how are best for youth coursera's designed

[chris macrae]

latest update

1. click to bbc 4 - 30 minute radio interview with coursera founders made July 2013
2. discuss bbc interview

1.0 Q When is www.coursera.org (content from over 50 worldwide universities)  uniquely best for youth? A When some of a course's 9 minute audio training modules viralise around millions of youth who then collaborate round job creation- or progressing investments in millennium goals from the bottom up -see eg MOOCyunus as several thousand entrepreneurs at Skoll 10th world championship cheering such an idea

reference- search how both daphne koller as designer of coursera and sal khan as designer of khanacademy see the 9 minute training module as the most impactful feature the world of education has ever been blessed to use

1.1 coursera has many features that may help to start up such a viralisation- also the fact that several hundreds of thousand people may be action learning live around a best for world's coursera makes these feature possibilities very different from uses you may heave encountered where barely any audience is coming back again and again 2.0 students of coursera are asked to sign a content secrecy pledge so as not to spoil the course's surprise impact on future course-takers - regarding open value multipliers, this is a relative weakness of coursera compared with khanacademy's 24/7 free learning access but it does help to ensure that you get that year's most motivated youth signing up-   2.1 Secrecy pledges also make it difficult to discuss what a best for youth coursera looks like - we hope that Jeff Borland at University of Melbourne doesn't mind us showing this mock up

.. Searching who sees mooc free university as humanity's greatest ever collaboration project.... .MOOC & Platforms : koller  NG : Khan, Berners Lee Entrepreneurial Revolution Content partners : BRAC , Soros Investors in humanity Soros, Skoll, Barrett, Butler-Sloss, Investors in brands that could value freeing their sectir's most sustainable purpose- Mackey, head of Tata, Jack Ma, Anderson (deceased), Riboud Lifelong pro-youth educators: Gandhi Family, Blecher, Other friends of Norman Macrae Remembrance Parties: Japan Ambassadors, JICA . . . . . . . . ..

3MOCK-up of a best for youth Coursera

The picture below comprises to the main features students can linkin while the course is alive- also part of a post I made to the forum- and 3 ads to open learning I would love to post if future coursera ever take ads that support youth open education revolution

 

3.1 Below we guide to you each of the features - discussing both the way coursera expects them to be used and more massive collaboration job creating experiments youth may want to free

[chris macrae]

These are 9 standard components of coursera The middle one "video lecture" is pivotal once the course goes live for typically a period of 8 weeks which form quite strict schedule. Each week will typically contain just over an hour's video content comprised of maximum 9 minute modules ...each modules has a parallel transcript or slide version. When we say videos- the typical format is mainly audio, with either the presenter or the slides he is guiding you through on the screen. It really is the audio that matters, as we also see more explicitly in the platform designed into Khanacademy. In other words if we can search out leaders who are prepared to make 9 minute audios that millions of youth need to interact around, THEN we can always edit in any visual content. On coursera the audio/video permits a lecturer to program an intermission- used to pose a multiple choice question to check whether the student is listening   Typically the top button announcement section (combined with next 2 buttons how to study course and syllabus) offer a roadmap of the course and clarify exact schedule of all the course's deadlines which often include weekly tests (usually multichoice quizzes,) and as you can see in the bottom button the occasional peer assessment. It has been found that if a presenter is going to ask 10000 students to write a short essay, peer assessment by 3 random peers is an adequate way of getting the marking done

ALUMNI EXPERIENCE
Until you have experienced it in the Coursera context, you are unlikely to be able to imagine how powerful discussion forums are when themed week by week on content hundreds of thousands of young minds may be simultaneously studying. In 17 years on the internet, I haven't seen discussion forums stay so deeply on content nor be a space where you might meet alumn that your work may wish to partner. Of course it can depend on whether the main presenter is interested too. This doesn't mean that he needs to follow every discussion but it makes a heck of a difference if the lecturer does pop in a few of the discussions each week - even better if he or she thanks the students for actually learning from them too. After all the best course in the world - as we define it - mobilises youth to create jobs or sustain extraordinary collaborations. If that total youth power isn't cherished by the lecturer to be more valuable than he alone is as an individual, then I am not sure I understand why that person wants to be a courser lecturer.

