By Casey Newton. Google said today that it will develop software for edX, a nonprofit created by Harvard and MIT that solicits and distributes online courses for free. Open edX, as the effort is called, is a platform for creating courses that can be taken by anyone with internet access. The move builds on Google's release last year of Course Builder, its own open-source education tool. "This platform is helping to deliver on our goal of making education more accessible through technology, and enabling educators to easily teach at scale on top of cloud platform services," said Dan Clancy, Google's director of research in the announcement. More...

MOOC. Cet acronyme ne vous a évidemment pas échappé ! Ces cours en ligne « ouverts et massifs » (Massive Open Online Courses) ont vu pour la première fois le jour au MIT relayé ensuite en 2008 à Standford.
Depuis plusieurs années, des plates-formes ont été créées pour rassembler l’offre « MOOC » de plusieurs établissements.
Le principe comme l’explique le teaser de Coursera : « consacrer à mettre le meilleur enseignement au monde gratuitement à la disposition de toute personne qui le recherche ». Suite de l'article...

By Jessica Knott. Rarely does a MOOC strike fear into the heart of its participants. Interestingly, in this case I mean the MOOC itself, not the content. MOOC MOOC, a MOOC about MOOCs (MOOC! Sorry, I just wanted to say it once more, as I didn’t feel I had worked enough instances of the word MOOC into the sentence) offered challenges and learning, exploring the MOOC phenomenon in an interesting, creative way.
MOOC MOOC has been offered three times by Jesse Stommel, Founder and director of Hybrid Pedagogy, and Sean Michael Morris, managing editor and coordinator of Educational Outreach for Hybrid Pedagogy. Read more...

By Kevin Burke and Jessica Mahoney. Online courses are no longer solely synonymous with for-profit, community and large state colleges. MOOCs, traditionally defined as Massive Open Online Courses, serve as a model for delivering free learning content to anyone who wishes to enroll. Since their breakthrough in 2012, MOOCs have summoned a sense of urgency for institutions deciding whether to assimilate or differentiate. The aftermath of rapid adoption at large, elite institutions and flagship state schools is the growing myth that MOOCs will threaten traditional liberal arts colleges. The original MOOC platform, however, was designed to deliver engaged learning activities found at the heart of these small institutions. More...

Some time ago, I began a discussion of "Why (Some) People Laugh at Badges."
I would like to ask a different question here. Right now (September, 2013) badges are risible, albeit less and less so, and non-controversial, while discussion of MOOCs is ubiquitous and intensely controversial. Why the difference? What would make discussion of badges more like discussion of MOOCs?
Some reasons that I can think of are that MOOCs clearly appear as a more imminent threat than badges do to faculty livelihoods.  MOOCs also appear to some as a threat  to cherished values about face to face teaching and learning. More...

Comme son nom ne l'indique pas, OpenClassrooms est une plateforme… francophone ! Elle hébergera, dès le 18 septembre, des cours en ligne gratuits dédiés à l'informatique, aux sciences, ainsi qu'à l'entrepreneuriat.
Pour le nom franco-français, il faudra attendre encore un peu… Mais c'est une réelle avancée que propose le site OpenClassrooms. Le site se révèle en effet être une plateforme entièrement consacrée aux cours en ligne gratuits, autrement dit les fameux "MOOCs". A ceci près que ces MOOCs seront… francophones ! Une grande première. Le lancement est prévu le 18 septembre prochain. Suite...

By Hilary Culbertson. Cathy Davidson, one of HASTAC's cofounders and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English at Duke University, is featured today in the New York Times. She's written a 2-part series on MOOCs that explores their potential and their negatives. Questions proposed by readers and addressed by Cathy include the high dropout rates of MOOCs, their potential to mitigate income inequality, and how they fit with traditional instruction. More...

Harvard, le MIT et… Google ! Le géant américain vient d'annoncer son association avec ces prestigieuses universités, ainsi qu'avec EdX, plateforme éducative en ligne. Objectif annoncé : se développer dans les MOOCs.
Quel est le lien entre la plateforme éducative en ligne EdX, Harvard, le MIT et Google ? La volonté de permettre la création d'un site, que le président d'EdX n'hésite pas à qualifier de "YouTube pour MOOCs". Mooc.org doit en effet être accessible à tous, des entreprises aux gouvernements, en passant par les professeurs et leurs étudiants. More...

By George Lorenzo. Massive open online courses were never meant to be dull and lonely. But how can the courses encourage more student-to-student and student-to-faculty interaction?
In a New York Times feature article headlined "Two Cheers for Web U," A. J. Jacobs wrote about his experience taking part in some massive open online courses (MOOCs). Among a good number of critical statements about MOOCS in general, Jacobs explained how the lack of teacher-to-student and student-to-student interaction in such online courses was probably the most disappointing aspect of his experience. He wanted to be engaged in what he said looked like, at first glance, a dynamic and exiting online learning experience. Instead, he said he was disappointed, finding that professors and students were out of reach and conversations were one-sided, faculty-only affairs.
MOOCs, however, were never meant to be dull and lonely. "A MOOC is not just an online course," said Professor David Cormier, manager of Web communication and innovations at the University of Prince Edward Island. More...

By Christina Quattrocchi.Brian Greenberg, Michael Horn and Rob Schwartz team up to scale best practices for blended learning. Silicon Schools Fund CEO Brian Greenberg believes that blended learning is about “reconceiving the role of the student, the teachers, and how you define schools.” But such cosmic shifts require guidance, coaching, and encouragement. With edtech coaches and coordinators still a relatively new field, teachers often have few direct resources on how to get started. The emergence of a new blended learning MOOC, compliments of Coursera’s new focus on teacher professional development, could provide such guidance--for free. More...