By Hilary Culbertson. Westmont College, Thursday, February 13, 2014 (All day) - Saturday, February 15, 2014 (All day).
You might have heard that MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the next big thing in higher education. You might have heard their merits: access, connection, innovation, low cost. You might have heard the concerns: anonymity, low completion rates, weak performance, even an attack on faculty.
What shall we make of this phenomenon, and of the many ways besides MOOCs that new technologies are making possible new teaching contexts and new models of higher education? And how, in particular, will these new teaching contexts and models interact with liberal arts education? More...

Battushig, a lad of just 15 years, recently became somewhat renowned for achieving a perfect score in a challenging course in advanced electronics offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more commonly known as MIT. 
What made Battushig’s story remarkable – aside from his score – is that he took the course without having to leave his village in Mongolia, one of the most sparsely populated, and traditionally nomadic, countries in the world. 
Battushig, like millions of others, is receiving his education online, taking advantage of new phenomenon called “MOOCs” – Massive Open Online Courses – a movement that is turning the traditional model of university education upside down. For doubters, note the fact that MOOCs are growing faster than Facebook. More...

Par Yves Epelboin, professeur à l’UPMC-Sorbonne Universités, Chargé de mission auprès du Président pour les MOOC. Evolution des MOOC 
Depuis le début de l’année civile le bruit autour des MOOCs n’a cessé de s ‘enfler, les annonces d’université ouvrant des cours se multiplient, les grands acteurs du marché ne cessent de mettre en avant les accords qu’ils ont passé avec des universités, surtout aux Etats Unis, pour faire reconnaître leurs certifications.
Les congrès, séminaires et colloques se multiplient en France comme à l’étranger et les diverses associations universitaires (EUA, LERU, …) prennent ou vont prendre position sur cette nouvelle façon d’enseigner, ses intérêts et ses inconvénients. L’EADTU (European Association of Distance Learning Universities) a organisé une déclaration solennelle de la Communauté Européenne, le 23 avril dernier, OPenupEd [1] et offre un portail pour orienter vers différents MOOC universitaires. Les premières critiques se font jour, aux Etats-Unis, et certains commencent à y dénoncer le mythe d’un enseignement de qualité bon marché. L’espoir qu’ils suscitent suit, comme n’importe quelle technologie moderne, la fameuse « hype curve » du Gartner. Les MOOC ont certainement dépassé le sommet et plongent vers des visions plus réalistes. Ceci semble confirmé dans les dernières études du Gartner [2]. Ceci est confirmé par d’autres experts [3].
Il n’empêche : le phénomène MOOC est présent. Il modifie non seulement les approches de l’enseignement à l’université mais également la perception que le public peut en avoir, dans le contexte de la compétition dans laquelle les établissements d’enseignement supérieur sont engagés pour leur visibilité à l’international.
La vision des MOOC évolue rapidement, les publications sont nombreuses. On pourra consulter, en particulier, les références [4] pour s’en faire une idée. Ce document est également basé sur une participation à plusieurs conférences et congrès et, en particulier « The summit of MOOC stakeholders » tenu à Lausanne, à l’EPFL, les 6 et 7 juin 2013. Cette réunion restreinte, sur invitation, réunissait les acteurs les plus avancés en Europe avec des représentants de edX et Coursera. J’avais l’honneur de représenter EUNIS (European University Information Systems Organization) et l’UPMC. Suite de l'article...

By Elizabeth Allan. As an American Council on Education (ACE) CREDIT reviewer, I had the unique privilege of being on the team that reviewed the first MOOCS (Massive Open Online Course).  The experience was unique due to the course delivery.  In the end, the process was the same used in every other review for ACE.
I’m often asked about the process and how the review was done.  Most of the time the person asking is really wanting to know how a faculty member can be confident in the recommendation.  The answer, I believe, is in the process.  The faculty review team was led by a national coordinator with extensive experience in teaching and evaluation and consisted of faculty current in the academic discipline under review.  We all had extensive experience in reviewing online courses and in essence, this was a review of an online course – with obvious differences. More on that later.What Happens In A Review?
For all ACE reviews, we consider student learning outcomes, the intensity of the course, pre- and post-course assignments, qualifications of faculty, and academic and work-related experience of the participants.  Reviewers work together to review the Content, Scope, and Rigor of the course including: course syllabi, textbooks, assessment methods, student and instructor guides, student projects, instructional materials, and instructor qualifications to name just a few. One thing we keep central in our focus is that we have the charge to consider recommendations based not on our institution, locale, or region but to critically appraise materials from a national/professional perspective.  It’s not our job to review a program based on what we do at our local campus, but instead to review each course in light of the ACE guidelines and best practices.  It is not an easy thing to do, but that’s where having a team and coordinator is vital.
How Did MOOCs Differ From Other Courses?
So what was different about the MOOC? Not that much. The course was reviewed using the ACE review criteria, no special considerations were given – the courses had to meet the requirements for Content, Scope, and Rigor.  A credit recommendation was given because the team determined that the course met the requirements. More...

