By Li Yuan and Stephen Powell. This report sets out to help decision makers in higher education institutions gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and trends towards greater openness in higher education and to think about the implications for their institutions. The phenomena of MOOCs are described, placing them in the wider context of open education, online learning and the changes that are currently taking place in higher education at a time of globalisation of education and constrained budgets. The report is written from a UK higher education perspective, but is largely informed by the developments in MOOCs from the USA and Canada. A literature review was undertaken focussing on the extensive reporting of MOOCs through blogs, press releases as well as openly available reports. This identified current debates about new course provision, the impact of changes in funding and the implications for greater openness in higher education. The theory of disruptive innovation is used to help form the questions of policy and strategy that higher education institutions need to address.
Link: MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education (pdf)
Link: MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education (MS Word docx)

By Lawrence Biemiller. If there’s going to be a MOOC equivalent to a Hollywood blockbuster, it may well be Larry J. Sabato’s course this fall called “The Kennedy Half Century”—a course that will have as media companions an hourlong PBS documentary starring Mr. Sabato and his latest book, The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy.
Mr. Sabato, the University of Virginia politics professor who is a frequent guest on news broadcasts, is recording about eight hours of video for the monthlong course, which will begin with John F. Kennedy’s early legislative career and then cover both his presidency and his influence on the decades since his assassination 50 years ago this November. The course, which starts on October 21, will be broken into 40 lessons, each 10 to 20 minutes long and each incorporating a quiz. A final examination is “not optional,” according to the course Web site, which is now accepting registrations. More...

Pour la première fois dans l’histoire de la recherche en éducation, les MOOC nous offrent la possibilité d’expérimenter à large échelle. L’enthousiasme qu’ils ont généré a déclenché un renouveau de l’intérêt pour les sciences de l’éducation à l’échelle mondiale, et les centres de recherche sur l’apprentissage en ligne poussent comme des champignons aux Etats-Unis et en Chine. Il était temps de redorer le blason de cette discipline, bien trop souvent reléguée au rang de science de seconde zone. Dans ce billet, nous revenons sur les données que nous récoltons, les Big Data, et sur l’usage que nous en faisons en tant que chercheurs, en nous basant notamment sur l’un des premiers articles de recherche publiés sur le sujet. Suite...

Nous allons discuter aujourd’hui de la question de la répartition des tâches au sein de l’équipe pédagogique. Nous avons abordé la question dans plusieurs billets (cf. MOOC: comment aider les enseignants qui se lancent?), en nous attardant notamment sur le rôle de chef de projet et de community manager (L’organisation d’un MOOC: un travail d’équipe). Nous n’avons cependant pas beaucoup discuté d’un des rôles-clef de l’équipe, celui de concepteur des évaluations. Autant la création des cours magistraux et la conception de la trame du cours est obligatoirement à la charge de l’enseignant, autant la création des devoirs et examens peut être déléguée au moins en partie à un membre de l’équipe à condition qu’il dispose d’une certaine connaissance du domaine enseigné. Retour sur le rôle de responsable des évaluations. Suite...

Impacts sociétaux, questions économiques, juridiques et politiques, recherche, innovation, devenir des systèmes éducatifs; l’émergence des MOOC pose une multitude de questions. Au sein de la communauté de blogueurs francophones, nous ne savons plus où donner de la tête. Quelles sont les interrogations que soulèvent les MOOC ? Comment construire une réflexion collective sur le sujet ? Suite...

Open source learning platform Moodle announces free MOOC for educators all over the world - Course starts 1 Sep; sign up now at the Learn Moodle website (http://Learn.Moodle.net)
Get to know and learn the basics of Moodle by participating in a free online course "Teaching with Moodle: An Introduction" spread over four weeks, beginning Sunday 1 September 2013.
Moodle’s first official MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) aims to gather teachers and anyone interested in using a learning platform to enhance teaching and learning. The goal: to collaboratively learn how to use Moodle to teach courses online.
Led by Mary Cooch from Moodle HQ, Teaching with Moodle: An Introduction, is a structured course delivered using the latest Moodle release, Moodle 2.5. More...

The course name is Metaliteracy MOOC. It is an open learning experience that emerges from the research of Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson and the metaliteracy framework they first developed in Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy in College & Research Libraries. Metaliteracy is a comprehensive open learning model that reimagines information literacy for social media environments and online communities in the 21st century. Metaliteracy is a unified framework that promotes critical thinking, participatory learning, and metacognitive reflection as interrelated and ongoing collaborative practices. Metaliteracy MOOC connects learners from the University at Albany, Empire State College, and participants from around the world. Join us for this interactive dialogue among participants and engage in conversation with scholars during our regularly scheduled Metaliteracy MOOC Talks. More...

Aiming to take education to every doorstep, Union HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju today said they intend to leverage the broadband network by embracing the 'Massive Open Online Courses' (MOOC) programme in a big way.
"...to make education more accessible, we have in the horizon MOOC, leveraging on the broadband education platform," Raju said at a function here while harping on sustainable development through such efforts. More...

By David Holmes. Like many newfangled fields in startup world, massively open online colleges or MOOCs (catch our explainer here) are treated with a mix of starry-eyed hope and sobering skepticism. On one hand, MOOCs put powerful educational resources into the hands of anyone with an Internet connection. And with college costs on the rise and the value of a Bachelor’s Degree shrinking, there has to be a cheaper, better alternative, and why not MOOCs?
But MOOCs are plagued by their own set of problems. The completion rate is abysmally low at less than 10 percent. Meanwhile, the Chronicle of Higher Education estimates that the graduation rate of accredited universities and colleges is a little under half. And while the value of a Bachelor’s Degree has fallen, four-year college graduates are at a far greater advantage than people who stopped at high school, and most MOOCs do not offer credit toward a degree. As for the ones that do offer credit, San Jose University attempted the for-credit MOOC model through a partnership with Udacity, but suspended the program after only six months. Why? Over half the students failed the final exams.
And yet MOOCs have raised millions upon millions of dollars from VCs and universities like Harvard and MIT. So there must be gold in them thar hills, right?
Not exactly. Dave Cormier, the man who coined the term “MOOC,” told the Wall Street Journal, ““Nobody has any idea how [monetization] is going to work.” Even the eternally optimistic CEO of Udacity, Sebastian Thrun, admits the industry is in “a state of experimentation” when it comes to business models. More...

By Sherrie Negrea. Michigan State University’s first massive open online course—Metropolitan Agriculture Value Creation—attracted 400 people from around the globe interested in learning about new ways to produce food in urban areas. Launched in March 2012, the course was built on a WordPress website and students communicated with one another via Facebook and Twitter. Although the MOOC successfully expanded the university’s network of students and scholars concerned with urban agriculture, it also raised some thorny and unanticipated questions: If MSU students took the course, should they get the same credits as the 50,000 other students on the East Lansing campus? And, should MSU students get credit for earning certificates or badges in MOOCs offered by other institutions? More...