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My friends have asked me, "What are you doing with yourself? We never see you on Facebook anymore!" Nope. Been busy, studying. I am extremely involved in taking courses from Coursera and for good reason. I love it!
It is not that I do not have an education. I graduated with honors with a Bachelors degree from American InterContinental University Online August 2012. We did a lot of writing there (and I still use the euphemism "a lot"). So, I thought it would be a good time to dialogue about my experiences with MOOCs.
A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course available to thousands of students around the world, and often, most of the time, it is FREE! Yes, no denaro, no dollars, no Euros, and most of the classes do not require you to purchase a text, though some are optional. Often the courses are a set of video lectures with quizzes and other assignments that provide a way to be graded. Some of the classes provide other resources, such as online texts, external videos, interactive websites, scholarly works, and more.
Most of the MOOCs take place over a six-week period, though some are longer and some are shorter. All of the ones I have attended have had an instructor from a reputable university working with other staff to present the subject at hand. There is also the availability of "discussion forums" which allow the student to interact with students all over the world and with the instructor and staff. This communication portal provides a way to discuss the course, to find study groups, to meet people in your field of work, to get technical help, to find other resources, and, in general, to contact those involved with the class to further your own education.
As for furthering your own education with some of the classes, you can get a certificate from the University or College that is sponsoring the course. This may be a "Statement of Achievement" which the university may not actually endorse. If you do really well in the course, per the instructor's grading policy, you may get a certificate with distinction.
Some of the universities do allow endorsement at a very small price per course (at one time only $39.95, though that was a special - price could range from $49.95 to $79.95 as of July 16, 2013; subject to change). But it is NOT required to pay for this endorsement to take a class.
There are some online courses that provide a way for a student to get Continuing Education Units (CEUs) which may be required by their profession on yearly basis.
So, at present, you are not going to get a degree by using a MOOC (at least not from Coursera at this time, but in the future it could happen). But these classes could look good on your resumé providing future employers with an insight into what you like to study and research.
I encourage you to take a look at the courses at Coursera and sign up for one, or two, or more. But let me tell you a little more before you leave.
There is great range of courses. Some are extremely challenging. I took a course called Medical Neuroscience to learn more about the anatomy and physiology of the brain and nervous system. I had taken almost a complete nursing course in the 80's and wanted to supplement my current degree. I also wanted to learn more about the human body to discover more about my own being (see Personal History blog). This course, presented by Dr. Leonard E. White, PhD, from Duke University, was very complicated with wonderful diagrams and demonstrations by the professor on actual human brains. I would recommend the course to anyone but be prepared to work hard. And know it is time consuming to study that hard - time is a whole subject of its own which will be addressed at another, uh, time. While I was taking that course, I suffered a Sudden Sensironeural Hearing Loss (SSNL) which made me back off from my studies, forcing me to lose my place and fail the course. But all is not lost because they are going to present the course again and the information I gleaned while I was studying helped me to find data about my own traumatic health experience, and probably saved my hearing.
So, let's talk about what it means to "fail" a MOOC. Because you are pacing yourself and totally in control of what you do when you take a MOOC, you are responsible for whether you pass or not. The statistics for MOOCs actually show that some classes have 50,000 students take the course the first day, but at the end maybe only 1500 will actually complete the final exam and not all will pass. And this is okay! You are not losing anything except your own time if you do not pass or complete a course. You are not penalized (at least not at present) for not passing a class, unless of course you are hard on yourself, which you really should not be. And unless your employer had you take the class, which currently I have not much info to report, but in the future you can expect some employers to have their employees use MOOCs to improve performance or get instruction that will improve employee's skills.
I talked about a challenging class - the hardest I have taken so far. But what about the easier courses? Are there easier courses? Well, sure there are. One class I took, Child Nutrition and Cooking, put on by Maya Adam, MD, from Stanford University was extremely easy, but had a more important purpose (I really don't want to say some classes are stuffy or academic, but that is what comes to mind when they are daunting, hard). The instructor's purpose was to get us in the kitchen trying things. And I did try things with that course. Here I am 59 years old, and I had never in my life made a stir-fry! It was really good, too (but does not taste the same without some soy sauce in it). I took the course because I now have grandkids and I thought I might learn some tricks for them, which I did. It was nice to take a course that was not grueling.
And in the beginning of taking courses, I was kind of like fish out of water. I had to determine how to take these courses, what methods worked for me. I found out that I do not learn well just by listening to a video. I have to actually take the text (which is usually available by the first week) of the video and read it while or before I watch the video. That way I can highlight key items that I want to remember, I don't have to take notes, and I can also add important things from the video that are not in the text, such as graphs or pictures the instructor adds. Usually the professors also provide their slide shows that go with their videos as a separate file that can be accessed to assist in the learning process. I have a lot of hints I can share about how to make it easy for yourself, which I will in another blog (see Tips to Learning). At present, I will concentrate on Coursera, but in the future, I do plan on exploring some other MOOCs.
