As my Internet History Technology, and Security Coursera course is winding down as students take the final, the discussion is turning to the issue of certificates. There will certainly be certificates for those that meet the minimum score. But there is still a discussion around how the certificates look and what the certificates contain.
One student (R.D.R.C.) proposed a great question:
I know that in some of the other courses on Coursera they are giving a Certificate with Distinction for those how score very high, I was wondering if we would have that here since there is no mention of it. Should those with 75 average get the same “commendation (since it isnt accreditation”) as those who scored 95 or above? Was just wondering.
Here is my answer I posted to the course forum
I am not going to distinguish the certificates. There are lots of factors that lead to the ultimate number of points. An important factor for many was technical issues and problems. I do not have the time to double grade 6000 students assignments if there was a glitch. The grade of “75 points” allowed a certificate to be earned by a diligent student even if there were some technical difficulties. I did not want to make points “so valuable” that students would get upset over every little thing that went wrong. If I set some “91” as “distinguished” – I would start hearing from hundreds of people who got a 90 because there was a bad question or the Coursera software or their Internet connection suffered a glitch on them.
It is also why I am not putting the points earned on the certificate. I was in communication with a student coming to the University of Michgan and he sent me two of his Coursera certificates as evidence of his skill. They were hard courses and so I knew that the certificates represented real work. And the rest of his transcript/resume supported that he was a very talented student.
But his certificates from Coursera had the scores on them – one of his scores was 750 / 700 – and it made me wonder. I did not wonder about the student’s achievement. It make it look to me like the points were too easy to earn – which makes me question the teacher of the class. I too have given “extra credit” in my course – so if you think I am being a little inconsistent – you are right. :) The difference is that in my course, I know *exactly why* I set up grading the way I did and how easy/hard points were to earn. In this other course, I don’t have inside information on how hard points were to get – or what the purpose of extra credit was. My point is that not knowing the grading approach and seeing a 750/700 – caused me to question the *course* but not question not the student’s achievement.
In a course like this, we need to be flexible in awarding points for many reasons – but as a result students who are (a) highly skilled before they come into the class or (b) have nothing go wrong, or (c) have lots of free time and are not juggling family or other schooling achieve these astronomical scores. Including the score to me reduced the value of the certificate IMHO even though the student I was interacting with had an extremely high score. It is like including a grade point averages on a diploma when you graduate – a diploma is far more than your grade point average.
We need to learn in this kind of new teaching and learning pattern that your achievement is not automatically higher because you are in the top 10 percent of the ultimate score. The score is only a proxy / approximation for what you have learned. And what you have taught others as part of a learning community is even more important and hard to measure.
In this class we have some in this course that are near to 120 / 100 – it is great to get these high scores – but it does not diminish those who got 80/100 or even 78/100.
What I am thinking of doing is labeling all the certificates as “the first time the course was taught” (or similar wording) to indicate that you are all pioneers and helped me so much in crafting what the course has become. You are the “first graduating class of the University of IHTS”. From this point forward whenever the course is taught (in Coursera or live) – your contributions wil be part of the course and I thank you.
Here is the trip report from our road trip. I wanted to blog as we went but the trip got pretty busy.
August 14
We got a pretty late start because I needed to replace two tires on the Buick before we could leave. While I was at Belle Tire they told me that my right front bearing was a little loose. But I had just replaced the bearings about 5000 miles earlier so I figured they were just being paranoid and I said I would check it later.
I had a few little things that I needed to finish before we left to the point where we did not get on the road to Chicago until 4PM. With the time change we made it to downtown Chicago about 7PM. We settled in at the Silversmith hotel and decided to go to Kingston mines for dinner and some Blues.
The wings at Kingston Mines are particularly tasty – I like the fact that they put a base of french fries underneath the wings to soak up the hot sauce – it is a great idea.
There were two bands at Kingston Mines that rotated each hour. We stayed for four hours and then went back downtown.
August 15
The first order of business was to do an office hour for my Coursera Internet History, Technology, and Security course at the Starbuck in the basement of Palmer House. Brent appears in the office hours video:
After office hours, we decided where to go next. The decision was whether to go west and visit places like Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone or go south to Memphis and beyond. Brent decided he wanted to see cities so I booked a hotel in Memphis and we checked out from our Chicago hotel.
As we were walking to the car, Brent asked if they had an art museum in Chicago. I said ‘yes’ and we were exactly one block away so we decided to spend a few hours at the Chicago Art museum. It was pretty cool and Brent really liked it but by the time we were done it was about 4PM and we needed to be in Memphis that night. Also because it was 4PM we started to hit Chicago traffic and I needed to fill the gas tank as soon as we got on the road. It took over an hour before we were outside Chicago on I-57 going toward Memphis. By the time we were at real highway speeds, the GPS was estimating our arrival time at 12:30 AM. I was getting pretty sleepy so I let Brent drive for a while – he was not comfortable driving the Buick but I was pretty sleepy so I let him drive for about 1.5 hours and took a nap.
I got up and drove the rest of the way. With gas and bathroom stops our estimated time of arrival ballooned out to 1:30AM. For the last hour I was *way too tired* – I should have stopped and took a nap. I was sooo happy when we pulled into that hotel and I had not fallen asleep driving. I used to drive at night fighting sleep and it felt really unsafe – for the past few years when I am tired – I stop and take a nap and when I awake I go back on the road. This keeps me from fighting sleep while driving. But with the arrival at 1:30 it just seemed like we were “so close” so I kept wanting to “gut it out”. Ah well – I vowed not to do that again.
