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Anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:53:00 +0000

MOOC Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:53

Eric Gershon

Whenever CU professor Robert Mazzeo offers “Exercise Physiology,” an upper-level undergraduate course popular with aspiring doctors, it fills quickly. So does the waiting list. He and a colleague each teach the class once a year to a combined total of about 230 students.

In June, Mazzeo, a member of the integrative physiology faculty and an avid tennis player, introduced an online version of the course called “The Science of Exercise” that also has proven popular — on a vastly greater scale and far beyond Boulder.

By early November, more than 35,000 people worldwide had at least sampled the course, a MOOC, or massive open online course. Nearly 800 were on track to finish it, many for fun and at no cost, others for a certificate of completion and a $49 fee. A new cohort of students enrolls every two weeks. There is no cap on enrollment.

“Based on the number of new students joining each week, ‘Science of Exercise’ is on track to be the most popular course in the history of CU,” said Cory Pavicich (Engl, Hum’04) of CU’s Office of Strategic Initiatives, which helps faculty design MOOCs.

MOOCs emerged about a decade ago. The 2012 debut of delivery platforms with ties to Stanford, Harvard and MIT led to a sustained burst of attention and a New York Times headline dubbing it “The Year of the MOOC.” The medium was hailed as a way to offer online learning to mass audiences at minimal or no cost, amid intensifying concerns about the high cost of traditional campus-based higher education.

The hype has died down, but MOOCs have shown they’re here to stay and that they can coexist with campus-based instruction while drawing huge numbers of additional off-campus learners. Coursera, one of the most prominent MOOC platforms, edX and Udacity now offer thousands of courses, commonly developed by professors at established universities, including ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

After a modest start in MOOC development in 2013, when CU introduced its first four courses, including “Introduction to Power Electronics” and “Comic Books and Graphic Novels,” the university is rapidly growing its slate. As of November, nearly 25 MOOCs developed at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ were available on Coursera, the university’s main platform partner. By 2020, the electrical engineering department alone expects to add at least 50 more.

“MOOCs were once branded the death-knell of the university and then they were proclaimed dead, but, in reality, they remain a fascinating field of play,” said English professor William Kuskin, who as vice provost and associate vice chancellor for strategic initiatives oversees MOOC development. “It’s an arena that uniquely merges teaching and research in ways capable of reaching the entire globe.”

The hype has died down, but MOOCs are here to stay.

MOOCs are just one form of online education, and not the only one offered by ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. The School of Continuing Education offers a variety of paid online courses open to the public, for example, and the campus has eight fully online graduate degree programs, mostly in engineering. But MOOCs are proliferating fastest, largely because production requires only one professor and a small team, and most of the faculty work is up front rather than continuous.

Besides “Science of Exercise,” ��ƷSM��ӰƬ MOOCs include “Kinematics: Describing the Motions of Spacecraft,” “Graphic Design,” “Business Analytics for Decision Making” and “The Dynamics of Group Communication.” Others scheduled for debut are “Social and Emotional Learning and the Teacher,” “Roots and Shoots,” a collaboration with the Jane Goodall Institute, and “Active Optical Devices.”

“The mission of a university should be to provide educational opportunities to students and reach as many as possible,” said Juliet Gopinath, the electrical engineering professor who developed the optical devices MOOC. “The online forum allows us to reach non-traditional students and provide opportunities to those for whom it might be otherwise impossible. Personally, I also hope that it helps underrepresented groups as well as those in Third-World countries who struggle to find the time and opportunity to receive an education.”

As the name MOOC suggests, a MOOC ("massive open") is easy to join. Anyone with an internet connection can participate by visiting a provider website, such as coursera.org, registering, picking a course and clicking the first lesson. Learners can watch instructional videos and consume other course materials (readings, quizzes, projects) for free. To be evaluated and eligible for a certificate of completion, students pay a fee, typically less than $100 on Coursera.

Two years ago, Mazzeo hadn’t even heard of MOOCs. When he did, from Russell Moore, the university provost, Mazzeo seized on the potential for propagating the core message of his teaching and research — that “exercise is medicine” — at an exponentially greater rate than possible on campus.

All this means the campus and MOOC versions of Mazzeo’s course complement rather than compete with each other.

