[SSC] Slides and podcast from Professor Michael Fielding's lectureon the radical potential of higher education at a time of crisis

[Megan Robertson]

If I may pop my head over the parapet for a moment...

In the e-learning community, someone asked about possible roles of MOOCs
(Massive Online Open Courses) in the future of education. This is what I
said:

Having studied traditional 'bums-on-seats' style, old style Open University
video lectures & postal communication with tutor, VLE-based distance
learning with a conventional class size and MOOC... 

I believe that all these methods (well, maybe not old-school OU) have their
place in the modern educational landscape, and serve to feed off one
another, enhancing all modes of delivery.

Heck, I've been doing some HE lecturing, and found that my style was very
much inspired by the lecturer of the last MOOC course I took :)

More importantly, the diversity of ways of acquiring knowledge can only be a
good thing, especially as current politics is heading towards pricing many
students out of conventional ways of getting their educations. The ability
to undertake asynchronous learning via VLE or MOOC facilitates combining
study with earning. 

The question of 'qualification' is an interesting one. One VLE-based
distance learning course I did was examined by an essay submission, and on
the basis of this you passed the course and got a regular transcript from
the university concerned.

The MOOC course I've just finished (with Coursera) had a final exam, a
multiple choice test. They are offering a 'certificate of course completion'
if you did the weekly quizzes and a peer-marked essay question and the final
exam, but this doesn't count towards a transcript. Part of this is because
there hasn't been any lecturer assessment of student work. About 7,000
students made it to completion of the MOOC course, whilst the VLE one had
some 45 students, so it's clear why you don't get lecturer-marked
assessments!

There is some thought in the MOOC community to have locally-based
examinations, where students are required to go to an assessment centre to
be tested and will then get 'proper' transcript accreditation. This will be
chargeable, but it seems likely that it will be possible to take the online
part of the course for free and only pay if you wish to take the formal
exam. Apart from the issue of scale, number of students, there is some
concern about identity.... bit baffling, although the VLE-based distance
course university required a formal application, rather than just signing up
for an account, they did no identity check - anyone could have written the
essay I submitted for assessment!

Some thoughts, from someone passionate about education however delivered!

Hugs from Megan
http://www.moodlepoodle.co.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: ssc-bounces at lists.aktivix.org [mailto:ssc-bounces at lists.aktivix.org]
On Behalf Of Alan Gurbutt
Sent: 28 September 2012 23:00
To: ssc at lists.aktivix.org
Subject: [SSC] Slides and podcast from Professor Michael Fielding's
lectureon the radical potential of higher education at a time of crisis

Dear Everyone,

Slides and a podcast from yesterday's lecture on the radical potential of
higher education at a time of crisis are now available online on our Lincoln
SSC website under the blog menu. You can reach the post via this link
http://tinyurl.com/cr4qlet Enjoy!

Best wishes,
Alan



  




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