August 16
We woke up at about 10AM and decided to go to Sun Studios. It turn out that we arrived during Elvis Week and August 16, 2012 was the 35-year anniversary of Elvis death in August 16, 1977 and the city was full of Elvis fans. And Sun Studios was also full of Elvis fans. It was our second time at Sun Studios and with it packed to the gills with people it generally was not too fun. We waited 45 minutes for the tour and then had a Chocolate Malt afterwards. Sun Studios is awesome and Brent liked it better because this time he is a musician and has done recording and so he appreciated a lot of the artists and equipment much more this time.
After Sun Studios I wanted to go downtown and kill some time and have some barbeque. It was extremely hot so I wanted to go downtown to Peabody Place – the giant mall that we had been to on our previous visit. We found our way to the parking ramp and walked to Peabody Place – there was no one downtown and when we got to Peabody Place – it was *permanently closed*. An entire gigantic mall was closed. I was amazed – I guess the bad economy has hit more than just Michigan.
I thought that perhaps we would walk through the Peabody Hotel and see the ducks. As we rounded the corner and the entrance came into view there was an extremely long line that snaked around the block to see the ducks. It seemed that the only thing to do downtown was see the ducks.
I gave up and we got back into the car and went back to the hotel to take a nap in the afternoon to save up our energy for the evening on Beale Street.
After we woke up from the nap, we went downtown to Beale Street. I had never been to Beale Street so I did not know what to expect. We needed some food so we went to Blues City Cafe and had dinner while listening to music. Brent was loving the music and the food was pretty tasty. After we finished at the Blues City Cafe we sat for a while at an outside venue kind of in an alley and listened to a young group playing some classic blues and had a couple of beers. After a couple of sets in the alley, we wandered down the street to listen to a more jazz-oriented band and had another beer.
All in all Beale Street was pretty awesome. It was very focused on music and not too crowded. We ended the night about midnight and went back to the hotel.
August 17
We got up August 17, and I did an office hour at a Starbucks in rural Memphis – but no one showed up so I caught up with some E-Mail and some work. We got on the road to New Orleans about 11:30 AM – and with about six hours of driving it looked like it was going to be a pretty mellow day.
I had booked a Holiday Inn in the French Quarter because I did want to have to handle the car for two days and wanted to keep the walking to a minimum.
We made really good time and were driving through the bayou and near Lake Ponchatrain as the sun was going down. We were in pretty good spirits and Brent was enjoying seeing the Bayou and the long causeways that drove straight across a lake. While I was driving, the GPS tracking system kept telling us to get off highway to avoid slow traffic. I had no idea where it was suggesting we go so I just stayed on the highway. Pretty much as we turned onto highway I-10, the traffic slowed to a crawl. The GPS was right all along but I just would not trust it. After about 15 minutes in a traffic jam we sped up until we got to the airport and then again slowed to a crawl and then once we got near the Superdome – the traffic literally stopped. We moved about a mile in an hour. And it was starting to rain.
Once we got off the highway, we had to deal with insane traffic in downtown New Orleans and we needed to cross from the North Side of the French Quarter to the south side of the French Quarter. The last mile through town took another 45 minutes. By the time we pulled into the Holiday Inn parking ramp, we were tired and stressed and just wanted to slump into a bed.
When we got to the lobby in the Holiday Inn in the French Quarter – it was packed with people damp from the rain – and it seemed like everyone was checking in at the same time and no one was in a good mood. Brent sat in a chair and I waited to get checked in. After about 15 minutes I got to the check in – when I gave them my name, they said, “What was your name again?” My heart sank. Then they asked for my confirmation number and my heart sank further. I gave them my confirmation number and after some typing they said my prepaid reservation was cancelled because of a problem with my credit card. And of course the hotel was full.
I had made the pre-paid reservations two days earlier. They gave me a confirmation number and then later yanked the reservation without a call or e-mail.
They told me that there was a Crowne Plaza a block away that had one room left. I was not in a position to do anything except say ‘yes’. We struggled back through the crowded lobby and up the elevators to the parking ramp and got back in the car. The Crowne Plaza was literally less than a block away and it took about 10 minutes to get there because of blocked roads and one way streets.
The Crowne Plaza did Valet Parking only and again it seemed like the whole world was checking in at the same time. We were the third car and waited 20 minutes before the valet guy could reach us. And all the time a constant drizzle. Finally we get our car parked handed off to the valet guy and go into the hotel. The hotel is hosting the national convention of the Vietnam Veteran’s Mortocycle Club. It seemed like at all times 24 hours per day, the entire entrance and sidewalk near the entrance would be filled with wall-to-wall motorcycle dudes smoking. Because it was raining, all the smokers crowded around the entrance under the small covered entrance. And since it was New Orleans they were always drunk and because they felt they owned the place if you tried to move between them they would always react with “attitude”.
We finally got checked in and in the room – I was exhausted. But I decided we needed to get out and see the Preservation Hall Jazz Band so we would have at least one positive experience in our first day in New Orleans.
We arrived at Preservation Hall about five minutes into their last set – but they let us in anyways. Which was really great. This was the reason for the entire trip and it made everything worth while. Brent loved it. It had always been my “ace in the hole” and on that day we needed something to leave us with a good feeling.
We walked back to the hotel and crashed.