Working with a CU team of learning design experts, Mazzeo condensed and simplified the lectures from his semester-long campus course, shot a series of videos and developed new quizzes that could be scored by software or other students in the course. Within months, thousands of people around the world were enrolling in “Science of Exercise.”

“I’m reaching populations I never thought I’d reach in my career,” said Mazzeo, who marvels over students’ locations, which he surveys on an electronic dashboard on his office computer: Botswana, Qatar, Algeria, Nepal, Iraq, India and scores of others. At least two-thirds of all people enrolled in ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s MOOCs live outside the U.S., according to Pavicich.

All this means the campus and MOOC versions of Mazzeo’s course complement rather than compete with each other.

“These are truly new students for the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ,” Pavicich said.

Mazzeo’s MOOC covers the same basic concepts as his in-the-flesh course, “Exercise Physiology.” But it’s not the same course, and isn’t intended to be.

The MOOC, which consists of four modules that can be completed at the student’s pace within a 180-day period, is shorter and less technical, for example. It involves fewer and less-detailed tests. And successful completion of the MOOC doesn’t confer CU academic credit.

Kuskin’s group believes MOOCs serve the university’s fundamental mission and key interests in several ways.

They fulfill the broad mandate of providing public education, and they amplify CU’s renown. At least one CU department has reported that its MOOCs have helped attract full-time, degree-seeking students to campus.

Teaching through new media also prompts professors to reevaluate how and what students ought to learn. This can lead them to modify and improve traditional classroom courses.

And MOOCs are a source of revenue, modestly so far for CU, but with potential for significant growth.

Many universities have raced ahead in online education, among them Arizona State and the University of Florida, which bring in tens of millions of dollars through their programs, including online degree programs. The University of California Berkeley offers an online master’s program in public health, and Georgia Tech offers online master’s programs in computer science and analytics. MIT offers a pair of online “MicroMasters” credentials that can lead to admission to an accelerated on-campus master’s degree.

In time, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ expects to increase its share of paid online certificates and degree programs, according to Pavicich. MOOCs offer a foundation for that effort while immediately serving a greater number and variety of learners than the university ever has, he said — both newcomers to higher education and people who simply want more of it.

“We are past the point where you can assume you’re done learning when you’re 22 or 23,” Pavicich said. “You should expect to learn throughout your life.”

Illustration by Harry Campbell

Online education gains steam at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

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The President's View - Spring 2017

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 07:00:00 +0000

The President's View - Spring 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/01/2017 - 00:00

Bruce D. Benson

All the World in Boulder

When I attended ��ƷSM��ӰƬ in the early 1960s, I remember only one classmate from outside the United States, a Saudi Arabian studying petroleum geology in the same department as me. The prevalence of students from around the world didn’t change too much since I was in school. Until recently.

��ƷSM��ӰƬ has always had international students, of course, but they were a small percentage of the student body. That is changing. In 2010, we collaborated with Colorado lawmakers and they passed legislation allowing us to boost the presence of international students. Previously, they were included in limits on non-resident students (no more than one-third of the student body can be non-resident), but they are now in a separate category.

In 2010, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s international student enrollment was about 4 percent, the second-lowest among our national peers in the prestigious Association of American Universities. Today, it’s nearly 10 percent; the legislation limits it at 12 percent. They come from around the world, with China and India providing the most. No qualified Coloradans are turned away because of international or non-resident students.

International students are important for several reasons. They add significantly to the learning environment. College is a place where students encounter people with different backgrounds and experience, from different places, offering different perspectives. People from around the world greatly enhance the diversity of our campus and the experience for all students.

The culture of the university is reflected in its students, faculty and staff, so embracing those from around the world is key to a strong culture. We are an international university, and international students, faculty, researchers and staff are essential.

International students are also an important revenue generator. They pay a higher tuition rate than non-residents do. Increasing their numbers while also maintaining or increasing current numbers of resident and non-resident students helps our bottom line. If we reach the legislatively mandated limit of 12 percent, it could mean some $80 million in revenue.

When I was an undergraduate student, our world seemed like an awfully big place. The pace of globalization and technology’s march have made it considerably smaller. We are part of that world and, increasingly, that world is part of us.

Illustration by Melinda Josie

President Bruce D. Benson's column from the spring 2017 issue.

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The President's View - Spring 2017

All the World in Boulder

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