[LINK] MOOCs
Tom Worthington
tom.worthington at tomw.net.au
Mon Sep 30 10:46:06 AEST 2013
On 29/09/13 11:25, Roger Clarke wrote:
> ... Is it all that much better now?
My anecdote is of a senior academic who congratulated me on the very
high student feedback score for my e-learning course. He then asked "How
many contact hours are there for the course?". I explained that an
e-learning course has no contact hours, in the conventional sense. He
looked very worried and said: "I think you need to invite all the
students to come in, so you can ask them if it is okay not to have
contact hours". I explained the students could be anywhere in the world
(one Australian university had a student in orbit). The students might
be a little annoyed to be required to travel to Canberra, just so they
could explain they did not want to travel to Canberra.
> Where I think lectures help is in assisting candidates to break into
> a new topic-area ... at the end of a logical block within a unit.
With the usual e-learning course you have a socializing period at the
beginning, points for review along the way and summary/celebration at
the end. On a finer scale I have proposed synchronization points:
http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/moocs_with_books/
> ... you can't *help* the bottom 10-20% ...
We can help the struggling students with progressive assessment and
feedback, to either improve or realize they should withdraw from the
course.
> ... I attended a small percentage of lectures in most subjects ...
I attended most lectures, I hated them, but I attended. Perhaps that
was why I did not do well in my studies.
On 29/09/13 12:49, Roger Clarke wrote:
> I was meaning in the sense of attendances at lectures typically being
> half (or less) of the unit enrolment. ...
About 25% attendance seems to be typical for blended courses with
optional lectures.
I ran my ICT Sustainability course with optional face-to-face tutorials
last semester. About one third turned up to the first one, by the last
one I was down to the 10% who were required by their visa conditions to
attend. I am dropping the set tutorials next semester. Students tend to
book an individual appointment, or come in with a friend, just before an
assignment deadline, for help.
--
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
Legislation
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
More information about the Link
mailing list