August 18
The next day, we got up about 10 AM and decided to walk down the French Quarter to absorb the “French Quarter Experience”. We went into stores of various kinds and had a nice lunch where Brent tried Oysters on the Half-Shell for the first time. As we walked, the rain kept coming and going. I was always worried about Brent slipping on his crutches because the sidewalks are mostly slate. After lunch we went to Jackson Square to see all the cool stuff there – luckily it was not raining so there was something to see. As we finished with Jackson Square I decided we should see the Mississippi RIver – but it started to pour. I pulled out my umbrella and we walked behind Cafe Du Monde and got to see the Mississippi River.
My next plan was to go to Cafe Du Monde and have some hot chocolate and beignets. Unfortunately it seemed as though every tourist in New Orleans had the same idea. It was raining, wet and slippery and I tried to sit Brent in a chair while I tried to get a table. No one was getting up and as soon as someone got up – some group of kids would run and grab the table. I decided to give up and go back to the hotel and dry out. But the walk back to the hotel was nearly a mile and it was raining and we had one umbrella and the rain made the sidewalks slippery.
I decided that we would take a pedi-cab back to the hotel. A pedi-cab is a three-wheeled bicycle with seats in the back. It is also covered and has a rain shield. So we grabbed a pedi cab and they took us back to the hotel – it was really the first time I had relaxed since we left the hotel in the morning. When we arrived at the hotel I gave the pedicab driver a big tip and told him how much I appreciated the ride.
When we got back to the hotel, the pedicab driver told me that I could call a number and they would pick us up anywhere in the French Quarter in about five minutes. I was incredulous but he assured me that it really worked. They have a little cell phone hanging around their neck where they get calls. He gave me a business card with their number on it – which I kept for the rest of the trip.
We got back in to the hotel room and took a nap, and dried out all of our clothing and shoes and were feeling a little better. So we decided we would venture back out for the evening. This time we were smart and called the pedi-cab right away. Just as they said, within five minutes our chariot arrived. I was planning to start the night at Preservation Hall and then work our way back and hit a few music clubs.
We were talking with our pedicab driver about where to find good music on Bourbon Street and he said we should probably just go to “Frenchman Street” – he said it was more focused on music and less focused on frozen margaritas and acting stupid. He said that Bourbon Street was fast becoming “Disneyland for Drunks” – and I had to agree. Over the years of me coming to NOLA since 1993 the cool Blues places (like Bryan Lee playing at The Old Absinthe House) were being turned into frozen Margarita shops. Ironically while we were in New Orleans, Bryan Lee was playing in Chicago. We just missed him both places.
We decided to switch our plans to Frenchman Street so he took us there and dropped us off. We had dinner at a cute little place on the corner where we had some nice southern comfort food. After dinner we went to a coupe of clubs. The first featured a washboard and the second was an all-brass band that played very loud. It was cool for Brent because it was completely different style of music from our other experiences.
After we were done at Frenchman Street we called our new best friends – the pedicab drivers and as promised he showed up in five minutes. I told him to take us to Cafe Du Monde – when we got there, we immediately found an open table and we could have our requisite beignets and hot chocolate. When we were done we again called the magical pedicab and were whisked back to the hotel.
August 19
I was quite ready to be out of New Orleans about our hotel filled to the brim with annoying Motorcycle Club members. Of course 20 people were checking out at the same time and the valet parking folks were overwhelmed – it of course was raining. We were told that it would take an hour to get our car – or we could get in a bus and be taken to the lot and that would take about 15 minutes. We finally got our car and I was so happy to be able to start putting some distance between me and New Orleans. As soon as we got in the car it started pouring in earnest and we slowly crept out of the city going eastward towards Misisssippi.
After about three hours we were finally in rural Mississippi making good time with New Orleans slowly receding in the distance behind us. We had 2.5 days to get back to Michigan and no other agenda – we could drive a few hours and do something and stop when we felt tired. It felt good to finally be agenda free.
After about 100 miles, I started to hear a loud whine from the front wheels. I called my brother Scott and asked him for advice on how far I could get with a whining front wheel bearing given that we had about 1200 miles to go to get home. He told me that once GM wheel bearings started getting louder the would fail pretty quickly. He said not to push it. He said to find the nearest city that had a repair shop and stop for the night. He said that the right thing to do was to keep the car from breaking down completely so at least I could drive it to the repair shop instead of getting towed.
So I consulted my RoadAhead iPhone application and found Meridian Mississippi that had a bunch of hotels and several repair shops. It was a Sunday so we took my brother’s advice and got a room at the Motel 6. We had dinner at a Sonic and then went to the WIll Ferrel Candidate movie. The movie was actually not WIll’s best work – one ironic bit was that the Marty Huggins character drove a Buick LeSabre – which they used to show what a dork the other candidate – was – of course we were driving a 2001 Buick LeSabre on the trip so that was pretty ironic.
August 20
I got up bright and early Monday morning to be at the door of the Goodyear Service Center in Meridian Mississippi precisely at 7AM to get my bearing fixed. They were really nice and got me right in and gave me a good estimate (cheaper than the Belle Tire estimate back in Michigan). The waiting room even had WiFi and free coffee so I could catch up on a bit of work and E-Mail. After about 45 minutes they came back and said that they fixed the right front bearing and the left was making noise too – it was less noise but it was not in great shape – so I told them to fix the left front bearing as well. They quickly completed the work and I went back to get Brent and we were on the road by 10:30AM – It was actually the earliest we had made it on the road on the trip.
