TITLE: The Reach of a MOOC AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: July 30, 2014 1:04 PM DESC: ----- BODY:
... I've taught ~1,000 students at Wash U., UC Irvine, and Vanderbilt in the past 20 years, so regardless of the completion *rate* the opportunity to reach > 4,000 students and teach them about patterns and frameworks for concurrent programming in Java and Android is pretty cool!Schmidt has a lot of knowledge and experience to share. His MOOC shared it with an awful lot of people in one offering. My department has not attempted a "massive" on-line course yet, though a few of our faculty did take a small first step last month. As Mark Guzdial lamented a few months ago, Google required that all of its CS4HS summer workshops be offered on-line. A few of my colleagues, led by Ben Schafer, have taught CS4HS workshops for the last five years, reaching in the ballpark of 20-25 teachers from northeast Iowa in each of the first four. As reported in the department's own Facebook post, this year the course enrolled 245 teachers from thirty-nine states and Puerto Rico. I haven't seen final numbers for the workshop yet, but just after it ended Ben reported good participation and positive evaluations from the teachers in the course. I don't know yet what I think about MOOCs. The trade-offs are numerous, and most of my teaching experience is in smaller, more intimate settings that thrive on individual relationships with students. But I can't deny the potential reach for MOOCs to reach so many people and to provide access to valuable courses to people who otherwise likely could never attend them. On a lighter note, the first comment in response to Schmidt's Facebook post is my favorite in a while:
I just loaded the dishwasher. Our jobs are so similar! Crazy, eh?Don't worry, Kristie. Sometimes, I look at all the amazing thing Doug does and feel exactly the same. -----