Innovative Online Strategies at MIT
Brandon Muramatsu, mura@mit.edu
MIT Office of Digital Learning
Cite as: Muramatsu, B. (2014, January). Innovative Online Strategies at MIT. NASA-MIT-NSTA
Collaboration Discussions. Washington, D.C. January 24, 2014.
Unless otherwise specified this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
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Background: Office of Digital Learning
Mission
The Office of Digital Learning works to transform
teaching and learning at MIT and around the globe
through the innovative use of digital technologies.
Established November 2012
Key Area: Strategic Initiatives
Realize mission through collaborations at K-12, Community
College, Higher Education and Corporate levels
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UNLOCKING KNOWLEDGE > DUAL MISSION
• Publish core teaching materials—including syllabi, lecture
notes, assignments and exams—from virtually all of MIT’s
courses
• Extend the reach and impact of OCW and the
OpenCourseWare concept
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Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds
MIT’s Educational Outreach
Long history, deeply ingrained
MIT’s sharing benefits the world, and
we believe, enhances MIT
Course Materials
MIT OpenCourseWare (2001)
Courses & Teaching
MITx (2011), then edX (2012)
The Experience
The ―special sauce‖, in and around
Cambridge, MA; with peers,
faculty,
researchers, alumni, startups
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Online Teacher Education
Project Details
Grant funded by Education Development Center (EDC) with US
Agency for International Development funds
4 month project: May – September 2013
Deliverables
3 Online Courses
2+2+6 BLOSSOMS Modules
5 Workshops
Concept Tools
Online Course Design Guide
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3 Online Video-Based Courses
Best Practices for Teaching and Learning
5 Sessions
Mathlets: An Introduction
4 Hours
Games and Learning
5 Weeks
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blossoms.mit.edu
2+2 BLOSSOMS Modules
+6 Translations to Urdu
Monty Hall
Tragedy of the Commons
Kite Flying
From Psychology to Logic
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5 Workshops
4 Day Visualization Workshop
½ Day Admin & Infrastructure
Workshop
1 Day Online Course Design Workshop
½ Day EdTech
Workshop
½ Day Concept Tools
Workshop
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mc3.mit.edu
Concept Tools
Concept Map Authoring Tool
MC3 Browser
Extension
(Assign Resources
to Concepts)
Concept-Driven Repository Tool
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CC/MIT: Community College Collaborations
Massachusetts Transformation Agenda
Advanced Manufacturing Case Studies and Online Learning
Modules—building/sharing MIT’s strengths
Guided Pathways to Success
Nascent collaboration
Tools and infrastructure to link learning outcomes with courses,
student information systems and real-time labor market
information
(Experiments around MITx courses)
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MITx / edX
MITx: many meanings, many interests
Residential experiments utilizing MOOCs for blended learning
MOOC courses
SPOC (―Small Private Online Course‖, aka Online Course)
edX: Standalone non-profit organization
Major funding from MIT and Harvard
Consortium of universities publishing MOOC courses
Impact beyond MOOC courses
New organizational models, opportunity for discussion
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Image: Andrew Ho and Issac Chuang
Initial MITx & HarvardX Research
Released on Tuesday, January 21, 2014
odl.mit.edu/mitx-working-papers
harvardx.harvard.edu/harvardx-working-papers
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Next Gen Science Standards MOOC
Goal
Prepare K-12 educators to implement Next Gen
Science Standards with their students.
Let’s look at research / observations that might
influence design…
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Engagement
What’s in a number?
Only registered
Only viewed
Explored
(accessed half or
more of chapters)
7.00x Introduction to Biology:
The Secret of Life, Spring 2013
Certified
Figure 3: Participants separated into four mutually exclusive
and exhaustive categories (not to scale).
Seaton, D.
T., Reich, J., Nesterko, S, Mullaney, T., Waldo, J., Ho, A., &
Chuang, I. (2014). 7.00x Introduction to Biology: The Secret of
Life - Spring 2013 MITx Course Report (MITxwork is licensed under#9)
Unless otherwise specified this Working Paper a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
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Intent & Outcomes
Figure 4: Scatter plot of grade versus
chapters viewed (left), highlighting student
sub-populations; certified students are red
points and all points are jittered.
Histograms of grades and number of
chapters viewed (right) distinguished by
student certification status.
7.00x Introduction to Biology: The Secret of Life, Spring 2013
What are the learners’ intent?
What do we want the outcomes to be?
Seaton, D.
T., Reich, J., Nesterko, S, Mullaney, T., Waldo, J., Ho, A., &
Chuang, I. (2014). 7.00x Introduction to Biology: The Secret of
Life - Spring 2013 MITx Course Report (MITxwork is licensed under#9)
Unless otherwise specified this Working Paper a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
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Support to Completion
Persistence
beyond the
first week is
key
Given our
goals, how
can we
support
learners to
completion?
Figure 12. Average percentage of active registrants whose last action in
a course is in a particular week.
Ho, A. D., Reich, J., Nesterko, S., Seaton, D.
T., Mullaney, T., Waldo, J., & Chuang, I. (2014). HarvardX and
MITx: The first year of open online courses (HarvardX and MITx
Working Paper No. 1).
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Series and Duration
University of California, Irvine
Virtual Teacher Program
A Specialization on Coursera: Your Pathway to Expertise
www.coursera.org/specialization/virtualteacher/10/courses
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Innovative Online Strategies at MIT
Brandon Muramatsu, mura@mit.edu
MIT Office of Digital Learning
Cite as: Muramatsu, B. (2014, January). Innovative Online Strategies at MIT. NASA-MIT-NSTA
Collaboration Discussions. Washington, D.C. January 24, 2014.
Unless otherwise specified this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
21
Editor's Notes
Cite as: Muramatsu, B. (2014, January). Innovative Online Strategies at MIT. NASA-MIT-NSTA Collaboration Discussions. Washington, D.C. January 24, 2013. Unless otherwise specified this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks to XXX for inviting me to speak about MIT OpenCourseWare.My name is XXXXX and I am XXXXX for MIT OpenCourseWare.
In that initial proposal for OpenCourseWare, the faculty committee articulated a dual mission for OCW.The first part was to publish materials from all of MIT’s courses, and they felt very strongly on this point. They wanted OCW to represent the academic diversity of MIT, including not just the science, math and engineering subjects for which the Institute was best known, but also the humanities, social sciences, health sciences and other disciplines that were taught with a unique MIT flavor. And they set the goal of publishing all MIT courses well before anyone sat down to figure out how expensive it might be.The second goal was to extend the reach of MIT OCW and the OpenCourseWare concept. By this, they meant not only to ensure that MIT materials reached the widest possible audience, but that OCW would become a practice adopted by many other schools around the world. They recognized that for MIT to do this would produce some benefit, but for OpenCourseWare to truly transform education, it would have to become a movement shared by a great many institutions.
It’s hard for us to communicate just how big OCW is. 2,180 courses, means of course 2,180 syllabi and reading lists, but also notes from more than 18,000 lectures, 10,000 assignments, 1000 exams. About 40% of the exams include solutions, so you check your answers. And beyond the core teaching materials, we’ve included other kinds of enhanced materials, including video content in 117 courses—60 of which have their entire lectures recorded—complete text books, animations and simulations. The materials cover all 33 of MITs academic disciplines at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
1 Summary, 16 focused on individual coursesSeminar at Harvard GSE (video recording available)
Cite as: Muramatsu, B. (2014, January). Innovative Online Strategies at MIT. NASA-MIT-NSTA Collaboration Discussions. Washington, D.C. January 24, 2013. Unless otherwise specified this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.