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Top universities join free online teaching platform

Coursera and similar online offerings could mean the end of large lecture theatres as universities put more emphasis on one-to-one teaching. Photograph: Image Source /Rex Features

Twelve leading universities in the US and Europe have joined an internet platform created by two Stanford University scientists which provides free online access to classes designed by academics at elite institutions.

The move, announced on Tuesday, marks a significant expansion of online university teaching. Observers say it heralds a shakeup of the classic lecture theatre model.

The new participants in Coursera, which combines online lectures with assignments to be submitted, include the California Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and University of California, San Francisco in the US, as well as Edinburgh University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne.

Caltech and the University of Pennsylvania have also announced a combined $3.7m (£2.4m) investment in Coursera.

Coursera already offers classes from Princeton, the University of Michigan, Stanford, University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania.

The 12 universities joining the platform will offer dozens of new courses in the arts, computer science, health, mathematics, history, literature and other disciplines.

The classes offered by Coursera do not count as credit towards degrees at the universities involved, but online students receive certificates for completing their studies.

Andrew Ng, the Stanford academic who co-founded Coursera with Daphne Koller, said the move gave students "greater access than ever before to the world's foremost subject-matter experts".

Koller said: "We're fortunate to have the support of these highly respected academic institutions as we move toward our shared goal of providing a high-quality education to everyone around the world."

Many universities already offer online lectures and some – notably the Open University – offer qualifications through distance learning. But observers say the rise of Coursera and similar online offerings marks a shift in the balance of power in higher education.

Mike Boxall, of the management consultancy PA Consulting, compared the development to the changes that have swept the media and music industry. "The interesting thing is that it effectively marks the provision of knowledge as a free good, which accords with young people's expectations. Now you've got the industry saying, we have to protect our offer – that offer is not the key to the library door – they have to provide something around that, the ability to use and interact with that knowledge."

The growth in online learning is likely to push universities towards greater emphasis on one-to-one tuition and other interaction with students, Boxall said. "What does that mean for 500-seat lecture theatres? It's amazing that universities are still building big lecture theatres – there's a huge wave of building across the university world. They're not rethinking that environment."

It is also a sign of the untapped demand for higher education. In recent years, there has been keen interest from venture capital in private for-profit higher education providers.

A consortium including Goldman Sachs owns the US private HE provider Education Management Corporation, while Montagu private equity recently acquired the College of Law, the UK's biggest law school, for £200m.

Boxall said: "There is huge latent demand. Public higher education is under pressure but the bigger market for learning is just vast."

Coursera's business model has not been made public, but learners pay for the certificates that mark completion of their courses – a revenue stream shared with the universities. One investor has suggested the business could profit from students opting in to premium services.

Jeff Haywood, vice-principal at Edinburgh University, said his institution was adopting a breakeven model. The platform serves as a shop window for universities; a free course with no entry qualifications offers students a way of sampling a traditional university education. It also offers the universities a chance to innovate, Haywood said. "There's an ability to experiment at a scale that we can't do on campus – you can't put together a class of 20,000 students on campus. If we're able to get some confidence that we can do automated large-scale assessment, on computers, we may do more of that and release our academic team to do higher value-added teaching."

An internet-based model which can pick the best courses from around the world puts greater pressure on universities to be distinctive; one of the courses Edinburgh will offer is in artificial intelligence, for which it has an international reputation.

Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, which represents leading universities including Oxbridge and Edinburgh, said: "Online technologies provide huge opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge, and our universities are continuing to take advantage by, for example, putting lectures online through iTunes U and YouTube, or by making much of our research open access. Russell Group universities have always been at the forefront of online innovations, and we are keen to exploit this further."

View the original article here

Using the web for learning and teaching – a new understanding

Using technology for teaching and learning in higher education goes way beyond Google. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

What are the implications for learning and teaching when we move from perceiving the web as a collection of tools to thinking of it as a series of overlapping spaces? This was the focus of a recent Higher Education Academy event on flexible learning and online residency. The term residencycomes from the Visitors and Residents continuum (V&R) which I proposed as an alternative to Marc Prensky's digital natives and immigrants idea.

V&R is a simple metaphor for online engagement: some people visit the web while others live out a portion of their lives online and are, in effect, resident in online spaces. Unlike Prensky's idea, the V&R continuum does not assume there are links between age and technical skill, but instead focuses on motivations to engage. We are currently using the V&R continuum as the underpinning principle in a longitudinal JISC-funded project which, in partnership with OCLC, is exploring what motivates learners, teaching practitioners and researchers to engage with the web. We are particularly interested in learner-owned literacies – approaches to information seeking and collaboration online which individuals evolve outside of an institutional context.

Rather than aiming to produce a framework of digital literacies, we are working with the notion of 'genres of participation', an approach first used to define aspects of digital youth culture but which, using V&R as genres, translates well into more academic contexts.

