MOOC Less Stressful to MIT Students

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, departed from its normal practice of marketing massive open online courses (MOOCs) to the public by offering a popular circuits and electronics class to its on-campus students for credit. A study of that pilot program found students who took the class online not only liked the flexibility, but also reported feeling less stress.

MIT launched the pilot to address student concerns over scheduling conflicts. The results have MIT administrators considering more ways to create flexible learning environments for students and professors.

“As you can imagine, MIT students are a very active bunch,” Sheryl Barnes, director of digital learning in residential education, told Insider Higher Ed. “And they expressed frustration they couldn’t resolve scheduling conflicts by having more flexibility.”

There were differences between the MOOC version of the class and the traditional course. MOOC homework and final exam allowed for multiple tries at answers, but provided no partial credit. MOOC students weren’t able to review their graded exam to find out which answers they got wrong, but were provided instant online feedback on homework.

“On the open courseware version of the class, they have lecture slides for each topic that also almost match identically in order of topic,” one student said in the report. “And so I’d just read through all those lecture slides, which were similar, but it was just a little cleaner and a little easier to go through. And they had nice summaries at the beginning of each lecture, like a review of what was covered in the previous set, so I went through those, and then I’d go to the homework, and then while doing the homework, as needed, I’d go back to the videos and watch to listen and review over anything that I didn’t get.”

Penn State Pilots Robots in the Classroom

For the last year and a half, the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) office at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, has been piloting a program to explore ways to use robots in education. The BeamPro Smart Presence System allows students to attend class without actually being there.

The BeamPro technology is being used for a wide variety of projects, including bringing artists to campus virtually, providing tours, connecting  students with their academic advisers, and as a summer outreach program in robotics. Another use envisioned for the robot is allowing students to attend class while off campus because of an illness or family emergency.

“There’s never been a technology that affords you this kind of freedom, and I think it changes the way that we will eventually collaborate or communicate over distances,” Chris Stubbs, manager of emerging technology and media for TLT, said in an article for Penn State News.

The robot has two wide-angle cameras, microphones set up to eliminate echo and reduce background noise, a 17-in. LCD screen, and built-in speakers. Students use a computer application to remotely steer the BeamPro robot to class and can even command the robot to take an elevator or go to other buildings around campus, according to a report in Campus Technology. The device can reach speeds of 2 mph and connects to the Internet through dual-band radios or an optional 4G card.

“Lion Ambassadors could conduct tours, career services could use it for mock interviews with companies located anywhere, and foreign-language classes could invite native-language speakers located internationally to engage in the classroom. That’s just the beginning,” said Kate Morgan, director of virtual education at Penn State Lehigh Valley.  “The future of interaction involves technology like the BeamPro and to have the opportunity to expose our students to it as undergraduates is one more way to prepare them for the millennial workplace.”

UF Researcher Articles Easier to Access

The University of Florida, Gainesville, is working with publisher Elsevier to make it easier to find the research articles it produces every year. The institution recently launched a pilot that links its repository of scholarly works with ScienceDirect, the Elsevier online journal and e-book catalog.

The pilot allows the university to store journal article searches on ScienceDirect and make them available automatically. Users can now search the university repository and find links to more than 31,000 articles that have appeared in Elsevier journals, according to a report in Inside Higher Education.

“The nice thing about this pilot is it opens up the repository,” said Alicia Wise, director of access and policy for Elsevier. “Rather than being the end destination, it’s part of the fabric of interconnected platforms.”

The university is pursuing similar partnerships with other publishers and wants to expand the current pilot to increase access for users who aren’t subscribers. It would also like to be able to allow all users to view some text of published articles.

Not everyone is as excited about the pilot. A group of university librarians and press directors said the partnership essentially turns the institutional repository into “discovery layers for commercialized content,” according to another Insider Higher Ed report.

MIT Pilots Online Master's Program

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is giving inverted admissions a try in a pilot for students in its supply chain management (SCM) master’s degree program. Students who successfully complete the first semester of SCM courses online will become eligible for admission to the Cambridge, MA, campus for one semester to complete the degree.

“Inverted admission has the potential to disrupt traditional modes of access to higher education,” said Sanjay Sarma, dean of digital learning, in a report for MIT News. “We’re democratizing access to a master’s program for learners worldwide.”

