MOOC

It took more than two years and multiple redesigns for University of Toronto University Professor Richard Florida and his team to perfect their massive online open course (MOOC) – which debuted last week on Coursera.

“It was an incredible learning experience,” says Florida, who is the director of cities at the Rotman School of Management's Martin Prosperity Institute. “I learned so much about how to make a course, how to use visuals, how not to overwhelm people with reading and writing, and how to give them information they need – that's been the really cool thing for me.”

City and You: Find Your Best Place draws from Florida’s extensive research and writings on what makes cities successful and prosperous, and presents it through video, short assignments and interactive features.

Read about Richard Florida's latest book

Since 2012, ��οscholars, including the “godfather of deep learning,” Geoffrey Hinton, have taught MOOCs on sites like Coursera and Edx. The courses are usually free, short – generally lasting just four to eight weeks – and incredibly popular. The most recent data from 2015 says almost two million people from all over the world have accessed the online courses.

��οNews spoke to Florida about why he decided to create the course and what people can learn from taking it.

What was your motivation behind creating this course?

First of all, we know, our cities are our most important economic and social unit. It's where business takes place, where economy is growing. We're putting billions of people in cities. We're spending trillions of dollars building cities. But in terms of your own life, I think the place you live is the most important decision you'll ever make. It's the most expensive decision you'll ever make. A house costs the most money – it's where you raise your kids – but no one gives it that much thought.

My field of urbanism, city planning, urban studies has all this incredible information bottled up. That's why I founded CityLab at the Atlantic – a website that talks about cities and urbanism – and I thought the next thing I could do was to build a course on the City101 – the hook on that is not just the city, but why the place you live is so important.

Do you have a specific audience in mind you're looking to reach?

Everybody. The world. Every single sentient person I think needs to hear this – and that's why the course is designed to appeal to every person throughout the world to help them understand more about what cities are and why urbanization is important, and help them to understand why the place they live in is so important to their life and their kids' lives.

What would you want the biggest takeaway from the course to be?

Making sure people find the best place for them and their family. Maybe they're in it – so it will confirm that, maybe they're not. They need to think about how they might find their way to a better place and how to find the place that will make them the most successful, the most productive, the most happy and create the greatest amount of joy and well-being for them.

What would you say to people who would be apprehensive about packing up and moving to a new city?

There's the mobile, who are looking to find a place, this course is for them. There's the people rooted around friends and family. And, there are people who are stuck, quite frankly and can't move.

For people who are rooted in their places, the course has a big component on how to make the place you live better fit you. It might not mean you move to a new city. It may mean you think about a new neighbourhood, but it may mean you get actively involved in your community and try to make it better. Whatever it is, understanding why you're there, what it means to you, whether you like it or not, and how easy it is to move or stay there and fix it, is really important.

2016: rethinking undergraduate education

sgupta — Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:00:35 +0000

2016: rethinking undergraduate education sgupta Tue, 12/22/2015 - 06:00

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Fiona Rawle, assistant professor, teaching stream, holds walking office hours with her students at the University of Toronto Mississauga (photo by Blake Eligh)

Arthur Kaptainis

Author legacy

Arthur Kaptainis

Features

UTM

Undergraduate Students

Teaching

Science Literacy Week

MOOC

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Astronomy

“Research is often framed in the public mind as a noun, as a product,” Susan McCahan, vice-provost, innovations in undergraduate education, said in her office in Simcoe Hall, a few steps away from her other home at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “We produce research, something in a package that we send out the door.”

“But we in the academy think of research as a verb. It is process, a way of thinking, framing questions, answering questions, connecting new ideas. Those are processes, not products.”

It is a distinction worth making at a time when research is widely viewed as an important means of enhancing and even rethinking undergraduate education – and, reciprocally, tapping into the vitality of gifted young students.

Examining the potential of research as a component of undergraduate education will be the focus of the Undergraduate Research Working Group, a tri-campus, cross-disciplinary committee that convenes for the first time in January 2016.

“We want to look at the programs that we can put in place that will support new capacity-building in this area,” McCahan says. Among the members, of course, will be students.

How students and faculty find each other is one issue. Serendipity is not enough. The recently established online Co-curricular Record is a mechanism for students to build resumes and find clubs and activities of interest. It works also as an academic matchmaking engine.

Funding is another question. Certain established programs, such as Advancing Teaching and Learning in Arts & Science (ATLAS) and the Centre for Community Partnerships, can support courses with a research component, and some departments have budgets for undergraduate field work. But there is no central university-wide mechanism for the support of undergraduate research.