The strength of taking this approach is that the notion of genres is inherently fuzzy edged, reflecting the increasingly blurred boundaries between roles and behaviours online – between the personal and the institutional. Unlike many competency frameworks, V&R doesn't imply that there is a linear progression in developing digital literacies. In fact our data indicate that individuals evolve their forms of engagement online in a fairly ad hoc, try-it-and-see manner, based on their immediate needs. In many cases their approaches are blunt but effective, with the response to the question "How do you go about using the web for your learning?" often being "I Google and see what comes up".

At the HEA event we focused on the residency end of the continuum, not because this is necessarily a more effective genre of participation for learning, but because the implications of the web-as-a-space and the related modes of engagement are less understood than those at the visitor end of the continuum. Certainly residency is inherent in some of the new forms of practice we see emerging online such as the original form of the MOOC (massive open online course), and the notion of residency is often linked to agile, communal forms of knowledge creation and ways-of-knowing.

Many of the graduate attributes higher education institutions are espousing appear to require reasonably high levels of residency and visibility online with phrases such as "engage productively in relevant online communities" and "influence others in an increasingly digital world". So the importance of these forms of engagement is being established but what is not yet clear is how we actually support this in practice.

It's not easy facilitating a shift from a visitor to a more resident mode and some of the teaching practitioners at the HEA event shared how difficult it is to communicate to learners what the possible benefits of having a presence and sharing practice online could be. For many, education is predominantly about consuming knowledge from trusted sources and seeking the wisdom of established experts. Study is seen as a relatively private activity which finishes with a series of exams. It's not commonly perceived as an evolving practice in which personal views are openly shared and in which students' opinions become a valued part of a communal learning experience.

The resident style digital literacies that are often discussed, such as developing a professional identity online and the ability to visibly collaborate on the web, can appear daunting, risky and potentially a huge distraction from the "real" curriculum for many learners. Even so, I think this type of anxiety is a valid and good defence against a consumerist mindset. We should be pushing learners to expand their view of education beyond traditional forms of expertise. The V&R project is gaining an understanding of how, and more importantly why, we use the web for learning. It will continue to share its findings and is planning to produce a toolkit-style learning resource to support practitioners interested in resident forms of practice. We are keen to move this area forwards so that our learners, to use JISC's definition, are fitted with the capabilities for "living learning and working in a digital society", to achieve this we need to be doing much more than advising how to Google a bit better.

David White is a researcher and co-manages Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL), a learning and technology R&D group in the University of Oxford. He tweets at @daveowhite.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, become a member of the Higher Education Network.

View the original article here

Top universities join free online teaching platform

Coursera and similar online offerings could mean the end of large lecture theatres as universities put more emphasis on one-to-one teaching. Photograph: Image Source /Rex Features

Twelve leading universities in the US and Europe have joined an internet platform created by two Stanford University scientists which provides free online access to classes designed by academics at elite institutions.

The move, announced on Tuesday, marks a significant expansion of online university teaching. Observers say it heralds a shakeup of the classic lecture theatre model.

The new participants in Coursera, which combines online lectures with assignments to be submitted, include the California Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and University of California, San Francisco in the US, as well as Edinburgh University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne.

Caltech and the University of Pennsylvania have also announced a combined $3.7m (£2.4m) investment in Coursera.

Coursera already offers classes from Princeton, the University of Michigan, Stanford, University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania.

The 12 universities joining the platform will offer dozens of new courses in the arts, computer science, health, mathematics, history, literature and other disciplines.

The classes offered by Coursera do not count as credit towards degrees at the universities involved, but online students receive certificates for completing their studies.

Andrew Ng, the Stanford academic who co-founded Coursera with Daphne Koller, said the move gave students "greater access than ever before to the world's foremost subject-matter experts".

Koller said: "We're fortunate to have the support of these highly respected academic institutions as we move toward our shared goal of providing a high-quality education to everyone around the world."

Many universities already offer online lectures and some – notably the Open University – offer qualifications through distance learning. But observers say the rise of Coursera and similar online offerings marks a shift in the balance of power in higher education.

Mike Boxall, of the management consultancy PA Consulting, compared the development to the changes that have swept the media and music industry. "The interesting thing is that it effectively marks the provision of knowledge as a free good, which accords with young people's expectations. Now you've got the industry saying, we have to protect our offer – that offer is not the key to the library door – they have to provide something around that, the ability to use and interact with that knowledge."

The growth in online learning is likely to push universities towards greater emphasis on one-to-one tuition and other interaction with students, Boxall said. "What does that mean for 500-seat lecture theatres? It's amazing that universities are still building big lecture theatres – there's a huge wave of building across the university world. They're not rethinking that environment."

It is also a sign of the untapped demand for higher education. In recent years, there has been keen interest from venture capital in private for-profit higher education providers.

A consortium including Goldman Sachs owns the US private HE provider Education Management Corporation, while Montagu private equity recently acquired the College of Law, the UK's biggest law school, for £200m.

Boxall said: "There is huge latent demand. Public higher education is under pressure but the bigger market for learning is just vast."

