Small "on re-reading this" edits almost immediately after publication.
You may have read this fierce critique of one of Udacity's courses by Daniel Collins, an experienced and articulate community college maths teacher who will for sure appreciate at first hand the challenges faced by students who do not take naturally to learning mathematics.
What particularly caught my eye was the unusually open way in which Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity and teacher of the Statistics 101 course has responded to the points made by Collins, and the gracious and constructive way in which Collins acknowledges this.
All three posts are well worth reading, along with their developing discussion-threads.
This is the kind of relatively open and self-critical dialogue that needs to be taking place between people who understand the problems and possiblities of the different kinds of mass courses that are currently under development, and who understand their fields from the point of view of how people learn. And if I am judging the underlying quality of a mass course provider, then its openness to criticisms and the extent to which it is committed to incremental improvement in its provision is a key consideration.
Last week I took part in my twelfth ALT conference. This was the last one in which
I will have had any kind of production role (and a minor one at that). Here are links to two talks I gave.
1. Learning Technology – a backward and forward look. This was a somewhat chaotic personal reflection, the first half of which was better prepared than the second. Presentation, with notes. [PDF]. The ALT YouTube channel now has a video of the talk.
2. Learning Technology-based interventions in adult learning: how should priorities be determined? This was a PechaKucha session - 9 slides at 45 second intervals - written with Clive Shepherd, Dick Moore, and Adrian Perry. Presentation. Notes. Abstract.
With the publication of the coruscating Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel [PDF], I am rereading my copies of Lord Justice Taylor's August 1989 Interim Report [PDF] and January 1990 Final Report into the 15 April 1989 Hillsborough Stadium Disaster (Cm 759 and Cm 962).
I am also looking again at my copies of a few papers about the disaster, including letters to the press by the then Labour MP for Hillsborough Martin Flannery, and materials from Sheffield Trades Union Council, including the Trades Council's 3 October 1989 media release "calling for Police Officers, irrespective of rank, found to have been responsible in any way for the disaster, to be dismissed", and the Trades Council's submissions to the Taylor Inquiry of May and October 1989, in which I had a hand at the time.
How Are Teachers in Finland Evaluated? Amanda Ripley's WSJ article appears via @dianeravitch on her driven & excellent "Site to discuss better education for all". - http://dianeravitch.net/2012...
++
Interesting sections on infrastructure and on universities in this (. @xtophercook) speech by Mike Bloomberg (Mayor of New York), looking back 4 years after the onset of the financial crisis. - http://www.mikebloomberg.com/index...
The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Research
Programme ends this year and a final public event showcasing our hardware,
software, and thematic work is set for 6 November at the Royal
Society (see www.tel.ac.uk). [The 17 minute documentary from the final public meeting is here.]
It’s an obvious time to assess where we are, where we started from, and where we are going. TEL was a
result of 2003’s ‘consultation on e-learning’ and ‘An e-learning research
agenda’ report calling for interdisciplinary research into technology’s
potential for improving education. The programme initially formed part the Teaching
and Learning Research Programme (which ended in 2010 - see www.tlrp.org).
I mentioned EPIC 2020, a US-focused Call to Action to compel universities to 'decouple the delivery of content and assessment through a “test out” option' in Snippets from 14 July to 3 August.
Though I do not agree with Marquis's assertion that MOOCs currently have a serious and probably inherent flaw in their inability to help people develop their creative and innovative capacities, the piece is worth reading in full.
It is also worth noting the comment on the piece by Bill Sams, originator of EPIC 2020.
"Thank you for the excellent review and discussion of EPIC 2020. My objective in producing EPIC was to create a piece that would cause people to consider and discuss that there are dramatic alternatives to the traditional education system. Given the 25,000 views from 83 countries I am satisfied that I have made a small contribution to what hopefully will become a lively discussion.
On a side note as to the timeline: In about seven months Coursera has enrolled one million students. Facebook took ten months to achieve the same level of members. Five years later Facebook is in the neighborhood of one billion members and has a capitalized value of $41 billion. The chances of Coursera and edX reaching similar numbers should not be lightly discounted."
Mark Guzdial has written this informative and sensibly low-key piece about Thrun's thinking, which benefits greatly from Guzdial having done a lot of prior thinking about teaching and learning computer science.
Clayton Wright sent me a link to The Little Data Book on ICT 2012 [~250 pages, 1MB PDF], which, he writes, "was jointly developed by the World Bank and the International Telecommunication Union to show progress made in 216 economies (countries) from 2005 to 2010".
The Data Book is worth browsing for the sense it gives of:
the pace of change;
the extent of "catch up" that there has been between middle income countries and the rich world;
the huge income-contingent differences in access to the Internet that persist.
Links to Koller and Horowitz talks added 21 August.
At the foot of this post is an 18 minute talk by Peter Norvig at the Google 2012 Faculty Summit on 26 July. In it Norvig reflects on what he learned from developing and running last year's "Stanford" online AI course (in which I participated), making links as he goes with the widely applicable "Theory and Research-based Principles of Learning", from Carnegie Mellon University's Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence.
Two othe things stood out for me from the talk.
The first is the reference Norvig makes to the challenges posed for course design and operation by the "dynamic range" of an online openly enrolled course, by which he means the wider range of capabilities and experience than would be found on a course where there are strict admission requirements. Norvig is not claiming that this idea is new, but it is good that it is getting attention.
The second is this very striking quote from the polymath Herb Simon:
Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn.
which squares strongly with something that Dylan Wiliam said at the 2007 ALT conference (where Peter also spoke):
Learning power is a concept that Guy Claxton has put forward. The key concept here—the big trap—is that teachers do not create learning. That’s true—teachers do not create learning, and yet most teachers behave as if they do. Learners create learning. Teachers create the conditions under which learning can take place.
(The full transcript of Dylan's talk is available for download [PDF]. Other talks from the Google 2012 Faculty Summit are also available: Daphne Koller; Bradley Horowitz - hat tip to R Seiter. Horowitz's talk about Google +, for which he is responsible at Google, is particularly interesting.)
Udacity's approach to course improvement
Small "on re-reading this" edits almost immediately after publication.
You may have read this fierce critique of one of Udacity's courses by Daniel Collins, an experienced and articulate community college maths teacher who will for sure appreciate at first hand the challenges faced by students who do not take naturally to learning mathematics.
What particularly caught my eye was the unusually open way in which Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity and teacher of the Statistics 101 course has responded to the points made by Collins, and the gracious and constructive way in which Collins acknowledges this.
All three posts are well worth reading, along with their developing discussion-threads.
This is the kind of relatively open and self-critical dialogue that needs to be taking place between people who understand the problems and possiblities of the different kinds of mass courses that are currently under development, and who understand their fields from the point of view of how people learn. And if I am judging the underlying quality of a mass course provider, then its openness to criticisms and the extent to which it is committed to incremental improvement in its provision is a key consideration.
Posted on 19/09/2012 in Moocs, News and comment | Permalink | Comments (0)
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