We should also discuss quizzes, final exams, mid terms, assignments, homework, and discussion board requirements, because each instructor will have a different process of how you can pass the class. Some of the classes will only be quizzes and you usually have to have about a 70% from the total quizzes to pass. Some of the quizzes are timed. Some have deadlines. Some penalize late entries and others do not allow late entries at all. If this is an area that bothers you, you do not need to take that course, or you can just realize up front that you may not pass the course, but still take out of it the knowledge you want.
And that's another good thing about a course that you register for - you can keep going back to that class even after it closes to access the content. Some classes are said to be available for up to a year, this also being determined by the instructor, though discussion forums may close. There are some courses that actually do close and the content is not available. Instructors will make that announcement so find that information within that course. But back to homework.
Other homework could be a midterm and/or final exam. These are often limited to one entry and timed and you may not learn the answers until all students have taken the exam and the exam is closed. With quizzes, often you will have access to the answers on the spot and can repeat the quiz up to 100 times. You can see what you did wrong and try to correct it. You do have to agree to some honestly policies when you take quizzes - it has to be your work, not something you copied. No cheating in MOOCs because you are really only cheating yourself (and maybe your future employer, tsk, tsk).
Some homework comes in the form of an assignment. This is determined by the instructor and staff and could be a writing topic about what you have learned. It could relate to a case study. You may need to do some problems, create graphs. This is determined by the course content. One class I took had us design something that "filled a gap." This class, Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society by Karl T. Ulrich, actually had us build a website to demonstrate our progress during the design of our artifacts. (You can view my website here: Suzanne's Patience Portfolio). If it wasn't for that class, I wouldn't be doing this blog. That class also taught me that I could pencil a drawing, then use ink to draw the lines of my drawing and erase the pencil. Here I was 59 years old and I had never learned that technique. That tip helped me in my Art class I later took at Coursera, plus I will never fear designing another idea to fruition again! Anyway, after you do the homework assignment, then there is a period where it is open to peer reviews, which you also have to do for other fellow students, then after this closes, you get your grade for the assignment. Honestly, at first, I was a little leery about this process, but now that I have done it a few times, I am over the fear and enjoying it. I really like to do reviews, as I am probably a teacher in disguise.
Beyond assignments and tests, some instructors may have you do other things. I know the speech class is going to require, if you have the capability, that students actually video their speeches for assignments. And this again will go through the peer review process. I took the Songwriting course from Pat Pattison of Berklee College of Music, and I actually wrote and recorded a couple of songs! But these were in the assignment format. Some instructors actually want you to participate in the discussion forums, requiring a minimum of at least one entry per week and actually grade on these posts, not content necessarily, but participation. I know from my work at American InterContinental University, we had to do at minimum four posts per week per class, and this is an extrapolation of accreditation requirements for colleges and universities that some instructors have pulled into the Coursera classes. It can be intimidating at first to participate in the discussion forums, but this is probably the best part of MOOCs. This is where you meet the world, you meet people from all over, and this is the chance we have to share and better lives all across the globe! During discussion forums, you can share websites, your own creations, pictures, graphs, and a multitude of material that interests you and may (hint, hint) improve your grade in the class. I have even heard that some students did so well in the discussion forums that they were invited to participate as staff members in a future course!
MOOCs are amazing. I have had so much fun not just learning but sharing with people all over the world that I may never again spend hours and hours on Facebook. It could be the future of education for many people who just cannot pay for a college education (no, you can't get degrees yet, but who knows). And you meet wonderful instructors, great staff members, and lovely students. Oh, yes, occasionally you will run across that anonymous student who does not share perfect netiquette skills yet, but for the most part, people are way more than decent. They are excited about what they are doing, they are excited to learn, and there is potential here to improve the lives of people all over the world, the globe, the universe through MOOCs. I am not just dreaming here. Try it with an open mind (after all it is an open course) and see if after a decent trial period, you don't think it can be good for you.
(Note: I have accessed Coursera with my touch tablet and found I can actually listen to the videos. They seem to load slow, could be my equipment, but they run fairly well. I was even able to access the videos with my tablet and look at the slide presentation with my laptop, so my learning experience was doubled. I do not know how Coursera will look on an iPhone or Android phone, so if you want to share, please let me know!)