Coursera's business model has not been made public, but learners pay for the certificates that mark completion of their courses – a revenue stream shared with the universities. One investor has suggested the business could profit from students opting in to premium services.

Jeff Haywood, vice-principal at Edinburgh University, said his institution was adopting a breakeven model. The platform serves as a shop window for universities; a free course with no entry qualifications offers students a way of sampling a traditional university education. It also offers the universities a chance to innovate, Haywood said. "There's an ability to experiment at a scale that we can't do on campus – you can't put together a class of 20,000 students on campus. If we're able to get some confidence that we can do automated large-scale assessment, on computers, we may do more of that and release our academic team to do higher value-added teaching."

An internet-based model which can pick the best courses from around the world puts greater pressure on universities to be distinctive; one of the courses Edinburgh will offer is in artificial intelligence, for which it has an international reputation.

Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, which represents leading universities including Oxbridge and Edinburgh, said: "Online technologies provide huge opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge, and our universities are continuing to take advantage by, for example, putting lectures online through iTunes U and YouTube, or by making much of our research open access. Russell Group universities have always been at the forefront of online innovations, and we are keen to exploit this further."

View the original article here

Using the web for learning and teaching – a new understanding

Using technology for teaching and learning in higher education goes way beyond Google. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

What are the implications for learning and teaching when we move from perceiving the web as a collection of tools to thinking of it as a series of overlapping spaces? This was the focus of a recent Higher Education Academy event on flexible learning and online residency. The term residencycomes from the Visitors and Residents continuum (V&R) which I proposed as an alternative to Marc Prensky's digital natives and immigrants idea.

V&R is a simple metaphor for online engagement: some people visit the web while others live out a portion of their lives online and are, in effect, resident in online spaces. Unlike Prensky's idea, the V&R continuum does not assume there are links between age and technical skill, but instead focuses on motivations to engage. We are currently using the V&R continuum as the underpinning principle in a longitudinal JISC-funded project which, in partnership with OCLC, is exploring what motivates learners, teaching practitioners and researchers to engage with the web. We are particularly interested in learner-owned literacies – approaches to information seeking and collaboration online which individuals evolve outside of an institutional context.

Rather than aiming to produce a framework of digital literacies, we are working with the notion of 'genres of participation', an approach first used to define aspects of digital youth culture but which, using V&R as genres, translates well into more academic contexts.

The strength of taking this approach is that the notion of genres is inherently fuzzy edged, reflecting the increasingly blurred boundaries between roles and behaviours online – between the personal and the institutional. Unlike many competency frameworks, V&R doesn't imply that there is a linear progression in developing digital literacies. In fact our data indicate that individuals evolve their forms of engagement online in a fairly ad hoc, try-it-and-see manner, based on their immediate needs. In many cases their approaches are blunt but effective, with the response to the question "How do you go about using the web for your learning?" often being "I Google and see what comes up".

At the HEA event we focused on the residency end of the continuum, not because this is necessarily a more effective genre of participation for learning, but because the implications of the web-as-a-space and the related modes of engagement are less understood than those at the visitor end of the continuum. Certainly residency is inherent in some of the new forms of practice we see emerging online such as the original form of the MOOC (massive open online course), and the notion of residency is often linked to agile, communal forms of knowledge creation and ways-of-knowing.

Many of the graduate attributes higher education institutions are espousing appear to require reasonably high levels of residency and visibility online with phrases such as "engage productively in relevant online communities" and "influence others in an increasingly digital world". So the importance of these forms of engagement is being established but what is not yet clear is how we actually support this in practice.

It's not easy facilitating a shift from a visitor to a more resident mode and some of the teaching practitioners at the HEA event shared how difficult it is to communicate to learners what the possible benefits of having a presence and sharing practice online could be. For many, education is predominantly about consuming knowledge from trusted sources and seeking the wisdom of established experts. Study is seen as a relatively private activity which finishes with a series of exams. It's not commonly perceived as an evolving practice in which personal views are openly shared and in which students' opinions become a valued part of a communal learning experience.

The resident style digital literacies that are often discussed, such as developing a professional identity online and the ability to visibly collaborate on the web, can appear daunting, risky and potentially a huge distraction from the "real" curriculum for many learners. Even so, I think this type of anxiety is a valid and good defence against a consumerist mindset. We should be pushing learners to expand their view of education beyond traditional forms of expertise. The V&R project is gaining an understanding of how, and more importantly why, we use the web for learning. It will continue to share its findings and is planning to produce a toolkit-style learning resource to support practitioners interested in resident forms of practice. We are keen to move this area forwards so that our learners, to use JISC's definition, are fitted with the capabilities for "living learning and working in a digital society", to achieve this we need to be doing much more than advising how to Google a bit better.

David White is a researcher and co-manages Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL), a learning and technology R&D group in the University of Oxford. He tweets at @daveowhite.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, become a member of the Higher Education Network.

View the original article here