By Stefan P. Schmid. The recent rise of MOOCs has created a buzz in the world of corporate education. Theories and experiments on how to leverage the systematic within corporate settings, have sprouted all sorts of interesting constructions including "Corporate MOOCs" that function as a sort of pre-selection for recruiters. Others interpret this term into company-wide courses, that utilize MOOC technology and design principles.
The underlying thought here, is that MOOCs - as they are percieved from the outside - do something 'magical'. More...

We’re at a curious point in the hype cycle of educational innovation, where the hottest concept of the past year–Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs–is simultaneously being discovered by the mainstream media, even as the education-focused press is declaring them dead. “More Proof MOOCs are Hot,” and “MOOCs Embraced By Top Universities,” said the Wall Street Journal and USA Today last week upon the announcement that Coursera had received a $43 million round of funding to expand its offerings;
“Beyond MOOC Hype” was the nearly simultaneous headline in Inside Higher Ed.
Can MOOCs really be growing and dying at the same time?
The best way to resolve these contradictory signals is probably to accept that the MOOC, itself still an evolving innovation, is little more than a rhetorical catchall for a set of anxieties around teaching, learning, funding and connecting higher education to the digital world. This is a moment of cultural transition. Access to higher education is strained. The prices just keep rising. Questions about relevance are growing. The idea of millions of students from around the world learning from the worlds’ most famous professors at very small marginal cost, using the latest in artificial intelligence and high-bandwidth communications, is a captivating one that has drawn tens of millions in venture capital. Yet, partnerships between MOOC platforms and public institutions like SUNY and the University of California to create self-paced blended courses and multiple paths to degrees look like a sensible next step for the MOOC, but they are far from that revolutionary future. Separate ideas like blended learning and plain old online delivery seem to be blurring with and overtaking the MOOC–even Blackboard is using the term.
The time seems to be ripe for a reconsideration of the “Massive” impact of “Online” and “Open” learning. The Reclaim Open Learning initiative is a growing community of teachers, researchers and learners in higher education dedicated to this reconsideration. Supporters include the MIT Media Lab and the MacArthur Foundation-supported Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. I am honored to be associated with the project as a documentarian and beater of the drum.
Entries are currently open for our Innovation Contest, offering a $2000 incentive to either teachers or students who have projects to transform higher education in a direction that is connected and creative, is open as in open content and open as in open access, that is participatory, that takes advantage of some of the forms and practices that the MOOC also does but is not beholden to the narrow mainstream MOOC format (referring instead to some of the earlier iterations of student-created, distributed MOOCscreated by Dave Cormier, George Siemens, Stephen Downes and others.)
Current entries include a platform to facilitate peer to peer language learning, a Skype-based open-access seminar with guests from around the world, and a student-created course in educational technology. Go here to add your entry! Deadline is August 2. Our judges include Cathy Davidson (HASTAC), Joi Ito (MIT), and Paul Kim (Stanford).
Reclaim Open Learning earlier sponsored a hackathon at the MIT Media Lab. This fall, September 27 and 28, our judges and contest winners will join us at a series of conversations and demo days to Reclaim Open Learning at the University of California, Irvine. If you’re interested in continuing the conversation, join us there or check us out online.

By Justin Ferriman. The secret is out: MOOCs are changing the landscape for education across the world.  While still very much in the early phases of development, the MOOC model for learning is already shifting our notion of ideal learning environments and methods.  Around the internet it isn’t uncommon to read articles and comments about how MOOCs are the “greatest thing ever” (as people often say when something new comes along).
I figured it might be worth looking at MOOCs objectively for a moment, and perhaps offering up some considerations as to why MOOCs aren’t the greatest thing since sliced bread.  First, let me say I do think that the way MOOCs are shaping the future (and present) of education is certainly groundbreaking. I think there’s a good chance we’ll see related offshoot services and/or businesses pop-up because of new industries that can be traced back to MOOCs. More...

By Janet Wagner. This is the first post of a three-part series covering recent trends and developments in education technology.
At the time of this writing, there are 197 APIs listed in the Education Category of the ProgrammableWeb API Directory. A few of the leading APIs in this category include Khan Academy, Edmodo and Schoology.
There have been a lot of exciting and ground-breaking developments in education technology in recent years. Some of these recent and growing trends include:

• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
• Learning Management and Learning Content Management Systems (LMS and LCMS)
• Education Marketplaces
• Adaptive Learning
• Integration with Legacy Systems

This first post of the three-part series includes information about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). More...

By Leslie Bary, Department of Modern Languages, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. I teach Latin American literature and culture in a public research university that, having lost half its state funding over the past five years, has moved at near warp speed to an entrepreneurial model. So as to become more current on pedogogical and policy issues affecting us and other institutions in similar situations, this summer I joined a Coursera MOOC and a Facebook group where faculty from around the country discuss online teaching. 
In 2008, the year the markets crashed, the Gates Foundation announced a new focus on recasting postsecondary education as a credentialing process. Gates and other private foundations dedicated to the educational “reform” movement donated generously to news organizations covering higher education. The opinion pages of newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal advanced the foundation agenda, touting the advantages of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. More...