The scope for such activity has its limits. Not all undergraduates have research capacity in their first two years and not all third- or fourth-year students enrol in courses dedicated to independent research.

And the reality is that graduate students are fundamental to research support. “How many [undergraduate] spots can we make available?” McCahan asks. “Your bread and butter is how many PhDs you produce.”

Where there is no barrier is in the introduction of the concept of research into undergraduate education as path to critical thinking.

Other innovations in undergraduate learning continue to be explored: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have a confirmed place in the future of education and the success of “one” programs, convening small groups of students in their first year, is well documented.

Many courses – introduction to psychology is the classic example – will remain heavily subscribed. This does not mean they have to be impersonal. Steve Joordens, a psychology professor at ��οScarborough was named a 2015 3M National Teaching Fellow in part for his development of peerScholar, an online software package that enables feedback among students.

“The model allows students to help each other,” Joordens says. “We literally have students trying to help other students get a better mark, which is great because it gives everyone a reason to buy into the process.”

Not all innovations are based on technology. Fiona Rawle, an associate professor, teaching stream of biology at ��οMississauga, was one of four faculty members to receive the first-ever University of Toronto Early Career Teaching Awards. One of her teaching tactics is to assemble students in the classroom into a giant DNA string.

“Professor Rawle defies all stereotypes of university professors,” said Ashna Khanna, a biology for health sciences and psychology student who ended up doing research under Rawle’s supervision.

Adding research to the pedagogical mix can only enhance the comprehensive undergraduate experience.

“I’m not just teaching astronomy that’s written in the textbook,” says Mike Reid, astronomy and astrophysics lecturer, coordinator of public outreach and education for the Dunlap Institute and another Early Career Teaching Award winner.

“I’m teaching the work my colleagues and I are doing right now – about papers published last week, about the discoveries we are on the cusp of making. I think that goes a long way to motivating students to learn.”

The Reid approach worked for Jesse Hildebrand, a young alumnus who went on to found Science Literacy Week. “Mike conveys the sort of enthusiasm you dream about from all teachers,” he says. It is worth noting that Hildebrand was a student of ecology and evolutionary biology, not astronomy.

“I call it transferable expertise,” McCahan says of the kind of thinking research awareness can cultivate. “The ability to connect ideas in different contexts and transfer them from one frame of reference to another.

“That, I think, we are doing in many courses. We want to do more of it. And we have an aspiration to find a way to measure some of it, a way to know if the kinds of programs – such as summer research programs and independent research courses – that we’re putting in place are having a positive effect.”

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Alternative energy MOOC captures global audience

sgupta — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 11:36:52 +0000

Alternative energy MOOC captures global audience sgupta Tue, 03/31/2015 - 07:36

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Mark Balson

Daniel Rouse

Author legacy

Daniel Rouse

Topic

innovation in education

Energy

Global

When he began teaching at ��οEngineering 37 years ago, Professor James Wallace (MIE) learned that a spare piece of chalk was all he needed to ensure his lessons went uninterrupted. Now, with the introduction of massive online open courses – or MOOCs – he’s found you can bring together a couple of IT technicians, a state-of-the-art camera and an internet connection to reach a worldwide classroom.

Wallace recently finished teaching a MOOC on alternative energy technologies – the second MOOC in ��οEngineering’s history. Called Wind, Waves and Tides: Alternative Energy Systems, the course examined the equipment used to harness various energies and brief explored their historical influences.

“At U of T, we are learning about online education and what it can do and what it cannot do. I think it is in essence an experiment on online education,” said Wallace, who in 2012 received U of T’s prestigious President’s Teaching Award.

“One of my motivations for participating as a MOOC instructor is that your reach goes much further – student feedback from around the globe makes you aware of local projects or technologies that enrich the course for everyone.”

One module featured a company that used waves to generate power, but the business became insolvent the week after. This only enriched the course content though, as it highlighted the tough environment of the industry. It sparked online discussion between the students, who provided Wallace with similar companies he was unaware of, both running and defunct, and current news on alternative energy systems from different parts of the world.

With his global online class providing such a wealth of information, Wallace found that he was learning of new methods and angles to compliment his alternative energy systems MOOC, and his continued work in environmental engineering.

“The MOOC enabled me to develop much better course materials that are now being used in my regular ��οAlternative Energy Systems course, which is also taught online,” said Wallace.

Two years ago, Professor Bryan Karney (CivE) led the Faculty’s first MOOC. His course studied how our world’s energy forces – from wind and waves to storms and currents – animate the Earth’s surface and allow our planet to support life.

