Rodriguez, O. (2012) Vast Lurker and No-lurker Participation in Open Online Courses: MOCCs and the AI Stanford-like courses respectively Osvaldo Rodriguez, March 3

Siemens, G. (2012) MOOCs for the Win! ELearnspace, March 5

Lewin, T. (2012) Instruction for Masses Knocks Down Campus Walls, New York Times, March 4

Following my two earlier posts on MOOCs (Some critical reflections on MOOCs and More reflections on MOOCs and MITx) and a response from Stephen Downes and Sui Fai John Mack, I am adding three more posts that deliberately or accidently continue the discussion.

George Siemens

First let’s start with George Siemens, one of the original designers of a particular kind of MOOC based on a connectivist approach. His post sets out some of the history behind the development of MOOCs and responds to a post from Clark Quinn and also to my two posts.

In conclusion to his post, George Siemens write:

It is important to realize that MOOCs are not (yet) an answer to any particular problem. They are an open and ongoing experiment. They are an attempt to play with models of teaching and learning that are in synch with the spirit of the internet. As with any research project, it is unlikely that they will be adopted wholesale in traditional universities. Most likely, bits and pieces will be adopted into different teaching models. Some systems will offer open online courses as a means of drawing attention to their university. Others will offer MOOCs because it’s an effective way of getting out an important message or to raise awareness about certain topics.

Any or all of those adoptions of MOOCs are not really a concern for me. I’m more interested in experimentation and exploring new modes of interaction online. I’m not concerned about whether or not existing university systems adopt MOOCs for undergraduate education or whether they serve to improve continuing education. That kind of discourse appropriates MOOC concepts to support the narrative of the existing education system. Which is fine.

But that is only one way to look at MOOCs.

Osvaldo Rodriguez

Osvlado is an Argentinian blogger and he has a very interesting post that compares participation rates between different kinds of MOOCs. He makes the distinction between MOOCs such as the Stanford AI MOOC based on a cognitivist-behaviourist methodology and ‘connectivist’ MOOCs, such as #Change 11 and EduMOOC.

He ran a statistical analysis comparing EduMOOC with the Stanford AI MOOC that showed that after a few weeks, active participation in EduMOOC had dropped from 2,700 to just over 100. The Stanford AI MOOC started at around 160,000 active participants then dropped rapidly to a pretty steady 25,000 active participants a week. He argues that although less than 10% of the original ‘starters’ in the EduMOOC actively participated, there were a lot of ‘lurkers’ reading but not otherwise participating, whereas with the Stanford AI MOOC, students could not lurk; if they did not take the obligatory exams they were ‘non-completers’.

His summary:

• the AI-Stanford participants have totally different learners goals and preparation than those in MOOCs.
• there exists a very different nature of the subjects studied: engineering  and  educational theory.
• the AI-Stanford course falls into the cognitive-behaviorist pedagogy category and the MOOCs  into the connectivist.