The pilot includes a new academic credential developed by MIT called MicroMaster’s. Students will earn the digital credential after taking a proctored examination of materials covered in first-semester classes from MITx, the portfolio of free MIT courses available online through the interactive learning platform edX.

There are no admissions requirements for the courses, which are available to anyone interested in taking them. Learners will have to pay a small fee to have their MicroMaster’s verified, but then they can apply for admissions to the semester on campus with the MicroMaster’s worth a semester of MIT credit.

“The rising cost of education, combined with the transformative potential of online teaching and learning technologies, presents a long-term challenge that no university can afford to ignore,” said MIT President Rafael Reif. “At MIT, we are choosing to meet this challenge directly by assessing the educational model that has served the institute so well for so long. We are experimenting boldly with ideas to enhance the education we offer our own students and to lower the barriers to access for learners around the world.”

Delivering Ed Content to Any Device

Skyepack is a digital publishing platform developed at Purdue University that allows faculty to assemble low-cost e-content students can access from nearly every operating system or mobile device. Purdue offered eight courses using the e-text platform in a pilot last year. That pilot is being expanded to 11 more courses for 2015-16.

The team that created Skyepack, originally known as Jetpack, wanted to develop an e-textbook that was easy for faculty to produce, while delivering more than just text and images to students. They were also trying to find a new way to save students money on their course materials.

“The project was designed to reimagine instructional material to take advantage of the technologies we have today,” Kyle Bowen, chief technology officer of Skyepack, said in a report from Campus Technology. “In particular, mobile technologies—smartphones, tablets—that allow us to access this material from everywhere.”

Any Purdue faculty member can use the platform to create their own content, but must apply to participate in the digital-textbook pilot program. Those accepted receive a stipend of several thousand dollars to create a textbook and must agree to use the book for two years and make the text available for $10-$20, depending on if the author opts to receive royalties for their work.

The e-texts are developed on a web-based interface, similar to a blogging platform. Students have unlimited access to the content and continue to receive any updates the instructor makes to the textbook after the class has been completed.

“If you drop a video into Skyepack, it re-encodes that video in such a way that it’s designed for delivery to smartphones with smaller screens or tablets with midsized screens or laptops with larger screens,” Bowen said. “It does that translation for you and it does the same thing with text and images and the interactive tools, so it makes it possible for the author to deliver content in all these different environments without having to understand the nuances of each individual environment.” 

Competency-Based Online Degree Piloted

Community colleges in the state of Washington will soon offer a competency-based associate degree in business using open educational resources (OER) for every class.

The online, self-paced classes are designed to adapt content and activities based on a student’s prior knowledge of the subject, according to a report in eCampus News. Students will also have access to free online course materials.

The 13 community colleges signed up for the pilot will work with Lumen Learning to design the courses. Lumen Learning is also collecting course material that will include textbooks, videos, and embedded assessments to gauge students’ progress.

“A motivated student could complete a two-year transfer degree in just 18 months,” said Jan Yoshiwara, deputy executive director for education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. “All this adds up to quicker completion at a lower cost, while achieving the same learning outcomes required for traditional courses and programs.”

ACE Pilot to Help Nontraditional Students

The America Council on Education (ACE) launched a pilot providing nontraditional learners a more flexible pathway to a degree. To be part of the pilot, 25 colleges and universities institutions agreed to accept all or most transfer credit from a pool of about 100 low- or no-cost lower-division general education online courses.

The program, made possible by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is focused on the more than 31 million adults who finished some college-level coursework but not enough to earn a degree or credential. Each institution will provide ACE with data regarding the credits accepted, along with progress and success rates of the students in the project.

ACE is also working on ways to develop new guidelines for issuing college credit for digital micro-credentials, competency-based programs, and nondegree certificate programs.

“This project will yield multiple and long-lasting benefits to the participating institutions, the wider higher education community, and, potentially, millions of nontraditional learners,” said Deborah Seymour, ACE assistant vice president for education attainment and innovation. “It will help lead to great acceptance of alternative forms of credit in a way that ensures quality and encourages more people to complete their postsecondary education.”

