Massive open online courses (MOOC) are a recent development in distance education. An MOOC is an online course aiming at large-scale interactive participation
and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as
videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user
forums that help build a community for the students and teachers.
Open online courses have the potential to impact our educational system. Why do I say this? Read the following course description of Hippocrates Challenge, an MOOC from Stanford University, and see if you agree this would appeal to bright students who are bored with traditional classroom instruction but interested in health sciences-
"The year is 2032. You are the doctor on a ship of 5000, when suddenly
you encounter a hostile forces Now, the sickbay is overflowing with the
injured and dying. Your mission is to repair, reconstruct and
regenerate your wounded shipmates before time runs out.
Welcome to the Hippocrates Challenge 2013, a course designed for
anyone with an interest in medicine. When you take the challenge in this
course, you'll be offered the opportunity to gain a better
understanding of the structure and function of the human body, how
tissues respond to injury, and how stem cells and regenerative medicine
can change the face of treatment of trauma. Using case-based studies and
collaborative projects, you will diagnose patients and then work in
teams to repair and reconstruct their injuries. By the end of this
course, you will have had the chance to learn the principles of human
physiology and anatomy, surgical reconstruction and explore the
innovative new field of regenerative medicine."
Sounds interesting and may appeal to students more than my chemistry lecture. But we are not ready to start using them at B-R yet. Most MOOC's are written for college students, but this year some high school courses came on-line. Three organizations, Khan
Academy, Peer-to-Peer
University (P2PU) and Udemy are viewed as being similar to MOOCs, but they work outside the university
system or mainly provide individual lessons that students may take at
their own pace, rather than having a massive number of students all
working on the same course schedule.
Several questions must be answered before we try offering one of these classes to our students-
1. How will students be graded?
2. Is the class of good quality and worth of offering?
3. How will the class work within our current system?
There will be other issues that have to be resolved before B-R students will be taking an MOOC.
But if there is a good quality MOOC that our students are interested in, I am ready to consider it.