It was a nice feeling not to be listening to the bearings to see if they were about tho break down and leave us by the side of the road. It was also nice to not have a precise schedule and not to have any time pressure to make it anywhere. And it was nice to be driving on a full night’s sleep.
The miles piled up as we went through Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. It felt good to be getting closer to home.
As we were driving along in Northern Kentucky, I saw a sign that said “Horse Cave Next Exit”. We had no particular agenda so I decided to get off the highway and take a look.
Horse Cave turned out the be pretty cool – we took a tour. Brent took a little extra time with his crutches – but eventually we were 150 feet under ground in a giant cavern carved by a river. It was nice to have done something on the spur of the moment instead of pushing to meet a schedule.
After a few hours we hopped back on the road and ended up staying the night at a hotel in southern Indiana. We were within striking distance of home and the next day should be a nice easy ride and a straight shot.
By this time Brent and I were feeling some flu-like symptoms. I had gotten them first and I was getting better – Brent was at the point where he was starting to feel pretty bad – so we had to run around the town and find him some chicken soup so he would feel better.
August 21
We got up about 10 AM and hopped on the road. As we passed Indianapolis, for me things became very familiar since I make the drive to Indy all the time. We passed Fort Wayne and then the Michigan border.
We pulled into our driveway at about 4PM. We arrived back home almost to the minute at same time as we had left seven days earlier. It felt good to be home. We had driven 2359 miles.
Epilogue
Interestingly we missed hurricane Isaac by about a week. Isaac almost exactly followed the path we took coming home from New Orleans. It hit New Orleans, Mississippi, and then went up the Mississippi valley and then turned down the Ohio valley – at one point they were reporting from Meridian Mississippi where we had our bearings changed.
It was interesting to watch the scenes from New Orleans and realize just how helpless they are if they did not evacuate long before the storm. Having driven into New Orleans for the first time in my life I realized how isolated it is and how much it is surrounded by water on all sides. The highways and roads are a mess and you just cannot get anywhere in a hurry. I would hate to be leaving in a hurry to escape a hurricane.
Afterwards Brent said he never wanted to go on a road trip again. I may try to convince him otherwise next year. I think that the mistake was to do a road trip that spent most of its time in cities instead of wandering around the west. I do think that if we want to go visit a city, we might as well fly and keep things nice and simple. But perhaps next summer we will do that “out west” road trip. My guess is that it will be a lot less stressful and more relaxing to drive with less of a schedule / agenda.
But overall it was a great experience and all the fun things we did were very fun. Because we were in such a rush and going a great distance and fighting through crowds with Brent on hand-crutches, logistics took a lot of energy. But the destination were well worth it and road trips are supposed have a few challenges !
I ended up in an E-Mail discussion with the folks in the University of Michigan School of Information mailing list and ended up writing this little essay on Coursera – it sounded pretty good so I decided to keep it. It is just kind of a thought piece.
July 23, 2012
There is way too much hype around Coursera and what it means, portends, and how a meteor will strike the earth and cause all of higher education to have a thin dusting of Iridium, etc etc. We need to factor *all* that out.
Coursera is a way for us to share a tiny tiny fraction of our niftiest on-campus courses and faculty members to an extremely wide audience, nearly all of whom will never get to Ann Arbor, let alone be enrolled in the University of Michigan. Sharing what we know and do with the world for the betterment of the world is what we do and who we are and for me as you well know it is doubly what I do and who I am. Hence my work with Sakai, Moodle, Open.Michigan, the open textbooks I write, appenginelearn.com, pythonlearn.com, and every other venue that I can share with the world the things that I do.
Coursera is a wonderful piece of technology that is tuned to allow me to share my material with 35,000 students around the world and it works amazingly well. Me teaching a Coursera course is my *research* in how we can better use technology to get reasonable education in the hands of underserved people. This is a problem that the world must solve in the next 20 years and working with Coursera is the most exciting thing I have done in my career because I can almost touch that seemingly impossible future with the help of Coursera. And there are a bunch of researchers here at SI and the School of Ed that are with me every step of the way in trying to understand this new form and help improve it and evolve it.
Coursera is six classes at UM – it is not a sea-change. It is a grand experiment and one that in my opinion we are duty-bound to participate in to fulfill our mission and if I were not involved, I would be in grave pain because I would know that the future was being explored and I was not part of it.
Now after all that hyperbole, there are some caveats. It is early days. At this point in time, there is no way to achieve the same rigor (there is that word again) in my Coursera course that I achieve in SI502. Even if I put every single lecture and assignment of SI502 into Coursera – it would not be the same as SI502 because of the lack of rigor. Everything in a Coursera course must be scalable and rigor is hard to scale – especially when folks are learning very emergent skills that are cognitively challenging – it is too easy to just quit and walk away. Coursera works well when students strive to gain the knowledge and they fiercely want the knowledge. But in a class like SI502, a large number of students (at least for the first 5-6 weeks) really might be happier without the knowledge in SI502 and if it were a Coursera course they would quietly drop out or game the system to get some weak but passing grade and get the certificate.
So it turns out that *not* putting too much value on the Coursera certificates is an essential founding notion of what it takes to make a scalable course scale. What students get out of these courses is best correlated to whatever they put in – and there is no good measure for that.
But even with all its limitations, Coursera is far better than anything that came before it in to solve the use case of “teach the world”. Folks will find lots of flaws and those flaws are indeed there – but the best way to fix those flaws is to jump in and life with the flaws and let the solutions come to us as we gain experience.