Course Material Assessment Pilot Launched

Reports that students still prefer print textbooks when studying are old news. San Jose State University and Hewlett-Packard are trying to find out why and if there is a middle ground between print and digital.

The SJSU School of Library and Information Science and HP launched a pilot this summer to compare electronic and print textbooks using a personalized hybrid tool offered in two of the school’s online master’s degree programs.

Instructors use METIS (Meaningful Education and Training Information System) to compile reading materials by combing PDFs and URLs of chapters they want students to read and create specific assignments from that content. The platform allows them to follow students’ work and find content that best fits the needs and interests of individual students.

Students can access course material as an e-book or print it out using the platform. Digital content includes embedded links and multimedia, while print versions use QR codes that lead to the same material. METIS also allows students to organize color-coded notes that connect to relevant content in the course materials.

“We are trying to learn what students prefer when it comes to working with print material and digital versions of the material,” said Debbie Faires, director of online learning at the SJSU information school. “Faculty members can use what we learn about the best formats to support student learning when they select the types of reading materials and formats they will use in their classes.”

Institutions Picked for CBE Program

Fourteen colleges and universities have been chosen to participate in the Competency Based Education (CBE) Jumpstart program, an initiative that will allow students to earn degrees based on skills and competencies they have learned through experience, rather than just through the completion of credit-hour courses.

“Competency-based education is particularly relevant for adults and nontraditional learners who bring learning from work and life experiences into higher education,” said Philip Coyle, provost at LeTourneau University, Longview, TX, one of the schools named to the program. “With the rising costs of education, students expect education that is flexible enough to meet their needs and provides them skills that are immediately transferable into the workplace.”

The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) is providing on-site training for faculty and staff at each participating institution. CAEL also offers follow-up support through webinars on selected topics and in-depth technical assistance for schools experiencing issues with getting the program going.

“We are in the very beginning stages of planning,” said Larry Frazier, dean of the school of arts at LeTourneau, which is hoping to start the program in fall 2015. “We are just now starting and we must think of how to reframe and shape the degree plans for CBE.”

Campus Stores Participate in Digital Pilot

The University of Minnesota Bookstores, Minneapolis, have been actively working to reduce the cost of textbooks for years. Now, they’re taking part in a digital coursepack pilot to provide online material as an alternative to printed coursepacks.

The project started with seven course sections from the College of Education and Human Development in the fall of 2012. It has now been expanded to 81 course sections, allowing students to pay an average of $12 per pack compared to $30 per pack for printed materials.

The goal of the program is make coursepacks as affordable as possible by making course-related materials in various formats available through a single online point of access. It also makes coursepack creation easier for faculty.

The content is free to the pilot via the electronic reserves system through the school’s digital library and made available to students through the bookstore website. In addition, pilot program officials are working with the Copyright Permissions Center on campus to lower costs by streamlining the permissions process.

Maryland Starts Open-Source Pilot

Students at the University of Maryland took their complaints about the costs of textbooks online, and they caught the attention of school officials.

They posted photos of whiteboard messages spelling out the amount each spent on books. That led to the University System of Maryland launching a pilot program this semester that makes course materials available as open-source digital content.

The pilot is part of a partnership with Lumen Learning, a company that helps instructors locate content used in creating open-source electronic books. The school estimates the program will save the 1,100 students participating a combined $130,000 in textbook costs.

Even with the partnership, compiling content requires a time commitment from professors. Scott Roberts, who teaches an introductory psychology course on the College Park campus, told the Baltimore Sun it took about 80 hours to write the open-source textbook he created for a class in 2010.

“Maybe one of the bigger issues is in certain academic circles, the rigor of a course is judged by the textbook you use. If you stray from that, you might be met by some furrowed brows,” said Robert Javonillo, a biology professor from Coppin State participating in the pilot. He added that the open-source material he has used has been high quality and that his students are relieved when they find out their assigned course materials are free instead of the $158 textbook he used to assign for this class.

SJSU Online Pilot Posts Better Results

The online course partnership between San Jose State University and Udacity hit a bump when pass rates of 23.8% to 50/5% from classes offered in the spring were posted for the first three courses. The program, called SJSU Plus, was put on hiatus through the fall so the university could evaluate the project.