(Text, prose and poetry, as well as photos and graphic artwork is copyright 2013-2014 Suzanne Belle Eichenlaub Lowry - graphics with raised hands supplied by Weebly.com)
My friends have asked me, "What are you doing with yourself? We never see you on Facebook anymore!" Nope. Been busy, studying. I am extremely involved in taking courses from Coursera and for good reason. I love it!
It is not that I do not have an education. I graduated with honors with a Bachelors degree from American InterContinental University Online August 2012. We did a lot of writing there (and I still use the euphemism "a lot"). So, I thought it would be a good time to dialogue about my experiences with MOOCs.
A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course available to thousands of students around the world, and often, most of the time, it is FREE! Yes, no denaro, no dollars, no Euros, and most of the classes do not require you to purchase a text, though some are optional. Often the courses are a set of video lectures with quizzes and other assignments that provide a way to be graded. Some of the classes provide other resources, such as online texts, external videos, interactive websites, scholarly works, and more.
Most of the MOOCs take place over a six-week period, though some are longer and some are shorter. All of the ones I have attended have had an instructor from a reputable university working with other staff to present the subject at hand. There is also the availability of "discussion forums" which allow the student to interact with students all over the world and with the instructor and staff. This communication portal provides a way to discuss the course, to find study groups, to meet people in your field of work, to get technical help, to find other resources, and, in general, to contact those involved with the class to further your own education.
As for furthering your own education with some of the classes, you can get a certificate from the University or College that is sponsoring the course. This may be a "Statement of Achievement" which the university may not actually endorse. If you do really well in the course, per the instructor's grading policy, you may get a certificate with distinction.
Some of the universities do allow endorsement at a very small price per course (at one time only $39.95, though that was a special - price could range from $49.95 to $79.95 as of July 16, 2013; subject to change). But it is NOT required to pay for this endorsement to take a class.
There are some online courses that provide a way for a student to get Continuing Education Units (CEUs) which may be required by their profession on yearly basis.
So, at present, you are not going to get a degree by using a MOOC (at least not from Coursera at this time, but in the future it could happen). But these classes could look good on your resumé providing future employers with an insight into what you like to study and research.
I encourage you to take a look at the courses at Coursera and sign up for one, or two, or more. But let me tell you a little more before you leave.
There is great range of courses. Some are extremely challenging. I took a course called Medical Neuroscience to learn more about the anatomy and physiology of the brain and nervous system. I had taken almost a complete nursing course in the 80's and wanted to supplement my current degree. I also wanted to learn more about the human body to discover more about my own being (see Personal History blog). This course, presented by Dr. Leonard E. White, PhD, from Duke University, was very complicated with wonderful diagrams and demonstrations by the professor on actual human brains. I would recommend the course to anyone but be prepared to work hard. And know it is time consuming to study that hard - time is a whole subject of its own which will be addressed at another, uh, time. While I was taking that course, I suffered a Sudden Sensironeural Hearing Loss (SSNL) which made me back off from my studies, forcing me to lose my place and fail the course. But all is not lost because they are going to present the course again and the information I gleaned while I was studying helped me to find data about my own traumatic health experience, and probably saved my hearing.
So, let's talk about what it means to "fail" a MOOC. Because you are pacing yourself and totally in control of what you do when you take a MOOC, you are responsible for whether you pass or not. The statistics for MOOCs actually show that some classes have 50,000 students take the course the first day, but at the end maybe only 1500 will actually complete the final exam and not all will pass. And this is okay! You are not losing anything except your own time if you do not pass or complete a course. You are not penalized (at least not at present) for not passing a class, unless of course you are hard on yourself, which you really should not be. And unless your employer had you take the class, which currently I have not much info to report, but in the future you can expect some employers to have their employees use MOOCs to improve performance or get instruction that will improve employee's skills.
I talked about a challenging class - the hardest I have taken so far. But what about the easier courses? Are there easier courses? Well, sure there are. One class I took, Child Nutrition and Cooking, put on by Maya Adam, MD, from Stanford University was extremely easy, but had a more important purpose (I really don't want to say some classes are stuffy or academic, but that is what comes to mind when they are daunting, hard). The instructor's purpose was to get us in the kitchen trying things. And I did try things with that course. Here I am 59 years old, and I had never in my life made a stir-fry! It was really good, too (but does not taste the same without some soy sauce in it). I took the course because I now have grandkids and I thought I might learn some tricks for them, which I did. It was nice to take a course that was not grueling.
And in the beginning of taking courses, I was kind of like fish out of water. I had to determine how to take these courses, what methods worked for me. I found out that I do not learn well just by listening to a video. I have to actually take the text (which is usually available by the first week) of the video and read it while or before I watch the video. That way I can highlight key items that I want to remember, I don't have to take notes, and I can also add important things from the video that are not in the text, such as graphs or pictures the instructor adds. Usually the professors also provide their slide shows that go with their videos as a separate file that can be accessed to assist in the learning process. I have a lot of hints I can share about how to make it easy for yourself, which I will in another blog (see Tips to Learning). At present, I will concentrate on Coursera, but in the future, I do plan on exploring some other MOOCs.
