viral MOOC videos.

Watch above, for example, George Mason University’s Professor Donald J. Boudreaux’s five-minute video lecture on the evolution of human prosperity: killer graphics, slick animation, studio lighting, multiple takes… A professional film studio in San Francisco spent two full days filming the four lectures that compose the course “Everyday Economics”. The video has gotten over 130,000 views.

Open edX’s technology possibilities are endless; this software can become the dominant, ubiquitous solution of the educational world, specially now that we know that it is used by the 31 member universities of the edX Consortium and Google is about to launch its MOOC.org, a YouTube-style portal for courses.

However, we are still far from that.  What do we need, then, to guarantee the ultimate success of Open edX?

See this infographic created by ExtensionEngine.com. It highlights Stanford University’s recommendations in a paper commissioned by its Office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning (we referred to this report recently at IBL Studios).

Basically, the xConsortium who runs Open edX must involve the open-source community with further conviction.

As developers and contributors to the Open edX community, and having worked for six universities, here at IBL we think that one of the most urgent recommendations is to set up a public bug tracking. Otherwise, there is no way to know if a bug has been identified and someone is addressing and fixing it.

Another practical suggestion is to attach some documentation to the frequent –almost weekly– software updates at GitHub.

Stanford advises to move to only 2-4 stable releases per year with notes, upgraded scripts, and improved packaging and clear version numbering. And that is fine too.

Open edX is amazing, disruptive technology. It is worth the effort!

How does Stanford use Open edX?

An engineer from this University, Sef Kloninger, has shared a snapshot of the features Stanford has built on its own Open edX’s instance.

So far we knew that those contributions included “real-time chat, bulk email, new installation scripts, operations tools and integration with external survey tools”,  according to Stanford’s website.

The all-new features Stanford has built on Open edX are:

1. Shibboleth integration
2. Chat for on-campus courses
3. Shopping cart / Cybersource payment for paid courses
4. Bulk email
5. Authoring tool improvements (e.g. view this unit in Studio, check all captions)
6. Basic analytics (metrics tab)
7. Theming
8. Targeted feedback
9. Option shuffling
10. LTI 2.0 (multiple submissions)
11. Send anonymized user_id to external tools (e.g. Qualtrics)
12. Time delay between problem set attempts
13. Assist with new peer assessment system
14. Incremental cert generation
15. Unauthenticated, deep linking
16. Stanford-specific checklist

Beyond this description, Mr. Kloninger’s talk at the University of Zurich, on June 3, focused on the process behind Stanford Open edx’s instance: servers, code management and developing features.  Click here to download the slides from Mr. Kloninger’s talk.

The Stanford Open edX platform is being developed by a team of engineers as way to support research and experimentation in interactive instructional learning. This platform is being used for residential education and MOOCs.

Recently a report from Stanford University examined the use of online technology and methods for delivering education to improve course material for on-campus students, distance learners in professional education programs and lifelong learners around the world.

This “Stanford Online: 2013 in Review is a key document to understand how technology is advancing teaching and learning.

Instructure, the maker of the Canvas LMS and operator of the Canvas.net MOOC platform, has launched a new service called Canvas Catalog, that allows to create edX and Coursera-style public course collections online.

Canvas Catalog (pictured above) also supports customized landing pages, payment for courses, discounts and promotion codes, credentials and certificates for completion.

In other words, by building a marketplace or storefront for their course offerings, students will have a one-stop shop where they can register, enroll, pay and take courses.

The goal is to help Canvas LMS’ customers produce, host and market their own branded distance courses.

The first two organizations that will use this service are Pasco County Schools in Florida and Academic Partnership.

Even if the hype on MOOCs is decreasing, higher education institutions need to follow a strategy regarding open online courses in order to stay relevant. One possibility is to join the not-for-profit edX Consortium (or xConsortium; the creator of the Open edX software). The problem is the high price of the ticket.

EdX university partners have to invest an estimated $2 to $4 million to be part of the xConsortium. Another possibility is to negotiate a fee per course. An East Cost university was asked recently to pay around $250K per course plus 70 percent of revenue earned from it.

Bring your digital classroom when you’re on the move!

Here is a lists of recommended iOS and Android apps:

• Coursera’s free iOS and Android app gives you access to Coursera’s list of available courses.
• The Khan Academy app on iOS allows you to run course videos on the screen with a rolling transcript underneath. There’s also an unofficial viewer for khan academy app for Android.
• The MOOCs4U iOS and Android app lists thousands of different MOOCs available from providers like edX, Coursera, Udacity and more.
• GroupMOOC’s iOS app helps you build study timetable plans in a calendar-like format.
• Omni Study iOS‘s app ($1) allows also to organize your study schedule.
• On Android, the free app My Study Life is a similar study planner.
• Write, $2 on iOS, will allow you to make notes on what you’re learning while you watch a MOOC video on your computer. If you’re on Android, take notes with SomNote.

(Note: We did this summary after a NYT article.)

Stanford University –which has been successfully using its own Open edX instance since April 2013, managing 20 public MOOCs and many more courses for on-campus use– criticizes in an elaborate report the way in which the xConsortium is running the edX open-source project, while it shares its recommendations to improve governance, core technology, and community management.

“We believe making these improvements will drive adoption amongst teachers, hosting providers, researchers, IT departments, and developers. Our recommendations are informed by interviews with a dozen stakeholders,” writes Sef Kloninger, Head of Engineering at Stanford Online, in Open edX’s Google group for discussions.

Mr. Kloninger posted Stanford’s findings online, in a Google Doc and in plain HTML. This paper was authored by Nate Aune, an open-source entrepreneur.

What follows is a summary of the recommendations:

Stanford University –which has been successfully using its own Open edX instance since April 2013, managing 20 public MOOCs and many more courses for on-campus use– criticizes in an elaborate report the way in which the xConsortium is running the edX open-source project, while it shares its recommendations to improve governance, core technology, and community management.

“We believe making these improvements will drive adoption amongst teachers, hosting providers, researchers, IT departments, and developers. Our recommendations are informed by interviews with a dozen stakeholders,” writes Sef Kloninger, Head of Engineering at Stanford Online, in Open edX’s Google group for discussions.

Mr. Kloninger posted Stanford’s findings online, in a Google Doc and in plain HTML. This paper was authored by Nate Aune, an open-source entrepreneur.

What follows is a summary of the recommendations:

WordPress’ online economy is really big. It accounts for 20.8 percent of all websites on the Internet.

The graphic below, created by WhoIsHostingThis.com,  details interesting facts, such as top-selling themes and designers. Some of these themes have generated over a million dollars in revenue!