Week 4 - Activity 12

Week 4 - Activity 12
Before we examine MOOCs in more detail, briefly consider if the MOOC approach could be adopted in your own area of education or training. Post your thoughts in your blog and then read and comment on your peers’ postings.

4 hours, that was the timing for this activity. I must have spent at least 10 hours reading and following up on links. Of the 100% I read I only ever seem to retain about 5% if I am lucky, so I had better write this fast. My notes on the given material and links stemming from this material can be found here.

My area of education has always been in private overseas international secondary schools (KS3-5), from the time I earned my PGCE to now (about 25 years in 5 different countries). The simple answer is yes, I believe the MOOC approach can work and already is being adopted in overseas international schools. For example, I have one student who has successfully completed two Udacity courses. He is a special case, but others started the AI course that was offered and some students took part in the team challenge on edX I think it was. This was all self-motivated and initiated by the students. In my school, within the Computing faculty, we make use of Codecademy, Code Monster and other online tutorials. Although these may not be classed as MOOCs I can see that as soon as MOOCs offer courses at the secondary school level they will be used. Already I make use of the first 5 to 7 lectures of a Stanford computing course as an introduction to programming with my IB Computer Science classes. My school is a 1:1 laptop school, which makes a difference in that all students have access to hardware and the school have a fast and fairly robust Internet connection.

The issues for secondary students is the need to help them stay motivated and organized as they work through a MOOC. The other issue will be parents asking what they are paying high school fees for if their children are spending time in lesson working on something they can just as easily work on at home, and probably with private tutor at a far lower cost. When I present this issue to my IB ITGS students their response is that they would rather come to school, for the social aspects of it as well as the need to be in a different place to work. They say they would not do any work if left alone at home. For middle school students, staying organized and not becoming overwhelmed with the various tools required to be used would take learning and practice. Overall, I think the use of MOOCs across a range of subjects will be used at some point in the student's learning during an academic year.