These types of online opportunities enable students to pool information form all across the world. Rodney Sumlin, from Baltimore, graduated from Georgia Tech last year and is pursuing a career in wind energy, and he found the MOOC a valuable opportunity to add to the knowledge he had already gained. He relished being part of an international classroom.

“[MOOCs allow] easy access to a large, global network of information from people – classmates, TAs and professors – with similar interests,” Sumlin said.

As well as allowing the University to boost its international reputation further through one of the world’s largest MOOC providers, Coursera, Wallace also appreciates the flexibility online learning offers to students.

“Engineering students in particular are kept really busy. They have a demanding workload and a very full schedule so they greatly appreciate being able to watch the videos online at a time of their choice. The ability to self-schedule is a key feature of online course delivery,” he said.

These sentiments are echoed far beyond the walls of U of T. Matthew Brown studied the course from Perth in Australia to put him back in touch with his undergraduate qualification – an MEng in mechanical engineering – and to continue to educate himself on the issue of climate change.

“This is a serious and significant issue that as a world community we need to address urgently,” said Brown.

His home life in Western Australia is busy as he raises a young family while holding a full-time position in sales and marketing, but his initial concerns in being able to squeeze in time for study were soon quashed.

“I studied the course twice a week for a couple of hours at night,” he said.

This flexibility does inevitably result in participation dropping off as those who were initially attracted in the MOOC find they are too busy, or just not as interested as they thought they were. Overall, 11,000 people signed up from all over the planet. About 6,500 viewed the first lecture, and by the end of the final exam, there were just 10 per cent of that amount left. Still, you would struggle to squeeze 650 students into a ��οseminar.

In the future, Professor Wallace has plans to broaden his online teaching portfolio with another MOOC on energy storage. He aims to build on what he learned with this course, keeping content more succinct and interacting further with his audience in the next round – it is an ongoing experiment to provide the best education possible to a large audience.

Who knows, this time around he might leave that trusty piece of chalk in his office.

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3M Teaching Award for Steve Joordens

sgupta — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 11:04:26 +0000

3M Teaching Award for Steve Joordens sgupta Fri, 02/13/2015 - 06:04

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(photo by Ken Jones)

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell

Steve Joordens loves the challenge of finding innovative solutions in the pursuit of improving education.

Throughout his career the ��οScarborough psychology professor has embraced or helped develop educational software that delivers results by keeping students engaged. (Read about previous teaching awards for Joordens.)

It’s that innovative approach to teaching and learning that’s seen him named a prestigious 3M National Teaching Fellow for 2015.

“I really enjoy the challenge of trying to present information in both a clear and entertaining way,” says Joordens. “Engagement is the front door to learning and there’s nothing else about teaching style as important as that.”

It was while teaching his large, first-year introduction to psychology class that Joordens began to think of more ways he could get his students to think critically and creatively about their work. His solution was peerScholar, an online educational software package that enhances cognitive ability through peer-assessment and peer-feedback.

“The model allows students to help each other,” he says. “We literally have students trying to help other students get a better mark, which is great because it gives everyone a reason to buy into the process.”

Joordens is one of 10 educators across Canada to be named fellows for 2015 by 3M Canada and The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE). Started in 1986, the 3M fellowship is the only pan-Canadian, cross-disciplinary recognition of educational leadership and excellence in university teaching. (Read about past 3M teaching award-winners at ��οsuch as June Larkin and Nick Mount.)

The success of peerScholar – it’s been adopted by universities across Canada, the United States and Europe – is just one part of a broader approach Joordens uses to teaching cognitive skills that goes beyond acquiring knowledge. In addition to developing Cogneeto, a peerScholar version for kindergarten to Grade 12 students, he’s also overseen mTuner and Digital Labcoat, which were both developed at Joordens’ Advanced Learning Technologies Lab at UTSC.

His embrace of technology as a learning tool also led to a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a massive open online course (MOOC) for his introduction to psychology class that was offered over Coursera. He’s also lent his expertise to the Global Teenager Project, an initiative that brings young people from 40 different countries together to learn about issues of child rights through online learning circles.

“Education is the best way to improve the lives and living conditions of people around the world,” he says. “I’m very fortunate that I work with such a brilliant and talented team that can make some of these dreams I have a reality.”

Don Campbell is a writer with the University of Toronto Scarborough.

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Engaged students, higher marks on finals: benefits of the inverted classroom

sgupta — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 10:03:43 +0000

Engaged students, higher marks on finals: benefits of the inverted classroom sgupta Fri, 07/18/2014 - 06:03

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Jessica Lewis

Author legacy

Jessica Lewis

Subheadline

Computer Science students tackle homework in class

What's an inverted classroom? Just ask students in some University of Toronto computer science courses.

