Posts tagged MOOC
Sign up for the open online course “Developing mathematics: The early years”
Jan 18th
I am leading a MOOC (massive open online course) this Spring. The sign-up is open January 17-22 at P2PU School of Math Future:
http://p2pu.org/en/groups/
The course is offered for credit to Arcadia University students, and for School of Math Future completion certificate to everybody. It has the following overarching themes:
- Personally meaningful and relevant mathematics achieved through projects, games, problem-posing and problem-solving.
- Computer-based mathematics, including interactive simulations, modeling tools, solvers, and children programming platforms.
- Lifelong learning for teachers, with the focus of online communities and networks for teacher support, and building your personal learning networks
You can learn more about MOOCs here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Join the adventure, and spread the word!
90-9-1
Feb 21st
When people first organize online experiences, they are frequently alarmed by phenomena that veterans expect. For example, you start a short open course online and you send the word out through your networks. A hundred people finish the sign-up task and become members. How many do you expect will respond to an assignment three weeks down the road?
Most people who buy books never read past the first few pages. Most people online lurk rather than participate actively. In the majority of situations, only about ten percent of people who sign up for online participation will contribute anything whatsoever at all, and about one percent contribute actively. If you have different distribution, your situation is special and you need to be sharing what it is you are doing!
The power law describes the distribution of contributions by members of most communities. Most recently, I encountered it in P2PU (peer-to-peer university), where School of the Mathematical Future offers its courses. Here is the discussion about School of Webcraft data, and a typical graph from it:
A newbie, looking at this graph, may think it unbalanced and problematic. But this is actually a course that is doing better than is normal! About a third of people are actively contributing, versus the typical ten percent. And that one person who does more talking than anyone else? It is a role someone has to play!
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