These are notes we used to guide the two-person panel at the US Moodle Moot August 3, 2012.
Panelists: Dr. Chuck Severance and Phil Hill
Moderator: Brad Schleicher
From the Program:
The future of Moodle is inextricably linked to the future evolution of the LMS. Recent changes in social app adoption, LMS business models, OER licensing, and the ongoing evolution of LMS usage are some of the factors influencing the future. What does Moodle, organizations using Moodle, and teachers need to consider to adapt successfully to this future?
Agenda:
• Quick introduction from Andrew Roderick, putting program in his words as well as short bio description of Chuck and Phil (2 minutes)
• Description of panel, rules (2 minutes)
• Phil introduces Chuck from his perspective (2 minutes?)
• Chuck introduces Phil from his perspective (2 minutes?)
• Brad introduces ground rules, then asks first question (2 minutes)
• Chuck and Phil question each other, PTI style (20 – 30 minutes)
• Audience questions filter in, including questioning of audience (15 – 20 minutes)
Rules:
• Each panelist question will lead to a ~60 second response from the other panelist, following by ~15 second reaction from questioner.
• The panelists will alternate asking the questions.
• Interruptions and challenges are allowed and encouraged.
• No speechmaking through questions.
• The moderator will actively manage the discussion and push the discussion forward.
• The audience can veto the moderator and indicate discussions that should be extended or re-directed.
• We will use hashtags to encourage audience input and questions.
Initial questions listed below. It is always better to go in depth on a particular aspect of a topic than to try to cover an entire subject in a short time span.
1) What is surprising in the last year in terms for the nature of the market? (both panelists will have 60 seconds to respond to this question from the moderator, with 15 second reflections each)
2) If we came back in five years how will LMS’s be different? UI? Market penetration?
3) What will be the story about open source LMS circa 2000 – 2012 if written in 5 years?
4) Has the LMS market fundamentally changed as you allege? If so, what are the drivers that are causing real changes to a market that has been fairly stagnant or stable for the past decade?
5) Does it matter? Was the LMS movement a short-term phemomenom that has almost run its course? Do teachers really use the LMS in an engaged way or is it just a tool of administrative control?
6) Who stands the most to gain and the most to lose if the LMS market continues migration to a learning platform market? What are the best case and worst case scenarios that you see in regards to LMSs?
7) Has the LMS open source movement lost its purpose? Previously the narrative was Moodle and Sakai, while being high-quality, as also being the source of freedom – freedom from the proprietary LMS market and M&A activity. Blackboard in particular supports the vision of multiple learning platforms. Are Moodle and Sakai still solving problems that education markets need solved?
8) Why do none of the new MOOC entrants (Stanford, Coursera, Udacity, MITx, edX, connectivist MOOCs) use traditional LMS solutions? Does there focus on custom-development signal a change in the value of the LMS as it exists today?
9) Lore developed two versions of its learning platform in less than 12 months and less than $4M. Coursera developed its platform in less than 12 months and less than $4M. what does this rapid pace and low cost of development mean for the future of the LMS?
10) Are we just blowing smoke amongst over-caffeinated pundits? The SUNY Learning Network proposed the rough equivalent of a learning platform based on patching together tools within a Learning Management Operating System in 2005 / 2006. That effort did not lead to changes in the LMS. Why do you / we think the situation is different?
11) Recently Jeff Young of the Chronicle wrote an article analyzing the Coursera contract with the University of Michigan based on a FOIA request. Given the role of being “open”, should these new delivery models such as MOOC be transparent and open in their potential business models and revenue considerations? Did Jeff perform a service to education or was he muck-racking?
12) What about teaching practices? Is the MOOC the ultimate flipped classroom? Or is it yet another type of drill and kill? We will discuss some of the methods we have used to engage learners. Will we change the definition of what is a good or successful teacher? Will teachers be more like talk-show hosts? And, if so, will the reward system be altered for those who are skilled in such environments? What are the options for those teachers who have difficulty teaching more than 25 students.
13) Who will the real winners and losers be if the MOOCs achieve wide dispersion?
14) How will we know when a MOOC is financially successful? What business plans make a massive open online course (MOOC) viable? Coursera and Udacity are already suggesting many different types of business models. Some involve companies sponsor courses, tuition small fees, membership, secure assessment fees, selling courses to community colleges, fees for certificates of completion, loss leader courses, paid advertisements, and pay as you go models.
15) How do all of these changes affect educational institutions? What do they need to do to prepare from and benefit from the future of LMS and learning platforms?
16) What will be the impact to students from all of the ed tech market changes? Will they benefit overall, or are we looking at clever ways for venture capitalists and private equity investors to benefit from a public movement?
Can you provide us with guidelines on when it is ok to use wikipedia as an authoritative source for academic writing? There is an active discussion in the peer review forum with no hope of any agreement.
At the risk of being flamed from 1000 directions – here is my answer and my policy.
For the writing in this class – Wikipedia is perfectly fine. For things that are relatively technical or scientific and broadly understood, WIkipedia is as good a reference as anything else. Wikipedia’s weaknesses are in emerging areas where researchers are trying to define the space and using Wikipedia to try to short-circuit the knowledge building process. Wikipedia is also very very weak when there are some external “stakes” involved as seen in the “Paul Ryan” Wikipedia edits/wars.
