Serendipity35

I was moderating a presentation by Darshan Desai and Rahul Bedi (Berkeley College) at the NJEDge.Net Conference a few weeks ago. There were a number of sessions on MOOCs at the conference. I ran a workshop with Mary Zedeck to help faculty or an institution decide whether "to MOOC or not to MOOC."

The Berkeley session took the approach of not trying to argue in favor of or against the MOOC, but in exploring ways to leverage MOOCs in two flipped classroom business courses. Attendees weren't sure at first what the professors were attempting. They have taught their classes without a MOOC component and also using content from a MOOC within their face-to-face class. My suggestion was to call this a "MOOC-enhanced" course in the way that we once called courses "Web-enhanced."  That latter term seems to have fallen away since practically every course uses the Internet in some way today.

I think that using MOOC content to supplement your own courses is a very good approach. If any good has come from the MOOC movement, it might include that educators are being exposed to using open content. Unfortunately, many MOOCs offered today are not Open in the wider sense that was intended with the first MOOCs of five years ago. For example, the Berkeley courses were using Coursera MOOCs whic are open to anyone for enrollment, but the materials are not open. You can't download the video to use or remix. Their students have to register for the MOOC to access lectures or other content.

I have been recommending to some high school teachers that they could use blended models to teach AP courses. MOOC-enhanced AP classes with with in-school support are already being offered. I am also a fan of teachers using MOOCs as their own professional development and as a way to update knowledge in their field.

William and Mary offered a mathematics recertification course for elementary teachers as a pilot using a MOOC developed by Stanford University. This hybrid course combined the MOOC with 3 face-to-face meetings and three online meetings. The total instruction time, including the time spent in the Stanford course, totaled 40 to 45 hours, which is equivalent to a traditional, three-credit hour course. 

While some big universities have the resources to create and offer MOOCs, most colleges would be better off looking at ways to use MOOCs that already exist. The MOOC-enhanced course is one way to do that.