Category: Top News

The Open edX 2017 conference will be hosted in Madrid, Spain, at Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) University’s campus in Leganes, May 24-25.

Carlos Delgado Kloos, UC3M University’s Vice President, made the announcement during the Open edX 2016 conference at Stanford –video above– as well as at Madrid’s 2016 Open edX meetup –video below.

The fourth Open edX Conference –after past editions at Harvard, Wellesley and Stanford– will happen at the same time as the European EMOOC 2017 conference.

This is the first time the Open edX conference is organized outside the U.S., a fact that acknowledges the strength of the community in Europe, Asia and Middle East.

Cornell has launched an interesting online learning initiative called “WebSeries”, a paid service that consists of one-hour long lectures providing “easy, bite-sized samples of experts and topics”.

The target audience is busy working professionals who do not have time for a full course or certificate program but want to stay informed on the latest research and stay connected with Cornell’s thought leaders.

Users can subscribe to a channel at $39 per month or $279 per year, according to the eCornell website.

ECornell – Cornell’s online education department – currently offers over 30 certificate programs for professional development.

What are the most popular MOOCs?

After filtering data from 185 free courses on various elearning platforms, the Online Course Report website has compiled a list of the 50 most-followed free MOOCs. Of all of the courses considered, 66 are on Coursera and 55 on edX.org.

1. Learning How to Learn – 1.1 Million Enrollments

2. Machine Learning – 1.1 Million Enrollments

3. R Programming – 952k Enrollments

4. Introduction to Finance – 846k Enrollments

5. The Data Scientist’s Toolbox – 828k Enrollments

6. Think Again: How to Reason and Argue – 775k Enrollments

7. Algorithms: Part 1 – 750k Enrollments

8. Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies: the First Step in Entrepreneurship – 736k Enrollments

9. Understanding IELTS: Techniques for English Language Test – 690k

10. Programming Mobile Application for Android Handheld Systems, Part 1 – 678k Enrollments

11. Cryptography I – 674k Enrollments

12. Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) – 657k Enrollments

13. Social Psychology – 645k Enrollments

14. Introduction to Public Speaking – 616k Enrollments

15. Model Thinking – 582k Enrollments

16. An introduction to Interactive Programming in Python – 581k Enrollments

17. Introduction to Philosophy – 550k Enrollments

18. Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 1 – 584k Enrollments

19. Introduction to Computer Science – 515k Enrollments

20. Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence – 494k Enrollments

21. Game Theory – 474k Enrollments

22. Calculus One – 454k Enrollments

23. Competitive Strategy – 430k Enrollments

24. Introduction to Computer Science – 384k

25. Exploring English: Language and Culture – 326k Enrollments

26. Data Analysis and Statistical Inference – Duke 291k Enrollments

27. Gamification – 286k Enrollments

28. Circuits and Electronics – 230k Enrollments

29. Creativity, Innovation and Change – 220k Enrollments

30. A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior – 217k Enrollments

31. Web Development: How to Build a Blog – 217k Enrollments

32. Learn to Program: The Fundamentals – 198k Enrollments

33. Greek and Roman Mythology – 180k Enrollments

34. Startup Engineering – 170k Enrollments

35. Computational Investing – 170k Enrollments

36. Financial Markets – 161k Enrollments

37. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence – 160k Enrollments

38. Introduction to Computer Science and Programming – 157k Enrollments

39. Introduction to Financial Accounting – 155k Enrollments

40. Modern & Contemporary American poetry – 140k Enrollments

41. Data Analysis – 102k Enrollments

42.  Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python – 98k Enrollments

43. The Future of Storytelling – 92957 Enrollments

44. Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science – 92k Enrollments

45. Introduction to Philosophy: God, Knowledge, and Consciousness – 89k Enrollments

46. The MOOC Introduction to Operations Management – 87k Enrollments

47. Introduction to Mathematical Thinking – 86k Enrollments

48. Justice – 84k Enrollments

49. A History of the World Since 1300 – 83k Enrollments

50. Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps – 78k Enrollments

 

 

The 2016 Open edX Conference, scheduled for June 14 – 15 at Stanford University, will gather over two-hundred top developers, educators and technologists from all over the world.

The main speakers will be Jono Bacon, a leading community manager, and Mitchell L. Stevens, educator and professor at Stanford University, where he also serves as the founding Director of the Center for Advanced Research through Online Learning and co-director of the Lytics Lab.

The conference will be opened by Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX, who will talk about the state of the edX and Open edX community. Several keynotes, talks, panels and lighting talks will complete the two-day program. [IBL will give one of the lighting talks on “education marketing”].

Another two days of workshops and tutorials will follow on June 16 and 17 for a more specialized audience.

During the event, organizers will announce that the 2017 Open edX Conference will be celebrated in Madrid, Spain, on May 24-25, organized by the UC3M University.

By Michael Amigot

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are about to lose the M and O of their name and just be OCs or Online Courses.