So there is not a blanket good/bad here – all references need to be chosen with an eye to their credibility and suitability for purpose. Given the nature of this course I would expect that most Wikipedia references would be perfectly fine. But if perhaps someone is making a contentious point and using a Wikipedia page to support their position – it might be weak.
For example, if we were fiercely debating the merits of using Wikipedia as a reference source and cited a Wikipedia page to support our position – that would be kind of weak :)
So any argument regarding the appropriateness of a reference needs to focus on the reference itself and not the blanket fact that it comes from Wikipedia.
Before we could leave, I had to run down to Ann Arbor for an hour and then come back and pick Brent up. On the way to Ann Arbor, my right rear tire blew out. In my dress clothes, I quickly hopped out and switched to the spare losing abut 10 minutes. But the spare was low so I carefully drove to a gas station to fill it up. But the little valve stem cover would not come off – so I had to get a pliers to fill the spare up to 60 pounds. Using the spare, I went to Ann Arbor and then back to Lansing where I sat at Belle Tire and replaced two tires where they informed me that my right front bering has a little play. Drat – I just had them replaced a few months back – the new ones must be bad. But I needed to get them replaced under warranty at the place I had them installed – but I did not have time for that – so we will do the trip with a little bearing noise. We will see how that progresses.
With all the confusion, we finally got on the road at 4PM and made it to Chicago at about 7PM. Checked into the hotel and decided to go to the Kingston Mines for some Blues – we arrived about an hour early so we had some food and played video games. We stayed for three hours and watched two bands and then back to the hotel.
Today I have my office hours at 10AM at the Starbucks in Palmer House and then on the road we go. It looks like we are going south down I-57 towards Memphis and Beal Street as our next destination. It looks like this is going to be a music-themed trip rather than a nature themed trip.
Where he suggests that the open educational resource (OER) movement is losing its impetus because of large-scale open-enrollment courses from Coursera and elsewhere are getting all the attention and that OER needs a clear and visible common goal to rally the community. His goal is to have several community colleges produce and promote a degree program by 2014 where every textbook is free/open.
I’ve been thinking about what’s next for OER… With the current set of MOOCs – which aren’t even open – grabbing attention away from the real movement, we need an exciting idea to get behind. Something that can inspire another decade of work across the nation and around the world. (When was the last time you heard about a new OpenCourseWare initiative launching in the US? When was the last time you personally thought of OCW as being really innovative?) We need something that can capture the imagination, something that can inspire both faculty and institutional leaders, something that will bring another 100 US post-secondary schools into the open education movement. Most of all, we need something that will significantly bless the lives of millions of students, providing them access to educational opportunities that can radically transform their lives for good.
Please read David’s entire post before continuing here. I want to make sure you read his post before you read my reaction/rant…
My Comment – Warning – somewhat ranty
Wow. A couple of points of of critique and then a suggestion. (a) It is ironic to hear the world’s pioneer in the idea of adding the dimension of “open/free enrollment” into our collective thinking back in 2007 http://chronicle.com/article/When-Professors-Print-Their/114058/ to make the statement in 2012 that courses providing “open enrollment” are not worthy to use the word “open” in any way to describe themselves. Or put another way – according to you, no one can use the word “open” to describe an activity unless they are using a remix-able CC license. (b) Large-scale open enrollment courses are and will drive the creation of OER/re-mixable course materials. At Michigan, every Coursera instructor works closely with Open.Michigan to make their materials as open and reusable as possible. We do copyright clearance and Open.Michigan actively helps instructors find alternate open resources to use in their courses so that their resulting materials can be as open as practical without compromising the educational outcomes of the course. Each Coursera course has a corresponding Open.Michigan web site where re-mixable materials can be downloaded when practical. At Michigan investment in supporting professor activity in Coursera is increasing investment in Open Michigan’s materials, capabilities, staff and importance to the university. Coursera is causing the creation of new OER materials at Michigan and wonderfully promoting those materials to over 200,000 students right at this very minute. Many of the students in my class *are* teachers curious how to teach my material – I actively encourage them to take and remix my CC-BY slides and make use of my openly available supplementary video materials through references to YouTube and Vimeo on the slides. They can *completely* remix my course if they so choose. Coursera is a content player – it does not decide the copyright of the materials that it plays. My *next* Coursera course will be based on open slides, open videos, and an open textbook.
David, there are 2-3 blog posts per day that mis-understand Coursera and see it as some kind of “enemy”. Life is to short to correct all the mis-understandings. But I figure I should comment to you since in my mind what we are doing in Coursera traces its seminal founding moment back to you back in December 2007. For me, Coursera is an amazingly effective execution of your idea from 2007. I personally loved the idea in 2007 and Coursera is my chance to honor your ideas and innovation. At over a million students we have come a long way from the 50 students in your course back 2007. So while I may not change your mind – I had to at least try. Enough of me defending Coursera – on to the larger mistake in your blog post…
A CC degree with only OER textbooks is not a particularly worthy or interesting grand challenge. There are lots of open textbooks – some may or may not be suitable. It would be pretty easy to do an all-OER CC degree – if folks tried to accomplish what you suggest in the timeframe you suggest – it would end up harming the OER movement in my opinion because it is easily done by compromising the educational outcomes of the degree or tailoring the degree to whatever textbooks are available. Accomplishing what you propose at the expense of educational outcomes would reinforce the mistaken notion that OER materials are somehow lower quality. Individual OER materials are *not* lower quality – we just don’t have high-quality OER materials in all subject areas.