The teaching method flips traditional notions of classwork and homework so that students learn some of the course material through videos and readings at home and do what used to be homework in class with the help of their professor.

"I was working part-time at a local coffee shop when I was taking the inverted class," said Ian Stewart Binks. "Working until midnight or starting work at six am made it difficult to get the right attitude to listen to a lecture everyday at a specific time.

"What the inverted classroom offered me was the flexibility to watch the video lectures to learn the content when I was ready, and then come to class to watch the instructor walk through exercises with me that I may have missed."

The innovation is one of the perks of the department’s venture into Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), in which thousands of students from all over the world take free courses online such as some from leading ��οcomputer scientists. The videos developed for the MOOCs are now used to benefit ��οstudents.

The inverted courses started rolling out not long after Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera, one of the leading providers of MOOCs, visited U of T's Department of Computer Science last year to evangelize all things MOOC. A number of professors wanted to see how some of the MOOC techniques could be used to benefit students enrolled in computer science classes on campus.

"It was the first time I’ve ever gone to a seminar on computer science and felt choked up,” said Diane Horton, who teaches a third-year Introduction to Databases course. “But I was more excited about the concept of inverted classrooms than the MOOCs. I’ve always liked having active exercises in class but the challenge has always been finding the time to do them.”

After developing two Coursera-hosted MOOCs, Paul Gries and Jennifer Campbell re-used the MOOC materials they had produced in an on-campus first-year course, Introduction to Computer Programming. Every week, students watched an hour’s worth of short videos and solved pop-up quizzes to measure whether they had learned the material. Each video in the course begins with one of the professors giving a brief introduction to a topic. After that, the professor fades out and the video becomes a screencast that demonstrates "live" programming. The professor provides explanations along the way.

“The use of videos with quizzes puts the learning directly in students’ hands,” said Gries. “If they don’t understand a concept, they can re-watch the videos and take the quizzes again. This allows students to learn at their own pace. It is exciting.”

Having prepared for class on their own time, students spend their lecture time solving challenging problems with the support of their professor, who helps them through the hurdles that they routinely face when learning to program.

“As I walk around class, I can see what people are doing and how long they’re taking,” says Gries. “It’s interesting to see what causes difficulty and what the common mistakes are so I can then be able to address those right away in class. It’s very effective to be able to do that.”

Horton agrees that being available to help students as they work on assignments in class is key.

“There’s a reason I’m there. There’s value added that I bring. I really enjoy taking something that students find baffling and breaking it down to make it easy to understand. That can be done in a video, but for the hardest topics, ideally you’re able to respond to the looks on peoples' faces and be able to help them on the spot. You can see if they’re getting it and come back to deal with the problems that are arising. That’s what I love doing.”

The inverted courses are still new, but they’re already reaping positive results.

“We don’t really know yet how much this approach improves learning but we’re seeing some positive signals,” said Gries. “The final exam marks, for example, are up eight per cent from last year when the course was taught in a traditional format.”

The teaching model is being used in other departments and has got professors thinking creatively.

“There are many ways to incorporate some aspects of inverted classrooms,” said Campbell. “I don’t think you have to go all or nothing. Some courses may have particular topics that could be inverted. It also doesn’t necessarily have to be done with video.

"Ensuring that students prepare well before class so that they can practice in class is what makes this method interesting.”

Binks switched his major from Astrophysics to Computer Science after taking the inverted classroom course.

"The in-class lectures were fantastic because they were interactive – it didn't matter if I was tired because they were both fun and engaging," said Binks. "The inverted classroom provides the flexibility needed by students who work as well as study.”

Jessica Lewis is a writer with the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto.

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Understanding MOOCs: online learners around the world head to U of T

sgupta — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 10:47:17 +0000

Understanding MOOCs: online learners around the world head to U of T sgupta Mon, 04/07/2014 - 06:47

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(photo by Ken Jones courtesy University of Toronto Scarborough)

Brendan Glauser

Author legacy

Brendan Glauser

Topic

Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) are becoming increasingly prevalent on campuses across the country and throughout the world.

Issues around online learning are receiving unprecedented media attention, and universities of all sizes are beginning to explore the potential of MOOCs, raising questions around the future of online learning as we know it.

At the University of Toronto, more than 740,000 users worldwide have registered for a MOOC. When surveyed, about 80 per cent of respondents indicated that they took the course simply for enjoyment, while 30 per cent were seeking credentials for their CV.

Laurie Harrison, U of T’s director of online learning strategies, shares insights into how this major Canadian university is integrating MOOCs into its academic offering.

Let’s begin by defining our subject. What do MOOCs mean to the University of Toronto?

