Edinburgh University bites on the "MOOC" bullet with Coursera

Don't be put off by the slightly stodgy tone in parts of this just-released promotional video from the University of Edinburgh about www.ed.ac.uk/moocs. Instead, listen carefully to what Stanford's Daphne Koller has to say about scale and formative assessment in Coursera's new "breed" of free on-line courses, as well as to the comments from Vice-Principal Jeff Haywood about Edinburgh University's approach to quality assurance. [See also coverage by BBC, Guardian, The Times Higher, Inside Higher Ed, Downes. ]

Of possible interest to readers of Fortnightly Mailing will be one of Edinburgh's Coursera courses E-learning and Digital Cultures, taught by Jeremy Knox, Sian Bayne, Hamish Macleod, Jen Ross, and Christine Sinclair. E-learning and digital cultures will "explore how digital cultures and learning cultures connect, and what this means for e-learning theory and practice". [On 8 August, ALT published MOOC pedagogy: the challenges of developing for Coursera, Jeremy Knox, Sian Bayne, Hamish MacLeod, Jen Ross and Christine Sinclair.]

Comments

[Brian Mulligan]

I agree that formative assessment at scale is the key to the usefulness of these MOOCs, however, Koller just claims that they have cracked that in this video rather than explaining how they do it. I've been poking around on the Internet and asking this question for a few weeks with no luck. Does anyone know what techniques they use in Coursera? If an effective technique has been developed for low-cost formative assessment in online courses this will be extremely effective in bringing down the cost of education. Are these techniques in the public domain? Is there any other system that we can freely purchase that will give us access to these techniques?

[Seb Schmoller]

Brian - these are all good questions, to which I do not know the answers. Daphne Koller spoke at UCL in London in June - when the talk is published we may get further insights. Seb

[Seb Schmoller]

Brian - Koller's University of London talk is now here. Limited detailed insights, however, into the questions your raise.
-- Seb