MASSIVE OPEN ON-LINECOURSES (MOOCS)

Faculty CouncilDecember 2012

Bruce W. CarneyExecutive Vice Chancellor & Provost

A brief (and incomplete) history

The Khan Academy. Free on-line brief lectures prepared by Salman Khan has evolved into an enterprise with 3500 videos. The total number of lessons delivered exceeds two hundred million.

www.khanacademy.orgThe effort is funded by foundations and

individuals; volunteers act as coaches and teachers.

The lessons are quite good, although they’re necessarily static.

The next steps

Salman Khan Sebastian Thrun + Peter Norvig.

July 2011 on-line course in Artificial Intelligence.

160,000 enrolled; 28,000 completed.Top 1,000 students were asked for resumes.Three major platforms emerged quickly.

• With funding from Charles River Associates, Thrun founded Udacity.

• Courses, assessments, certificates are free.

• Focus is on STEM courses.

• Revenue generation uncertain but may come from modest per-student costs for tutoring, authenticated certificates, advertising, or, most likely, career placement services.

www.udacity.com

• Dec 2011: MITx; May 2012: joined by Harvard, each investing. $30M. UC Berkeley, Univ. of Texas system, and Wellesley have also joined. Non-profit, led by Anant Agarwal from MIT.

• The first course enrolled 122,000 students.

• The revenue model has not been developed or, at least, it has not been revealed.

• Courses have fixed terms, unlike Udacity.

• Class discussion boards, automated assessment, lectures and quizzes. Cannot handle essays etc. yet.

https://www.edx.org

• Founded by Daphne Koller & Andrew Ng (Jan 2012)

• It is a for-profit company, with significant backing, and appears to be driven to provide a larger suite of courses. The business model is unclear.

• It partners only with “elite” universities, mostly schools in the U.S., and comparable foreign schools.

• Coursera is primarily a platform, with faculty at member universities developing and delivering course content, exams, etc.

https://www.coursera.org

FIELDS Coursera (199) Udacity (18) edX (8)

Computer Science 37 13 7

Other STEM 53 4 0

Bus./Finance/Econ. 23 1 0

Environmental Sci. 9 0 0

Social Sciences 15 0 0

Languages 0 0 0

Humanities/Arts 20 0 0

Health Affairs 39 0 1

Education 2 0 0

Law 1 0 0

Comparison of Course Offerings

Issues requiring consideration

• Quality of instruction: are static courses suitable, especially if they’re not residential?

• Can student-only discussion groups work?• Credentialing the courses.• Course credit? Beginning to emerge in high

schools and now at Antioch University.• Revenue generation?• How can development of such courses

improve our residential courses, our new hybrid courses in particular?

Why should we engage?

• Work with peer universities to learn how to provide quality on-line education, whether it’s to build up our “brand” or to provide major national and international public service.

• Learn how to redesign our own courses.• Be part of the rapidly-evolving higher

education endeavor.

What are we doing vis-à-vis MOOCs?

• Conversations with the deans — identify a set of courses for initial offering.

• Establish an advisory committee to help us identify opportunities and risks, both financial and instructional.

• Are there selective, revenue-generating opportunities for us beyond the platforms desribed earlier?

Provost’s Task Force on MOOCs: Goals

• Direct the development of 3-5 MOOCs.• Develop quality standards and a process for

reviewing, approving, and establishing MOOCs at UNC-CH.

• Evaluate infrastructure needs.• Explore development of MOOCs for

improvements to residential courses, continuing education, and supplemental academic support.

• Would like to deliver some by Fall 2013.

Provost’s Task Force on MOOCs: Membership

• Carol Tresolini, Chair (Vice Provost)• Valerie Ashby (Chemistry)• Rob Bruce (Friday Center)• Larry Conrad (ITS)• Mike Crimmins (Arts & Sciences)• Gary Marchionini (SILS)• Bill McDiarmid (Education)• Sarah Michalak (Library)• Eric Muller (Law; Center for Faculty Excellence)• John Paul (Public Health)• Dwayne Pinkney (Vice Provost)• Doug Shackleford (Kenan-Flagler Business School)• Louise Spieler (Journalism)

Graduate On-line Courses at UNC

• 2tor partnership: MBA@UNC. Small classes; mostly synchronous learning; equivalent to residential experience. Expensive: $89,000 for two years. 2tor does the recruiting; we control admissions; content; delivery.

• 2nd 2tor partnership: MPA@UNC. A very similar program set up in the School of Government.

Undergraduate On-line Courses at UNC

• 2U (= 2tor) Semester On-line (SON)• Synchronous instruction in small

classes for credit.• Announced partners are Brandeis,

Duke, Emory, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Rochester, UNC-CH, Vanderbilt, and Wake Forest.

• MOU signed November 20, 2012.

Undergraduate On-line Courses at UNC

• Cost to students is $1400/credit hour.

• Universities may limit the number of their students taking such classes.

• We will be offering a few classes, but via the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

• For UNC, this business model probably cannot work at large scale.