When we began developing our first MOOCs, in addition to wanting to explore, evaluate and conduct research, we also wanted to open up and contribute to the online education community – sharing offerings from some of our great faculty members as part of our Open UToronto initiative. We never intended that our MOOCs would replace our degree offering, and we have not pursued the monetization of our MOOCs. That said, some materials developed for online learning are repurposed on campus.

We work with two different online learning partners – we began working with Coursera in July 2012 and edX in February 2013. We are one of just a few institutions who have partnered with both platforms. We did this intentionally because we wanted to explore them both and the pedagogies they enable. We have 13 MOOCs in various stages – some in development, some currently being offered and others that have already been offered.

What are the benefits you hope to gain through MOOCs?

For one, MOOCs provide a means of engaging our faculty, creating a community of practice focused on online course design, and the kinds of dialogues we are able to have with faculty and other leaders within the institution around the intersection of learning and technology. This isn’t to say online course design is new, but online learning at this scale is. Secondly, faculty members are often used to working independently, but the scope of these projects tends to involve educational, technical, resource and library staff – which creates an interesting team model. Third, developing the research and analytics component of MOOCs has also allowed us to ramp up our ability to work with big data.

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered so far?

The most important challenge for us is around course design. We have developed a workshop model where we guide instructors through the process of determining their goals, as well as the skills, knowledge and attitudes they want their learners to develop. Then, based on what they identify, they are able to map out activities that will help them achieve their goals. We have found that, often, there is a limited awareness of the variety of activities you might undertake in a MOOC. Often, instructors consider just video quizzes or online multiple-choice tests. But our instructors identified a variety of goals, involving social interaction, engaging students, creating discussions, peer assessments and personalized assignments. As a result, we’ve become very creative with the types of activities we offer.

One major concern around MOOCs is that the quality and legitimacy of university degrees may be jeopardized, if universities begin giving degrees based on MOOC credits. How do you respond to that?

Our goals do not include granting credits or degrees to those who have completed our MOOCs. We want to provide high-quality MOOCs that support learning, and we do that by focusing on the design phase.

Much of the common perception of MOOCs is that people want to take them as an alternative to a degree course to get credit. But, from what we’ve observed, a lot of them just want to learn or connect with others in a particular community. So, not all of our MOOCs are based on existing courses, and you have to look at the goals of your instructors and learners to gauge success.

How do you think the future of MOOCs will look?

MOOCs have put the intersection of technology and learning at centre stage. The attention it garnered through the media put it at the foreground, but lots of institutions were already having meaningful conversations around understanding the role and potential of online learning.

If you consider a typical hype cycle, I think we’re past the peak of the hype cycle now, and maybe even passed through the low point – the criticism. If you look at the phase of integration, what aspects are scalable and useful, and can fit into the needs of institutions, research programs, outreach programs, reaching people who might otherwise not have access to learning – the potential is huge. The media often focuses on the negative, but that’s not the conversation happening with folks working in the world of online learning. We see this as one dimension of long path of exploring and developing strategies for online learning.

We’ll be hosting a MOOC research symposium on April 28, with five presentations from various researchers from within the “MOOCosphere” as we call it. This aligns with our research mandate and various aspects of our mission.

MOOCs are excellent enablers of collaboration. No one stakeholder who can carry a MOOC. You need to think about your goals, and that includes the goals of your instructors, program, institution and learners. And as we know, this isn’t unique to MOOCs. What you learn through MOOCs is certainly transferable.

Read a full report on the first year of MOOC activity at U of T.

To see U of T’s full MOOCs offering, visit Coursera or visit edX.

Brendan Glauser is a writer with CUCCIO Quarterly e-Newsletter where this article originally appeared.

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Much wow: how online courses are potential game-changers for higher education

sgupta — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 09:09:07 +0000

Much wow: how online courses are potential game-changers for higher education sgupta Thu, 01/23/2014 - 04:09

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Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries of U of T's Department of Computer Science (photo below by Ken Jones

Cynthia Macdonald

Cynthia Macdonald with files from ��οNews

Author legacy

Cynthia Macdonald with files from ��οNews

Topic

Steve Joordens absolutely loves teaching large classes. “I like to think of them being akin to the NASA space program,” says the University of Toronto Scarborough psychology professor. “In order to make something work in very challenging conditions, one is pushed to be innovative and to come up with unique solutions.”

Good thing, then, that Joordens teaches Introductory Psychology. It’s always been the Woodstock of university courses – the one guaranteed every year to attract vast hordes of young people deeply curious about the workings of their own minds.