The grand challenge that you *should* take on is to take this code – http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ and then take this code – http://cnx.org/ and fork them both and create a desktop authoring environment that allows authoring, import, export, and publishing to a wide variety of formats of augmented media-enhanced textbooks. In short make an open source / open standards version of iBooks Author – Oh yeah and fix the lame iBooks Author UI while you are at it. You need to fork SIGIL because they think EPUB is virtual paper and should never move beyond that. You need to fork cnx because they think that server-based authoring is sufficient – yuck! Actually the cnx format is likely a good start as the internal representation of the the desktop authoring environment – keep that and remain compatible with the CNX online authoring environment. Oh yeah – and Flat World Knowledge (and cousins) is also not a solution to the grand challenge because in search of a sustainable business model they are building a 99.4% open model and it turns out that the 0.6% matters. So there is your grand challenge. Empower authors. Remove the barriers to producing and remixing open content. If someone dropped a bunch-o-money in my lap – I would grab four grad students and do it – but it seems people want to fund me to advance the cause of open source and interoperable LMS’s these days rather than address the rate-limiting factors of the OER community – so this grand challenge falls to you or someone else.
My son Brent turned 21 this year so we decided that it was time to take a classic American summer road trip. Of course the tradition is to ride motorcycles all around the mid-west visiting places like the largest ball of twine. But since Brent is mildly handicapped (Cerebral Palsy) we need to do it in a car. I have adapted the “Dr. Chuck Mobile” – a 2001 Buick LeSabre (215,300 miles) with a left foot accelerator so he can share in the driving.
Here is a short video I made in 2005 just after Brent had recovered from a hip-augmentation surgery and we purchased a Polaris 90cc ATV so we could go out riding.
More recently he has been in several heavy punk/metal bands as the lead singer. I also made this terminally cute and a bit long video to play in the background at Brent’s high school graduation party.
On The Road Again…
So the idea of the road trip is to take two weeks and have absolutely no agenda. The road trip will start early on Tuesday August 14 where we will drive to Chicago and stay at the Palmer house, do an office hour for my Coursera course at the Palmer house, go to listen to some Blues, and then the next morning get up and drive out of Chicago and decide where to go next on the spur of the moment. We will program the destination into the GPS and off we will go pointed at the horizon.
It will be a classic vagabond road trip – we will sleep in Walmart parking lots, sleep in rest areas, take showers in truck stops, eat junk food or at diners and generally smell and look pretty bad – growing beards and wearing hats when our hair looks a mess. Brent calls it our “hobo trip”. Every few days we will spend a night in a hotel to clean up and get re-civilized and then back on the road we will go. Like any good road trip we will not stay at any destination for very long – anywhere from 4 hours to 24-hours and then back on the road we will go. A key element of a road trip is to be on the road – not stopped at one location or another. It is about wandering and being on the move looking for adventure.
We are consciously not doing any planning in terms of agenda and don’t even know when we will exactly come back other than when school starts at Lansing Community College. We will generally likely not go east to explore but we may go as far north as Calgary Canada, as far South as New Orleans, or as far west as Roswell New Mexico and Area 51. We just don’t know.
We will have Twitter and WiFi as we go and I will tweet and blog as we progress. I will ask the Twitterverse for help on things like “Where is a good blues bar in St. Louis?” (if we decide to go there). I have no idea if Brent will do any kind of public blog – he is not on Twitter (sheesh – kids these days).
I may have some office hours for my Coursera course in weird locations like Mount Rushmore or Omaha Nebraska. But I won’t know in advance even where I am going so folks will only find out at the last minute.
I would be glad to get some suggestions and help for how to survive such a road trip. How do I know where there are rest stops? Is there a book of all the truck stops that have showers? There must be a book or even better an app that tells you cool road-trip like places to visit that can use location services on my iPhone. I have this feeling that showers will be the most difficult thing to manage when we become hobos living on the road. Any general advice will be greatly appreciated as this is our first experimental road trip.
This is the Dr. Chuck Insider’s Guide to Ann Arbor for the upcoming IMS Meeting – August 6-9, 2012. I am really looking forward to you all coming to Ann Arbor. With a meeting in North Quad (where I have my office and teach) and hotels with a 1 block radius and plenty of great eating and fun within a short distance – it should be a meeting to remember. North Quad has a few nicknames to help in asking for directions: NQ and Quadworts are the most prevalent nicknames for the building.
Thanks to Matt Jones and Anthony Whyte for their help with this guide and thanks to Heidi S for all her help in setting up the meeting logistics.
For hotel and other details for the IMS meeting see the IMS web page.
We of course start with the most important thing of all – Karaoke. There are two box Karaoke within walking distance:
Blue Karaoke (Box)
404 W. Liberty St.
Friends Karaoke (Box)
621 Church St
This is a 10 minute walk diagonally across campus to the south east corner of campus.
Good Time Charley’s
1140 S University Ave
There’s club-style Karaoke from 10PM-2AM on Tuesday night.
WiFi and Coffee
University buildings have free WiFi with the SSID of MGuest – you might need a VPN for some ports but it should be super-fast, support tons of simultaneous connections (students are gone for the summer), and be reliable. Go ahead and run Apple’s Software Update during the meeting and watch the download speed.
The Starbucks at 222 South State (1/2 block south) has free Wifi. Search for “Espresso Royale Cafe” (a.k.a. ERC) if you want a less “franchised feel” for your coffee shop and free WiFi. Panera’s is at 777 North University is a block south.
