Reading group notes: MOOCs | Education works

Characteristics of MOOCs (from Wikipedia) – (Roger) – participants distributed, course materials available on the web, built on a connectivist approach, typically free but may charge for accreditation, typical components might be a weekly presentation, discussion questions, suggested further resources, personal reflection and sharing of resources . I also tried registering for Stephen Downes Change. Mooc.ca– and was interested that the 4 types of activity suggested for the course reflect quite well important aspects of the way I work : these are 1. aggregate , 2. remix 3. re-purpose and 4. feed forward

Disrupting College, Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, 2011 (Suzi) – Policy paper arguing that we are in for a massive change (a disruption) in the way HE works and that (amongst other things) the only way for existing institutions to take advantage of this is to create autonomous business units to work in this area.

What Can We Learn From Stanford University’s Free Online Computer Science Courses?, Seb Schmoller, 2011 (Suzi) – Seb’s experiences on the Stanford AI course and his thoughts about what this means for the sector. Stanford will be learning a lot and getting well ahead of the game by running these courses. Other institutions will not be able to get their numbers – collaboration may be the only way to compete.