The next set of results for courses offered in the summer session were much better with more than two-thirds of the 1,380 students who completed the online courses received passing grades of C or higher. In addition, students in three of the offered courses posted higher pass rates than their on-campus counterparts when compared to an average of the last six semesters.

The pass rate for college algebra rose from 25.4% in the spring of 2013 to 72.6% in the summer, while elementary statistics went from 50.5% to 72.6%. Entry-level math saw an increase in pass rates but still lagged far behind the other courses, going from a 23.8% pass rate in the spring to 29.8% in the summer.

“To all those people who declared our experiment a failure, you have to understand how innovation works,” wrote Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun in a blog post. “Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation. We are seeing significant improvement outcomes and student engagement. And we know from our data that there is much more to be done.”

The number of at-risk students taking SUSJ Plus courses in the spring is one factor school officials point to as a possible reason for the low pass rates. Officials also suggest that a more diverse student enrollment in the summer, when 71% of the students were from outside the state of California, may be part of the reason for a higher pass rate.

SJSU and Udacity also made improvements to the pilots between sessions and added more tools to gauge student performance. However, the SJSU Plus will remain on hold through the fall.

“There is no disruption,” SJSU Provost Ellen Junn wrote in a statement. “The main reason is we wanted to take time to review all the data, to debrief with the faculty, to make sure that we’re following all the procedures on campus and just taking due diligence.”

iPad Pilot Begins at CSUN

California State University at Northridge (CSUN) invited 1,800 of its students to join its MyCSUNtablet Initiative, a pilot program designed to cut textbook costs on campus.

Student volunteers are able to access e-texts, apps, and other learning materials after buying an iPad through a CSUN partnership with Apple or using a device they already happen to own. The program is offering classes in seven CSUN majors and will be assessed on how well the devices and digital course materials help students learn.

“What we want to do is get out of the grasp of the publishers of this stuff,” CSUN Provost Harry Hellenbrand told the Los Angeles Daily News. “I figure our bookstore will disappear in 10 years, with the money deferred to portable devices and service contracts.”

CSUN officials say students will only need to take three classes to break even on the cost of the iPad assuming professors design and furnish free digital course materials. They also suggest e-books are available for purchase for $12-$15, although that is not always the case.

“No, no, no. We’ll never get rid of the bookstore,” countered Paul Schwantz, director or web and tech services at the school. “We will always need CSUN sweaters. I think some of the books will be around for a long time as well, because some people always want books.”

Not to mention the program directs students to the Matador Bookstore to purchase their iPads.

'Textbook-Free' Degree Being Offered

Tidewater Community College (TCC), with branches in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach, VA, is planning to offer an associate of science degree program in business administration that won’t require the purchase of any textbooks. The school says it’s the first program of its kind and could reduce the cost of the degree by a third.

“I think we have a responsibility as a college to do what we can to help control the costs of textbooks, because we know there are students who can’t afford them,” Daniel T. DeMarte, TCC vice president for academic affairs and chief academic officer told eCampus News. “We know there are students who are not successful because they can’t afford them.”

The fall pilot will use open educational resources (OER) instead of traditional textbooks, a move the college estimates will save students who complete the degree about $2,000. Additional academic advising will also be made available to students in the OER courses.

“When a student hears it’s a textbook-free course, that doesn’t mean they don’t have to read,” said Kimberly Bovee, associate vice president for strategic learning initiatives at TCC. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have to engage in the course material and maybe read even more than they’re used to.”

Virginia State University, Petersburg, already uses open digital textbooks in all of the core courses in its business program, while the state community college system is trying to expand the OER courses offered through grants to instructors who develop material for high-enrollment classes that can be shared across the system.

“I think it’s one of the biggest rip-offs in this business,” Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia community college system, said of the cost of textbooks. “I say that not as a chancellor: I say it as a father who just had to give his daughter 600 bucks to buy this semester’s textbooks at a public university.”

Testing Ways to Make MOOCs Work

The state of California is taking a look at how massive open online courses (MOOCs) can provide credit for students and revenue for its institutions. A deal between San Jose State University and Udacity to test courses for credit and a fee comes at a the same time the community college system is exploring how MOOCs can help the hundreds of thousands of students who have been unable to enroll because of cuts in government funding.