Zingerman’s
Zingerman’s Deli
422 Detroit Street
Zingermann’s needs its own category. This may be the best deli in the world. There may be great deli’s in New York City – but Zingermanns is also very nice to you and the staff are always willing to talk to you or give you a sample. They make all their own bread. Insider trick – When they ask you if you want an old pickle or new pickle – say “both”. It is a four block walk (northwest) from NQ. It is near a terrific shopping center called Kerrytown. This is an event on Wednesday evening http://www.zingermansdeli.com/2012/06/pop-in-little-italy-in-kerrytown/
Bars
Ashley’s
338 South State Street
The best beer selection in Ann Arbor. Two blocks south of NQ. Ashley’s does Trivia on Mondays and it is pretty intense.
Arbor Brewing Company (a.k.a. ABC)
114 East Washington Street
Sidewalk dining if you get there early enough. Three blocks west of NQ.
Blue Tractor (Microbrewery)
207 East Washington Street
Grizzly Peak (Microbrewery)
120 W. Washington
Jolly Pumpkin (Microbrewery)
311 South Main Street
Dominick’s
812 Monroe Street
Dominik’s requires a nice walk to the south side of campus. But there is nothing like it on a warm summer’s evening.
Hole-In-The-Wall Restaurants
Jamaican Jerk Pit
314 S. Thayer
This is 1/2 block south of NQ. I would forgive you if you ate every meal here. When you leave – you might fly back just to eat here. My fav is the pork entree – go ahead and get spicy. I eat there so often I have a “Frequent Jerk” card. You can take it when you go so I get to 10 punches and free food more quickly.
Ray’s Red Hots
629 East University Avenue
This is a 10 minute walk diagonally across campus to the south east corner of campus. The cheese fries are the stuff of legend – don’t get chili – just cheese – trust me. If they wrote a fifth Lord of the Rings book – these cheese fries would be featured in the book for sure – they are that epic.
Blimpy Burger
551 South Division Street
This is a seven block walk from NQ – but the burgers are legendary. And they insist that you make your selections in the right order: (1) fried side items, (2) how many patties and what bun (3) additional items on the burger. Just watch the people ahead of you in line and you should be OK. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Listen to what they ask you and answer their question instead of blurting out your whole order. If you make a mistake they won’t punch you – they will just correct you. It is a mark of being a “honorary native Ann Arborite” when you can order at Blimpy Burger without being corrected. And yes you can open the pop and drink it while you are in line.
Tijo’s (Mexican)
401 East Liberty Street
About 2 blocks from NQ. We like the wet burrito. It is no longer technically a hole-in-the-wall – but before it was moved downtown, it was a hole-in-the wall – so it is still given the honorary hole-in-the-wall designation. They have an item called “Mount Nacheesmo” that is not on the menu and was featured in Man v. Food. If you eat one by yourself you get a picture on the wall.
Pizza
Pizza House
618 Church Street
Cottage Inn
512 E William St
Fancy Food
Main Street is the place for fancy food. Just Google Street View up and down. Legal Seafood, a fondue restaurant, fancy german food, fancy italian, too many to list. Here are a few you might miss and want to check out.
The Earle Restaurant
121 West Washington Street
Underground – dark, fancy and classy – nice place for dinner with some red wine.
Gandy Dancer
401 Depot Street
This is in an old train station and about 6 blocks north of NQ (not on Main Street). It is fine dining and where we take people being interviewed for lunch or dinner.
Blue Nile – Ethiopian Restaurant
221 East Washington Street
A unique Ann Arbor experience. Closed Mondays.
Interesting Collegey Things to Do
Pinball Pete’s
1214 South University Avenue
There are very few remaining places full of pinball machines. Pete’s is a throwback and in a basement. I prefer the one in East Lansing as it is darker and dingier – but the Ann Arbor Pete’s is a short diagonal walk through campus to the South U area.
IEEE Interview: Teaching the World – Daphne Koller and Coursera
In my August installment of my IEEE Computer magazine Computing Conversations column, I interview Daphne Koller, Stanford Computer Science professor and Coursera cofounder. The other cofounder of Coursera is Andrew Ng, also a Stanford professor. This interview was filmed May 25, 2012 during a visit to Coursera headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
I think that it is particularly interesting that the Coursera, Udacity, and edX efforts all were created by people with Computer Science/Engineering backgrounds and in particular people with interests in Artificial Intelligence.
The trend toward opening up college courses while they are being taught started back in 2007 with David Wiley. Others like George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Dave Cormier, and others increased the sizes of these open courses and explored different pedagogical approaches to the courses.
But in the Fall of 2011, three Stanford courses were opened to the world and they effectively took the idea of large-scale open courses and pushed it up to 11. With all three courses seeing an enrollment of over 100,000 students, it opened up the possibility of a whole new level of scale in terms of the number of students enrolled.
Once this new frontier was identified, people are moving quickly to explore the possibilities of large-scale open courses (some call these MOOCs). Coursera, Udacity, and edX were formed to move these amazing experiments more towards the mainstream by making technology available to more instructors, universities and students. Even though these efforts are still only a few months old – they are capturing a lot of mind share and they are quite successful already.
Who knows where these efforts will take us in 3-5 years?
Note: I am excited to be teaching a course in Coursera as part of the University of Michigan participation called Internet History, Technology, and Security that starts Monday July 23, 2012 (i.e. next Monday).
