Blog Educpros de Matthieu Cisel. On divise traditionnellement les MOOC en deux types: d’une part les cMOOC, ou MOOC connectivistes, basés sur les interactions entre participants, et d’autre part les xMOOC, basés sur une pédagogie transmissive plus traditionnelle. Cependant, avec la diversification des pédagogies, la distinction xMOOC vs. cMOOC est devenue dans une large mesure obsolète. Quelle grille de lecture utiliser pour décrire un MOOC ? Quels sont les ingrédients qui le composent? A la lumière des dernières évolutions des modèles pédagogiques, nous proposerons dans cet article quelques pistes de réflexion pour tenter d’y voir plus clair. La première étape consiste à trouver des axes de description aussi peu corrélés que possible. Nous avions passé un peu de temps à réfléchir au sujet avec l’équipe de Unow. Yannick et Jérémie, les fondateurs, avaient finalement décidé de ne laisser que trois axes dans leur livre blanc: degré d’interaction, degré de contrainte et degré de difficulté. Suite de l'article...

By Tim Goral. The acronym may be new, but the SPOC concept isn’t. It’s hard to follow higher education news these days without seeing a reference to MOOCs. The online learning platforms from edX, Coursera, Udacity, and others were launched to great fanfare over the last two years. Proponents praise them for their potential to change education, while critics chalk them up as more hype than hope.
To be sure, for all their promise, MOOCs also have their share of problems. For one thing, as has been documented in each of the popular platforms, the attrition rate is high. For the thousands of students that enroll in a MOOC, only a fraction will fulfill the requirements of the course. Read more...

By Karine Joly. Whether we like it or not, disruptive innovation is now the name of the game in higher ed. What’s to blame? Internet technologies, of course.
No doubt your institution has had to change its marketing and communication practices over the last five years to adapt to the paradigm created by the rise of social media. Meanwhile, the academic side is under pressure to offer alternatives to the traditional higher education model through MOOCs and venture-funded startups.
As if that wasn’t enough, converging factors point to college and university fundraising as the next item on the soon-to-be-disrupted list, from what some predict will be a rise of crowdfunding in higher education. Read more...

By Devon Haynie. International students can use MOOCs to test whether they are ready to study in the U.S. At 15, it seems unlikely Priya Prabhakar would know much about college.
But the rising high school sophomore has already taken six college courses from some of America's best universities, earning high marks in everything from poetry to computer programming.
Prabhakar, from Chennai, India, is one of thousands of students across the globe taking massive open online courses. And she can't get enough of them. Read more...