Some courses add outside spaces such as a linkedin group or twitter to offer a way to ensure that some of the knowledge and alumn solidarity collaboratively multiplied during the 8 week course stays on the net for the rest of the year. Ultimately we advise practotioers whose organisation is open sourcing best for youth world action maps to be present both in coursera and khanacasdemy - and by focusing on your 9 minute audio module this can be done

It is worth continuously debating what are the alternative advantages of being live for one 8-week mass class a year and being live all the time- as well as where do the 2 forms need to partner each other if worldwide youth is to gain maximally from MOOC - Massive, Open, Onlice - and the 3C's collaboration, course and curriculum. For example while we are not aware of a case yet, a cousrea on youyth entrepreneurship could be timed to also be the world's number 1 student competition and guest judges could be brought in for that part of the course including investors and those with the most inspirational youth pulling power (such as dr Muhammad Yunus)

[chris macrae]

so far the only open education models to have massively scaled start by being configured around 9 minute mainly audio training modules - however these are connected with very different add on experiences - khan academy is always there and offers unlimted online eercises-

 

coursera markets each course a s a typically once a year event - so maximizing live simultaneous audiences and its design builds social features

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notes from bbc radio interview with koller and Ng july 2013

koller believes within 5 years coursera we will have a good enough course on anything people might want to learn

=cost basis of coursera currently free but with pay for version to get a certificate (cost about $60)

note coursera is a for profit model - currently with 22 million dolar of venture capital investment coordinated by John Doerr associates

 

coursera has built technology scape so that it can serve 100000 students on same online course and expects to get to larger numbers

 

coursera is proud of its peer review technology making it possible for 100000 students to grade each other's essays- this supplements the weekly multi-choice tests that also make up course grades

 

points koller enjoys debating

 

1 action learning based instruction gives students more real understanding than traditionaluniersity models

 

in some developing countries like india to cater for planned expansion of tertiary students they would need to build 10000? universities; moreover in developing countries many universities already cant get the quality staff they want - all reasons why online education may not be a choice but a necessity in some nations' futures

as bbc radio interviewer added - the past of one job or even one career for life doesn't look like being the future- maybe the model of expecting students only to go to universities once when they are young and can least afford it is also unsustainable- commentator also mentioned that UK's open university will be launching an online platform future learning soon

[chris macrae]

in parallel to coursera there is the open courseware consortium http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/courses/ocwsites

[chris macrae]

End announcement from world best course leader Jeff Borland

Hi Generating the Wealth of Nation MOOCers,

Congratulations to those of you who have now completed all the assessment requirements. It will take us a little time to process and check the marks, and then we will be able to send out the Statements of Accomplishment. 

As we reach the end of the course, I thought you might be interested to know some statistics on participation and outcomes. At the end of last week, out of the 28,922 enrolments in Generating the Wealth of Nations, 12,197 people had actually participated in the course at some stage, and in the last week 1,935 had been active. There had been 164,946 viewings of individual lecture videos. On the Discussion Forum there were 423 threads, 2370 posts and 1413 comments. About 700 of you completed the first assessment (average grade was 2.86), and about 500 the second assessment (average grade 3.09). These averages indicate that the standard of assessment work submitted has been high. 

I wanted to reiterate my message from the final section of lecture 11 by saying thanks to all of you who have participated in the course in some way – be it viewing the lecture videos, submitting the assessments and peer reviews, or posting on the Discussion Forum. I especially appreciate the time that so many of you have committed to the Discussion Forum – Raising and answering questions; Suggesting extra resources; Debating the causes of economic development. This has made the course a much richer learning experience for everyone. Everyone, of course, includes me. The Princeton sociology Professor Mitch Duneier commented on his MOOC that ‘…Within three weeks I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas than I had in a career of teaching…’. My experience has been the same. Not only have I come away from the course with pages and pages of notes on new ways to think about the history of economic development, there have also been many valuable suggestions on extra references and resources, and on aspects of the course such as assessment and presentation. I’m grateful for this feedback, and for the constructive approach you’ve taken to giving it. More generally, the whole team who put together Generating the Wealth of Nations have been delighted to see the positive comments about the course in recent weeks – Thanks to everyone for your kind words.

This is the end of the course, however, I hope that it’s just the beginning (or a continuation) of your learning on the history of economic development. So from all of the team, we wish you many happy years of MOOCing in the future.

All the best, Jeff Borland