We should also discuss quizzes, final exams, mid terms, assignments, homework, and discussion board requirements, because each instructor will have a different process of how you can pass the class. Some of the classes will only be quizzes and you usually have to have about a 70% from the total quizzes to pass. Some of the quizzes are timed. Some have deadlines. Some penalize late entries and others do not allow late entries at all. If this is an area that bothers you, you do not need to take that course, or you can just realize up front that you may not pass the course, but still take out of it the knowledge you want.
And that's another good thing about a course that you register for - you can keep going back to that class even after it closes to access the content. Some classes are said to be available for up to a year, this also being determined by the instructor, though discussion forums may close. There are some courses that actually do close and the content is not available. Instructors will make that announcement so find that information within that course. But back to homework.
Other homework could be a midterm and/or final exam. These are often limited to one entry and timed and you may not learn the answers until all students have taken the exam and the exam is closed. With quizzes, often you will have access to the answers on the spot and can repeat the quiz up to 100 times. You can see what you did wrong and try to correct it. You do have to agree to some honestly policies when you take quizzes - it has to be your work, not something you copied. No cheating in MOOCs because you are really only cheating yourself (and maybe your future employer, tsk, tsk).
Some homework comes in the form of an assignment. This is determined by the instructor and staff and could be a writing topic about what you have learned. It could relate to a case study. You may need to do some problems, create graphs. This is determined by the course content. One class I took had us design something that "filled a gap." This class, Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society by Karl T. Ulrich, actually had us build a website to demonstrate our progress during the design of our artifacts. (You can view my website here: Suzanne's Patience Portfolio). If it wasn't for that class, I wouldn't be doing this blog. That class also taught me that I could pencil a drawing, then use ink to draw the lines of my drawing and erase the pencil. Here I was 59 years old and I had never learned that technique. That tip helped me in my Art class I later took at Coursera, plus I will never fear designing another idea to fruition again! Anyway, after you do the homework assignment, then there is a period where it is open to peer reviews, which you also have to do for other fellow students, then after this closes, you get your grade for the assignment. Honestly, at first, I was a little leery about this process, but now that I have done it a few times, I am over the fear and enjoying it. I really like to do reviews, as I am probably a teacher in disguise.
Beyond assignments and tests, some instructors may have you do other things. I know the speech class is going to require, if you have the capability, that students actually video their speeches for assignments. And this again will go through the peer review process. I took the Songwriting course from Pat Pattison of Berklee College of Music, and I actually wrote and recorded a couple of songs! But these were in the assignment format. Some instructors actually want you to participate in the discussion forums, requiring a minimum of at least one entry per week and actually grade on these posts, not content necessarily, but participation. I know from my work at American InterContinental University, we had to do at minimum four posts per week per class, and this is an extrapolation of accreditation requirements for colleges and universities that some instructors have pulled into the Coursera classes. It can be intimidating at first to participate in the discussion forums, but this is probably the best part of MOOCs. This is where you meet the world, you meet people from all over, and this is the chance we have to share and better lives all across the globe! During discussion forums, you can share websites, your own creations, pictures, graphs, and a multitude of material that interests you and may (hint, hint) improve your grade in the class. I have even heard that some students did so well in the discussion forums that they were invited to participate as staff members in a future course!
MOOCs are amazing. I have had so much fun not just learning but sharing with people all over the world that I may never again spend hours and hours on Facebook. It could be the future of education for many people who just cannot pay for a college education (no, you can't get degrees yet, but who knows). And you meet wonderful instructors, great staff members, and lovely students. Oh, yes, occasionally you will run across that anonymous student who does not share perfect netiquette skills yet, but for the most part, people are way more than decent. They are excited about what they are doing, they are excited to learn, and there is potential here to improve the lives of people all over the world, the globe, the universe through MOOCs. I am not just dreaming here. Try it with an open mind (after all it is an open course) and see if after a decent trial period, you don't think it can be good for you.
(Note: I have accessed Coursera with my touch tablet and found I can actually listen to the videos. They seem to load slow, could be my equipment, but they run fairly well. I was even able to access the videos with my tablet and look at the slide presentation with my laptop, so my learning experience was doubled. I do not know how Coursera will look on an iPhone or Android phone, so if you want to share, please let me know!)
(Text, prose and poetry, as well as photos and graphic artwork is copyright 2013-2014 Suzanne Belle Eichenlaub Lowry - graphics with raised hands supplied by Weebly.com)