Wednesday, September 12, 1:00-2:00 pm
Williams Building, Skybox conference room (fourth floor)
With special guest Ken Baldauf, Director of FSU’s Program for Interdisciplinary Computing (http://pic.fsu.edu/)
Online Courses and MOOCs
While distance education and online teaching have been part of the academic landscape for some time, they acquired new prominence this year as Ivy League schools including Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and several high-profile public universities began significantly investing in online course delivery platforms. Known as MOOCs (“massive open online courses”), these courses have generated a great deal of discussion about access to education, online teaching, academic labor, and the very future of universities. In our meeting, we will sort out the implications of MOOCs and online courses, for better and worse, with the help of Ken Baldauf, the director of FSU’s Program for Interdisciplinary Computing.
Attendees are encouraged to explore the following resources:
“What You Need to Know About MOOC’s.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 2012. http://chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-Know-About/133475/ (a useful cluster of backgrounds, news reports, and opinions)
Schaffhauser, Dian. “Education Leaders See MOOCs, Distance Learning as the Future of Higher Ed.” Campus Technology 20 Aug. 2012. Web. http://campustechnology.com/articles/2012/08/20/education-leaders-see-moocs-distance-learning-as-the-future.aspx (describes and links to recent survey by Pew/Elon College on future of education)
To continue the conversation, a great group of folks who run a little thing called Hybrid Pedagogy put together a MOOC about MOOCs (appropriately titled MOOCMOOC) and few weeks back. Both links worth clicking through.
The conversation will continue close to home, as suggested by this Chronicle article about the Florida Board of Governors exploring an online university or consortium portal for online courses: http://chronicle.com/article/Florida-Ponders-Opening-an/134482/