Half an Hour: International MOOCs Past and Present

Stephen Downes on Half an Hour now has a list with international Massive Open Online Courses.  Let’s not forget: there is more out there than the xMOOCs such as offered by Coursera, edX and Udacity – the connectivist courses offer a very different learning experience, based on distributed platforms, the… Continue reading

Difference and the unexpected are what matters

Nice video about how education changes and should change. Because difference and the unexpected matter more than identical competences and predictability. Coursera is one of the examples of the ‘new education’, but I think other educational practices would be even more illustrative of the deep changes. Stephen Downes and George… Continue reading

In search of… metacognition amplifiers

I’m gearing up for Howard Rheingold’s course about Think-Know Tools and so I read his latest book, Mind Amplifier. I’m starting to become a bit of a veteran in Rheingold courses, so I was not surprised to read about the notion of literacies, of designs for improved collective action and… Continue reading

MRUniversity: it’s not a massive open online course, but it could be used to create one

Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, two economics professors at George Mason University, launch Marginal Revolution University. They’ll deliver free, interactive courses in the economics space, so I read on Open Culture. Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok run the blog Marginal Revolution. Some years ago, Cowen also was a guest at… Continue reading

From Self-Flying Helicopters to Classrooms of the Future – The Chronicle of Higher Education

“What do self-piloting helicopters have to do with the growing movement to transform education online? A day spent with Mr. Ng here at Coursera’s offices, with the aim of getting a sense of the company’s culture and the ideas that make up its DNA, helped answer that question. It turns… Continue reading

Should MOOC-platforms be open, portable and interoperable?

While working at the Peeragogy Handbook I’m having some discussions about the business models of xMOOCs, the Massive Open Online Courses on platforms such as Coursera, Udacity and edX. The xMOOCs are, for now, free. The building of the courses is rather expensive – so what’s the return? Also, just… Continue reading

Python in four weeks. Or in eight!

The Mechanical MOOC is in full preparation of the Python programming course. As reported before the mMOOC combines several existing open courses, such as the MIT Opencourseware, Peer 2 Peer University, OpenStudy and CodeAcademy. During the preparation the learners are introduced to those other platforms. The first instalment was interesting:… Continue reading

Navigating the massive open online courses by Mechanical MOOC

Another week, another Coursera-course (via the University of Toronto): Learn to Program: The Fundamentals by Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries: Behind every mouse click and touch-screen tap, there is a computer program that makes things happen. This course introduces the fundamental building blocks of programming and teaches you how to… Continue reading