Joordens is the kind of infectiously happy prof who would probably fill a room no matter what he taught. The recipient of numerous teaching awards, he’s a devoted vegetarian who zips around town on a motorcyle, plays in a rock band and looks much younger than his 48 years. It’s no surprise that his Intro Psych class normally packs in almost 2,000 students.

“The more people in the crowd,” he says, “the more energy you have to work with and shape.”

Of course, Joordens’ love of crowds runs counter to received educational wisdom. Giant classes are often scorned as a bad thing, for student and teacher alike. So you might ask why, this past spring, he chose to make his class size even bigger. How big? Try 40,000 students.

Joordens is one of several ��οprofessors now teaching a “massive open online course,” or MOOC. MOOCs are shorter, video-based versions of regular university courses, and they’re often completely free. With a single mouse click, a prospective student anywhere in the world can now sign up for a class taught by a ��οprofessor on psychology, computer science, statistics, education or social work – and that’s just for starters. Nine ��οMOOCs have “gone live” since fall 2012; three more are being launched over the next several months.

“A MOOC is more a form of public outreach than it is a traditional university course,” says Cheryl Regehr, U of T’s provost. “We see this as a way of giving the world access to some of our finest instructors.”

To do this, the university signed deals with two well-known providers of MOOC software – the for-profit Coursera, and the not-for-profit EdX. MOOCs “provide incredible access to universities for people who ordinarily wouldn’t have it,” says Charmaine Williams, who teaches a social work course on mental health. “They reach people at all different levels, in all kinds of different places.”

The term “MOOC” was coined in 2008 by a group of academics in Manitoba and P.E.I. who were interested in expanding the possibilities of online learning. The first class, offered by the University of Manitoba, bore the name “Connectivism and Connective Learning,” and boasted some 2,300 students. Faculty and administrators at three of North America’s most prestigious universities took note and created their own online learning platforms – Coursera was started by computer science professors at Stanford; EdX at Harvard and MIT. Now, schools around the world are signing on: whether you’re sitting on a park bench or snuggled in bed, you can now return to class at U of T, attend Harvard or study at a university in India or Hong Kong.

Venture capitalists are hugely enthusiastic about investing in MOOCs: so far, Coursera says it has raised some $65 million. Bill Gates is a big supporter. EdX president Anant Agarwal, an electrical engineer, somewhat grandly likens the MOOC revolution to the invention of the printing press, while Andrew Ng, one of Coursera’s co-founders, crows that it’s growing “faster than Facebook” did when it started.

Ng and Agarwal talk about changing the face of higher education – and on the surface, it looks like they might be right. But they are still searching for a viable business model.

U of T’s MOOCs, like most others, are really mini-courses: four- to eight-week versions of the real thing, with no formal credit provided at the end. But some institutions are beginning to experiment with MOOCs that substitute for traditional university courses. This fall, the Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, is offering a MOOC master’s degree in computer science at one-sixth the price of a conventional one. And in Canada, the University of Alberta has just launched a for-credit paleontology course; it costs half of what an in-person course does. One has to wonder: could MOOCs be a truly disruptive technology – higher education’s version of Kindle and Napster?

It’s doubtful. Even the professors who teach MOOCs say they are unconvinced of this. First, there’s the problem of community. MOOCs boast lively discussion boards, but “I don’t see them replacing universities,” says Paul Gries, a computer science professor whose Learn to Program course (taught with Jennifer Campbell) is so far U of T’s largest, with an initial enrolment of 70,000 learners. “I think students really enjoy being connected to a human being. It’s so important to be able to say ‘I don’t understand this line,’ and have somebody sit down and explain it to you.”

Then there’s the infamously low completion rate, which averages from seven to 10 per cent. “It’s very easy to register – and then your life takes over,” says Laurie Harrison, U of T’s director of online learning strategies.

Joordens (pictured left) thinks MOOCs are more about process than product: “a lot of people told me they didn’t want the certificate of completion,” he says. “There are some people who say, ‘I watched every lecture, I learned a lot and that’s what I came here for. I wasn’t looking for formal accreditation; I was just looking for the knowledge.’”

It’s also a challenge to ensure academic integrity in a setup involving one professor and thousands of students – and in this respect some courses are more difficult than others.

“Plagiarism could be a problem in any MOOC where there’s writing involved,” warns Williams. This includes her own social work course. (Registrants to any MOOC are asked to click on an honour code, which, for all its old fashioned charm, is hardly a guarantee that everyone will follow it).

Further, marking is tough. Because a single instructor can’t possibly be expected to mark the work of a student population twice the size of Yellowknife, many lecturers will use computer-graded tests or support additional learning by having the students grade themselves. You simply submit your assignment to up to five other students and they mark it according to guidelines provided, sometimes with additional comments. But is a fellow student’s evaluation as valuable as a professor’s?

