Some basic information MOOC, a new concept in learning. This was presented on 26th of June at Brasov Tech Meetup at Kronwell Hotel. It also contains some interesting references from people involved in creating MOOCs or from some MOOC providers like Udacity, Coursera.

1. MOOCs
alternative education
Iulian Șerbănoiu
June 2014 - Brașov Tech Meetup

2. About me
Iulian Șerbănoiu - Software developer
undergraver
on

3. MOOC is ...
Massive
Online
Open
Course

4. some MOOC providers

5. it started in 2012 *
More at: http://edutechnica.com/moocmap/#
* 2012- Year of the MOOC[1]

6. and keeps growing

7. and keeps growing

8. and keeps growing

9. MOOC structure
● Lectures (usually video)
● Homeworks
● Discussions (forums)
● Announcement board
● Wiki (collaborative platform)
● Quizzes
● Virtual Office Hours
● External resources (eg GitHub, Youtube)
● Surveys
● Statement of accomplishment
● Certifications (not always)
Typical Extra

10. MOOC structure

11. Benefits for “students”
● Easy access *
● Your own pace
● In touch with the big world
● Modern way of teaching
● Diversity and various approaches
● Time zones become irrelevant
* even though payment will be needed sometimes

12. Disadvantages
● Less interaction
o virtual office hours/forums may help
● High “dropout” rate
o no fear of getting expelled
o periodic announcements may help
● Not yet on par with university courses
o most people still think with pen & paper
o new teaching methods needed
● Prerequisites not always defined
● Not suitable for all type of courses

13. Challenges for providers
● Identity verification
o coursera [7]
o edX [8]
o Udacity [10]
● Making it profitable (*)
● Converting MOOCs into college credits,
toward earning degree [11]
● Intellectual Property
* Even with donations (like edX and Khan Academy)

14. Benefits for universities
Lectures used even before
MOOCs for publicity:
● MIT (with OCW)
● Stanford
● Berkeley
● Caltech
● ...

15. New/unique possibilities
Leveraging the power of Internet
First trans institutional course [5]

16. New/unique possibilities
Leveraging the power of Internet

17. Automate the automatable
forced to automate because of
“Massive”
● assignment auto-verification
● peer review of homeworks
after deadline
See [6] for the full list

18. Course preparation and
handling
● A lot of effort for preparing high quality
videos [3]
● Huge effort in managing the MOOC [3]
o support for issues is time consuming
● Many limitations of the MOOC platform[3]

19. Course experience
● A lot of time required (maybe even 6-10h /
week for one course)
o watching videos & processing information
o working on assignments
● Platform limitations
o automated test platforms don’t always
work well
● Your effort may be rewarded

20. Course experience
● A lot of time required (maybe even 6-10h /
week for one course)
o watching videos & processing information
o working on assignments
● Platform limitations
o automated test platforms don’t always
work well
● Your effort may be rewarded

21. Future?
MOOCs?
Education as a Service
(EaaS)? [4]
Only few universities? [13]
“In 50 years [...] there will be only 10
institutions in the world delivering higher
education and Udacity has a shot at
being one of them. [Sebastian] Thrun
just has to plot the right course.”

24. References
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-
pace.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSxqpaCCPvY&t=50m45s
[3] http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/POSA-MOOC.pdf
[4] http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/11/education-as-a-service-5-ways-higher-ed-must-adapt-to-a-changing-market/
[5] http://blog.coursera.org/post/74257050344/a-trans-institution-specialization-on-mobile-cloud
[6] http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/posa-mooc-countries.txt
[7] https://www.coursera.org/signature/guidebook/certificate
[8] https://www.edx.org/verified-certificate
[9] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/10/2/edx-id-verified-certificates/
[10] https://www.udacity.com/faq#section-0-5
[11] http://www.mooc2degree.com/
[12] http://blog.udacity.com/2014/06/announcing-nanodegrees-new-type-of.html
[13] http://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_aiclass/all/1

25. Resources
http://openclipart.org/detail/19110/virtual-school-cloud-by-jjfbbennett
http://search.creativecommons.org/
http://pambuccian.com/2014/06/01/why-i-designed-the-online-live-learning-and-
livetutoring/
http://openclipart.org/detail/172105/user-identity-by-lpr577-172105
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
http://openclipart.org/detail/159643/thank-you-pinned-by-juliobahar
http://openclipart.org/detail/177461/mike-the-mic-question-by-bibbleycheese-
177461
Alternatives:
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.wikiversity.org/
http://ocw.mit.edu
http://ocw.cs.pub.ro/
http://www.youtube.com/ (university video recordings)