At San Jose State, a pilot program has been created for three entry-level courses—math, elementary statistics, and college algebra—that allows students to take the Udacity online course and earn academic credit. The cost is $150 per student with the pilot limiting enrollment to 100 students per course. It’s hoped the program can help students succeed in remedial courses that often have long waiting lists and high failure rates.

The courses are designed by SJSU professors and use the Udacity online platform. The MOOCs will include videos that let students work at their own pace, while mentors will be available for student sessions, according to a report in eCampus News.

“This could be not the solution, but the key part of the solution,” said Gov. Jerry Brown at a press conference. “We know that, because of the billions we’re spending on schools, we have the right to better results.”

The community college effort includes “challenge exams” that allow students to prove they can pass for credit. The MOOCs would prepare students for the exams and providers could modify the course to the exam.

While some community college faculty members have voiced concerns about the initiative, the Academic Senate, which represents community college instructors, is so far satisfied with the system’s approach.

“We have a good dialogue with the chancellor’s office,” said Michelle Pilati, president of the Academic Senate and professor of psychology at Rio Hondo College. “As far as we know, there is nothing moving forward that we would take issue with.”

E-Text Pilot Results Point Out Areas to Improve

Brian Jacobs, founder and president of the virtual bookstore and marketplace Akademos, was anxious to review the results from an e-textbook pilot done last spring at five universities, but not surprised when they proved to be less than positive. The results simply highlighted improvements to digital course materials that are necessary going forward.

According to Jacobs, the primary development must come in interactivity. It’s not enough to digitally highlight content; the material needs to offer more than its print counterpart and faculty must be willing to take the lead in producing the annotations.

“A successful digital initiative will be one in which the faculty is strongly committed to actively participating in working with course materials—when  the course materials act not as passive appendages to classroom teaching but rather as direct extensions of that teaching itself; when they are less interchangeable commodities and more directly reflective of the learning environment itself (the institution or the classroom),” Jacobs wrote in this blog post.

Jacobs said he also believes limiting access through digital rights management must change and that lower pricing of digital content is not enough in itself. Lower cost is important, but the device used must also provide a satisfactory experience for users.

“What this e-textbook study and others like it tell us is that the technology of the textbook—with its physical interactivity, rich graphics, and tactile experience—raises the digital transition threshold for study materials well beyond what it is for general reading books,” Jacobs continued. “And that’s probably a good thing, for when the transition comes (and it will), it should be one that fundamentally changes not only course materials but the very relations of teacher, student, and text.”

Pearson, McGraw-Hill Launch Learning Initiatives

Pearson and McGraw-Hill Education recently unveiled new approaches designed to help college students learn more efficiently.

Pearson launched its Project Blue Sky search engine, which is intended to make it easier for instructors to find electronic course materials. Pearson hopes its search engine will fill a need demanded by faculty, while making sure its own content catalog is in front of educators searching for open educational resources (OER).

“We clearly believe our content is superior to OER content, but we recognize there is a place for OER in the current environment,” said Don Kilburn, vice chairman of Pearson’s higher education division, in an Inside Higher Education article. “If we can’t compete effectively there, we have a bigger problem.”

Then, McGraw-Hill Education unveiled its Digital Learning Partnership Program, which will be available for implementation by fall 2013. The program is an extension of the pilot program being used this fall at 25 colleges and universities across the country. Instructors can choose materials from McGraw-Hill’s e-textbook partners and institutions are able to select e-book vendor, price structure, and length of subscription.

“Finding new ways to make course materials more affordable to students is a core focus of this program, but the ultimate goal is helping universities and students transition to digital in ways that encourage deeper learning, better pass rates, and higher rates of retention,” said Tom Malek, vice president of learning solutions and services, in a press release. “Over the last few years, we’ve collaborated on several pilot programs that have enabled us to learn a lot about digital readiness, preferences, and needs of institutions and students.”

Accessibility Still Lacking to NFB

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has accused Educause and Internet2 of ignoring the needs of print-disabled students in e-book pilots in progress on more than 20 campuses across the country this fall. The criticism caught the pilot developers by surprise since they thought they were collaborating with the NFB on the project.