Finally, MOOCs cater to an unusually broad group of learners, and it’s sometimes difficult for professors to know exactly who’s out there. Technical snafus can occur: says Gries of his final exam, “you could start it any time you wanted, but you had to finish it in three hours. And we had people posting from Ghana saying sorry – I don’t have electricity for three hours straight, let alone an Internet connection!” He also had to extend his course by a week because of difficulties posed by Hurricane Sandy.

The university’s research suggests that the typical MOOC student is a motivated, curious adult who already has at least one degree. The age range is vast, spanning anywhere from 12 on up. The data also show that more than half of ��οMOOC students are not native anglophones, and Gries says one student actually took his course to improve his English.

“He was already a computer programmer. The English was more accessible to him because it was contextualized in a domain he was familiar with.”

So while ��οfaculty and administrators are as keen as anyone to know what will happen with MOOCs (“there’s a lot of fog of war around them,” sighs Joordens), few believe they will leave “brick-and-mortar” institutions in their dust – which isn’t to say they aren’t a perfectly interesting complement to the educational landscape.

MOOCs represent the kind of fast and easy learning that seems to herald not only a changed university, but a changed brain. Lectures are divided into 10- to 15-minute nuggets and placed on video; they cater perfectly to the YouTube generation – or indeed to any of us who might find a subject interesting, but are intimidated by our lack of background in, say, science or math (not to mention tired after a day spent at our regular jobs).

This past summer, I registered for Williams’ course, the Social Context of Mental Health and Illness. The resource material was excellent – the readings were varied and surprising, and Williams was an enthusiastic, smart and friendly lecturer. The MOOC community lacks that person-to-person je ne sais quoi, but I found the online discussions fascinating nonetheless. In her introduction, Williams asks students to describe how mental health is treated in their own countries; the information gleaned from her global survey (readily available on the discussion boards) makes for wonderful reading. Students around the world seemed to make common cause; for example, a mother in Bogota, Colombia, frustrated with the treatment of her child’s ADD, found ready counterparts in other countries.

Joordens’ Intro Psych students are especially spirited. They started calling themselves the “Cognitive Cannibals,” picking up on a phrase in his introductory video, and even created their own flag. It’s an important point: MOOCs are fun. They seem to bring university professors down to earth, transforming them from theatrical Laurence Oliviers into televised Jon Stewarts. MOOCs also demystify profs. Williams says that many of her international students are taking a university course for the first time; when they hear PhD, they envision a gallery of pipe-puffing, white-haired, white men.

“I don’t fault them for thinking that’s what a university professor is, because that’s what I mostly saw when I went to university,” she says. Part of her motivation for teaching a MOOC was to be “a black woman out there, representing an elite university with elite instructors.”

Like other MOOC instructors, Williams has attained a greater measure of celebrity than she’d otherwise have. People now approach her on the street, and her already overstuffed email inbox now contains 800 more messages each day during the MOOC’s run. As for Joordens, he was able – in response to his adoring fans – to livestream his band’s gig to the worldwide Intro Psych community. And to some degree, he’s attained professional immortality. Once a MOOC’s done, it’s preserved for all time in the cloud, and can be repeated even after the instructor dies or retires.

It’s the kind of reward that makes the onerous task of setting up a MOOC seem worth it. In the future, the laborious process of recording lectures on video, mounting and monitoring discussion forums, and placing PowerPoint lectures online will surely be streamlined. But the future hasn’t happened yet.

Gries says that recording 10 minutes of video takes him between four and eight hours to do each time, and Williams says her family felt like she “disappeared for a long time.” But, on the positive side, she notes: “I’ve developed a whole set of skills that I didn’t have before.”

For all of this, many professors would prefer not to mount MOOCs; the thought of immortality scares rather than excites them. This is because MOOC materials are not only used by lifelong learners in their pyjamas – they are making their way into regular classrooms, too. In a recent edition of The New Yorker, Peter Burgard, a professor of German at Harvard University, articulated his disdain for this latest development.

“Imagine you’re at South Dakota State,” he said, “and they’re cash-strapped, and they say, ‘Oh! There are these HarvardX courses. We’ll hire an adjunct for $3,000 a semester, and we’ll have the students watch this TV show.’ Their faculty is going to dwindle very quickly.”

This will not happen at U of T, senior administrators assure. Regehr says that while ��οis not averse to letting other schools use their MOOCs, they will not import material from other schools.

“We are only using MOOC content created by University of Toronto professors in our inverted classroom pilots,” she says.