Courses intended for academic credit are the new trend, and in the edX universe we will see an explosion of offers, especially around the “MIT’s Micro-Masters” idea. Those who successfully complete the MOOCs –or the OCs– with a verified certificate ($50 to $150 per course), will earn a Micro-Masters credential and be able to apply to master’s programs on campus. The Micro-Masters credential will count as a semester’s worth of work.

An advantage of taking a for-credit course is that students will not need to have SAT scores or survive the admissions process. They will be able to just pass and purchase the credit. Or, in the case of the CLEP courses that Modern States Education Alliance– a non-profit in New York City committed to providing “freshman year at college for free”– will launch in the fall, learners will just pay a fee of $80 per exam at approved College Board centers.

Another turn is online courses as a professional development tool. Coursera has registered over 7.5 million enrollments in their sixty professional development-oriented courses.

Overseas, FutureLearn has recently announced that students taking some of its MOOCs will be able to earn course credits toward degrees, MBAs and professional certifications. In this way, higher education will begin the unbundling process.

All of it, in the U.S. and overseas, signals the end of the free MOOC model and the beginning of the freemium model, following the goal of bringing revenues to non-profit and for-profit educational organizations alike.

As MIT’s Prof. Dave Pritchard said last month on the MOOC Maker Workshop in Cambridge, MA, educational organizations consider that “it’s time to recover some cash, by charging for certificates and developing branded degrees” (see his explanatory slide above).

 

https://youtu.be/L3ou5RyvIiY

This recently posted video from McKinsey Academy shows the features used by this organization within its heavily customized Open edX platform.

Additionally, it gives a glimpse on how learners are equip with the skills and mindsets to achieve organizational impact.

The CS50x course from Harvard University –the most popular course on edX with over one million enrollments– will incorporate virtual reality this Fall 2016 in order to improve the student experience.

See a sample above, click and drag to look around, or watch it with Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear.

Experts say that virtual reality will transform online learning. The director of the VR lab at Stanford University, Professor Jeremy Bailenson explained it during a recent talk.

https://youtu.be/JfbVg41mDV0

“Introduction to Programming with Java”, developed by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) on edX.org under a Creative Commons license, has achieved the milestone of 200,000 learners –as his coordinator, Prof. Carlos Delgado Kloos, disclosed to IBL.

This course, one of the ten most successful on edX.org, is divided into three five-week parts; the estimated time that learners need to dedicate is eight-to-twelve hours per week. It is designed to prepare learners for the Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science A exam.

Java is one of the most-in-demand programming languages designed to work across multiple software platforms.

 

Business schools are watching the rise of McKinsey Academy, an Open edX-based platform created by the consultancy giant and headquartered in lower Manhattan .

“McKinsey has genuine potential to reshape the business education market”, says The Financial Times.

“When people ask me where my competition is, McKinsey Academy is on the list,” says Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School in New York.

• “A typical McKinsey Academy course might drill the user in the “10 timeless tests” that it applies when hatching corporate strategies (“Does your strategy rest on privileged insights?” asks test five, while number 10 inquires: “Have you translated your strategy into an action plan?”). Alternatively, the student might get sucked into a fictional case study involving a playground equipment manufacturer that has lost its way and needs to get sales growing again.”

• “The content tends to be broken up into 3-5 minute snippets to reflect the fact that participants are unlikely to have much time to spare — there is even an option to watch videos at double speed. McKinsey consultants serve as “teaching assistants” and top students are rewarded with a place on a leaderboard. There is also a “group work” element where participants are broken up into small teams.”

Beyond McKinsey, other consultancy making similar moves include Korn Ferry and PwC.

 

[Disclosure: IBL has a partnership with McKinsey Academy to host the Open edX Meetups in New York]

 

MOOCS need to be more flexible, audience-sensitive, not focused on institutional learning, modular and shorter.

Author and EdTech entrepreneur Donald Clark recently blogged about “7 ways to design sticky MOOCs”.

Here is a summary of his revealing ideas:

• “It is unfortunate that many MOOC designers treat learners as they were physically (and psychologically) at a university” (…) “MOOC designers have to get out of their institutional thinking and realize that their audience often has a different set of intentions and needs. The new MOOCs need to be sensitive to learner needs.”

• “Having all the material available from day one allows learners to start later than others, proceed at their own rate and, importantly, catch up when they choose.”

• “A more modular approach, where modules are self-contained and can be taken in any order, is one tactic. Adaptive MOOCs, using AI software that guides learners through content on the basis of their needs, is another.” (…) Data show that some learners complete the whole course in one day, others do a couple of modules per day, many do the modules in a different order, and some go through in a linear and measured fashion. Some even go backwards.

• “MOOC learners don’t need the ten week semester structure. Some want much shorter and faster experiences, others want medium length, and some want longer courses. Higher education is based on an agricultural calendar, with set semesters that fit harvest and holiday patterns. The rest of the world does not work to this pre-industrial timetable.” (…)
  “We have to understand that learning for MOOC audiences is taken erratically and is not always in line with the campus model. We need to design for this.”

• “There is a considerable thirst for doing things at your own pace and convenience, rather than at the pace mandated by synchronous, supported courses.”

• “Take a dual approach that appeals to an entire range of learners with different needs and motivations.