For various reasons I'm keeping a close eye on maths MOOCs (or, strictly speaking, xMOOCs, in the jargon explained here by John Daniels [PDF]).
I've been dipping in and out of the Udacity/San José State University College Algebra course, and I am about to start Keith Devlin's Coursera/Stanford Introduction to Mathematical Thinking course, which starts on Monday 4 March. In the latter case I intend to do the course thoroughly, Easter holiday permitting, and to write about it as I go along, though probably not as systematically as I did in 2011 during the Norvig/Thrun AI course.
Keith Devlin, who hails originally from Hull - almost close enough to Sheffield to feel an affinity - is writing regularly about the practicalities of MOOC design, with a particular focus on "the question of the degree to which good, effective mathematics learning can be achieved at scale, over the Internet". Here are two examples:
- MOOCs are So Back to the Future from MOOCtalk, which Devlin describes as "A real-time chronicle of a seasoned professor who is about to give his second massively open online course";
- Can we make constructive use of machine-graded, multiple-choice questions in university mathematics education? from Devlin's regular column for the American Mathematical Association.
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