The criticism was leveled, in part, because a review of the original pilot done by Disability Services at the University of Minnesota recommended the school drop out of the program because of its use of PDF formats that wouldn’t work with adaptive technology such as text-to-voice software.

“The initial problem was the way the content is packaged and delivered, but it really [goes] beyond that, to the affordances that are built into the package as well,” said Brad Cohen, associate chief information officer for academic technology at the University of Minnesota.

The NFB criticism is an attempt to pressure organizers to add accessibility requirements into any platform used to deliver e-books, according to NFB President Marc Maurer, who added he would be satisfied to know what accessibility plans will be going forward.

“There has to be a deadline by which time they expect the system to be accessible to blind professors and students,” he said. “It can’t be 25 years from now. A couple of years would suit me. I’d be glad to have it sooner than that.”

Educause and Internet2 claimed in an e-mail to Campus Technology, “Given the rapid change in how technology is deployed—students often bring it rather than campuses providing it—it is critical to experiment with new ways to provide course materials. Inevitably, some of those experiments fall short. However, rejecting experimentation does not solve the problem.”

The tiff could be an opportunity for publishers to become more involved. Mickey Levitan, CEO of Courseload, which provides an e-reading platform for the pilot, said he believes accessibility is a “shared interest” between tech firms and publishers.

“These are very complex issues that will have to be resolved with collaboration of all the key parties,” he said. “I don’t think that this is going to fall unduly on any one of those groups, but its clear that its going to have to be a collaborative multipronged effort if we’re going to make progress possible.”

MOOCs on a Smaller Scale

Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have become big news in higher education. Tens of thousands of students are taking advantage of the free, not-for-credit courses offered by some of the most prestigious universities in the nation.

Now, throw LOOCs and anti-MOOCs into the mix.

LOOCs, or little open online courses, are being tested at the University of Maine, Presque Isle. The pilot program, called OpenU, offers four online courses open to between two and seven online students for free, in addition to the regular paying students taking the class. The online students get no formal credit for completing the course, but, unlike MOOCs, can receive personalized responses from instructors on assignments and tests.

“Students are not paying, but they are getting the full experience,” said Presque Isle Provost Michael Sonntag in an article about the program in Inside Higher Education. “If they want to write every paper and take every test, our faculty members have agreed to give them feedback.”

There are even ways for students to receive some credit for the course. OpenU students can earn up to six credit hours through the UMPI prior-learning program if they enroll in the school, according to the university web site.

The UnderAcademy College appears at first to be a joke, with courses such as Grammar Porn and Underwater Procrastination and Advance Desublimation Techniques. However, it is also “offering serious content taught by professors at some well-known institutions,” according to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

UnderAcademy offers classes limited to 15 students. The goal is to deliver quality liberal arts and humanity classes by providing “students with the opportunity to focus on the process of learning and control the courses themselves rather than worry about the end product,” Talan Memmott, founder of UnderAcademy and lecturer of digital culture and communications at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden, wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle.

“Based on some spirit of humor that seemed to underlie everything, I assumed it was largely a joke,” said Mark C. Marino, associate professor of writing at the University of Southern California, who taught his “Grammar Porn” class last spring. “But Talan would say that this project is research into alternative pedagogical practices that are collaborative, less hierarchical, and take place online. That piqued my interest.”

Print-On-Demand Opportunity to Pilot

NACS Media Solutions (NMS) is seeking up to 25 college stores to participate in the next stage of its regional print-on-demand network service. NMS is trying to evaluate and fine-tune its R-POD network, which has been created to fulfill orders within two days and afford lower shipping costs through a regional print model.

To participate in the pilot program, college stores must have rights-negotiated content to print through the R-POD network and be willing to provide feedback. NMS does not provide any content licensing services.

Content will be submitted to NMS for inclusion in the POD catalog. The content can remain private and accessible only to the store submitting it, or can be public, depending on the option specified by each store in the pilot.

For formatting requirements and addition Regional POD information, go to www.nacsmediasolutions.com. To participate, contact Veronica Gancov, digital media project manager, at vgancov@nacs.org or (800) 622-7498, ext. 2343.