by Rosie Redfield, Vancouver Observer
MOOCs offered by Coursera and by Udacity and EdX, are open to anyone, anywhere in the world. No fees are charged, there are no formal application procedures or prerequisites, and the courses yield no formal academic credit. Instead of hour-long lectures, MOOCs offer weekly sets of short, focused instructional videos, supplemented with computer and peer-graded homework, quizzes and exams. Students ask for and receive help in online discussion forums and even get together for study groups in cities around the world. These courses are made possible by learning management technology that eliminates the need for face-to-face lectures and human grading, so that enrolments no longer need to be capped by the size of the lecture theatre or the budget for teaching assistants. As a result, MOOCs are already attracting many thousands of students from around the world – even hundreds of thousands for some of the first computer courses. Here are some of the implications.
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/thescene/ubcs-massively-open-online-courses
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