The “inverted classroom” is where MOOCs may well have the biggest impact on higher education. Alison Gibbs teaches a MOOC on statistics, which she’s decided to use in her regular second-year course as well. In the “inverted classroom,” students watch Gibbs’ lectures on video at home and tackle problem-solving in class.

“Real learning happens when you’re grappling through a problem set – but you typically do that at home, without the guidance of an instructor. So we’re going to actively engage students in class. And the more passive stuff where they’re just watching and taking in information, they’ll do that at home.”

The technological innovations that Joordens is honing within his own MOOC – such as peer assessment and a research instruction tool called the “Digital Labcoat” – can also be used in his regular Intro Psych class; after all, at nearly 2,000 strong, it’s practically a MOOC itself. And he has added features to his online course to better ensure students are actively absorbing material – features that can certainly be used to improve learning capacity across the board.

At U of T, exploration and evaluation of the MOOC experience is ongoing. Researchers are attempting to understand the appeal and potential of these new online course formats. They are also examining the range of teaching strategies that MOOCs make possible, such as peer assessment and the inverted classroom model. And that streamlined future may be drawing nearer.

In December, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities announced funding for projects that would focus on "redesigning courses to use more online and multimedia resources to enhance student learning, such as electronic textbooks and mobile-friendly online curriculum". Five initiatives at ��οreceived funding for such projects. The faculty leads are: Joordens; Franco Taverna, who teaches human biology; Margaret Blastorah, who teaches nursing; Rosa Hong who teaches language studies at University of Toronto Mississauga and Scott Ramsay who teaches materials science engineering.

Together, their projects comprise an initiative called Active Learning: Online Redesign. This interdisciplinary undertaking seeks to improve the quality of learning by breaking down large classes into smaller learning experiences, while maximizing efficiencies through the use of web-based tools, says Harrison. Examples include enhancements to Joordens' Digital Labcoat (to improve integration with existing UofT learning systems and provide improved faculty and student user support) or, in the case of Ramsay, developing lab activities that would use online and portable materials which would decrease the demand for dedicated undergraduate laboratory space.

So it’s difficult to argue that MOOCs won’t positively change education, especially if they’re used to improve rather than replace traditional education. And for those outside the classroom (including ��οalumni eager to learn something they missed the first time) online learning could be the next best thing. “My dad used to brag that his son taught over 1,500 students,” Joordens writes in a note on his course blog. “I wish he had lived to see all this!”

Watch a video about the course “Learn to Program: The Fundamentals” by Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries from U of T:

Cynthia Macdonald is a freelance writer for ��οMagazine, where this article originally appeared.

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Gates Foundation funds new research on MOOCs

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��οoffers MOOCs through Coursera and edx (photo by Ken Jones)

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Ilya Sutskever, Alex Krizhevsky and University Professor Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science (photo by John Guatto)

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Gates Foundation backs ��οonline courses

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Psychology professor Steve Joordens is known for his innovative approach to teaching (photo by Ken Jones)

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The University of Toronto has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop two online learning courses that will be delivered by award-winning ��οprofessors.

The two courses – the latest in U of T’s involvement in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) programs – are intended to “engage a broad range of students in successfully advancing their general and developmental education,” said the Foundation in announcing the award earlier this month.

“We are extremely pleased that such excellent faculty members are garnering Gates Foundation grants for the University of Toronto,” said Cheryl Misak, ��οvice-president and provost. “They are helping to keep us ahead of the curve in this potentially important arena.”

The first course, Introduction to Psychology, will be taught by Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology at ��οScarborough. Joordens is a popular lecturer at the University and a winner of the 2011-2012 Teaching Award from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations.

The second course, Statistical Science, will be delivered by Jeffrey Rosenthal and Alison Gibbs, both in the Department of Statistics in the Faculty of Arts and Science.

Rosenthal has won numerous awards for his research and teaching and is the author of a best-selling book, Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities.

Gibbs is credited with creating innovative programs and courses that promote collaboration between statistics students and those in other disciplines. She excels at outreach, having for many years chaired the Statistical Education Committee for the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC), developing connections between the society and students and teachers.

Students will be able to register for the courses soon and lectures will begin in the spring of 2013.

“We are excited to expand our offerings of open, online courses,” said Cheryl Regehr, vice-provost, academic programs. “Thanks to this generous grant, we have the opportunity to bring even more of our award winning faculty to the world.”

These two ��οcourses are among those delivered by the university through Coursera, a consortium of 33 top-ranked international universities that was established earlier this year to provide open online courses. To date, almost two million students worldwide have registered to take Coursera courses.

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