Katherine Thompson
Associate Registrar, College of DuPage
IACAC
March 6, 2014
 Massive
 Open to several hundred or several thousand students
 no seat caps
 Open
 No admission or enrollment requirements
 open to anyone with access to the internet
 Online
 No travel
 no classroom
 Courses
 A number of lectures and activities in a specific subject area
IACAC, 2014
 2007 – 1st MOOCs
 Experiment to serve large numbers of students in online
courses
 Graduate level courses in education
 Utilized blogs and wikis
 2008 – the 1st course to be called a MOOC
 Graduate course open to students paying for credit and
anyone else for free
 2300 people enrolled
 Flexible design and non-credit option made it possible
for students to make the course work for them
IACAC, 2014
 180+ institutions in 20 countries offer MOOCs
 The majority are still offered for Free
 Certificates of Completion
 Coursera’s Signature Track offers identity verification
and proctored exam for a fee
 Offered for credit
 Excelsior College Credit-by-Exam program
 Georgia Institute of Technology, offering MOOC
Computer Science Masters degree in 2014
 ACE has recommended 5 MOOCs for credit, and has a
grant to review more
IACAC, 2014
 ACE has recommended the following courses for credit
 Pre-Calculus, University of California at Irvine
 3 hours lower division mathematics
 Introduction to Genetics and Evaluation, Duke University
 2 hours lower division biology or general science
 Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach, Duke University
 2 hours upper division biology or biomedical engineering
 Calculus: Single Variable, University of Pennsylvania
 3 hours lower division mathematics
 Algebra (developmental), University of California at Irvine
 3 hours developmental math; does not meet general education
requirements
IACAC, 2014
 Google “MOOC” and you get:
 September 2013, 3 million results
 October 2013, 4.9 million results
 March 2014, 33.9 million results
 Everyone has an opinion




MOOCs will be the downfall of higher education
Only the Top 10 institutions will survive
MOOCs will save higher education
MOOCs are nothing but a passing fancy
 There is a lot of hype and a lot of negativity, some of
which is coming from the same sources.
IACAC, 2014
IACAC, 2014
 Accessibility
 High-demand courses (California)
 Affordability
 Unfunded financial aid programs
 High cost of borrowing
IACAC, 2014
 Retention & Completion rates average 10%
 Identity Verification
 Learning Assessment
 Awarding Credit
 Transcription and Credit Verification
 Do MOOCs have a student code of conduct?
IACAC, 2014
 Proponents claim MOOCs
are the solution for:
 Low-income
 often 1st generation
 Remedial courses
 Introductory courses
IACAC, 2014
 Educators say online courses
are best for:
 Motivated students
 Self-starters
 Organized & disciplined
students
 Those with good time
management skills
 Self-learners
 Those who need little or no
personal interaction to stay
engaged
 University of Pennsylvania Study
 35,000 responses from MOOC students who
completed at least 1 lecture
 34% come from the US
 24% were age 30 and under
 the majority of students were 51+
 6.6% were unemployed
 86% already have a college degree
IACAC, 2014
 50% Personal Enrichment (fun)
 44% Skill building for their current job
 17% Skill building to get a new job
 13% To gain knowledge toward a degree
IACAC, 2014
 64% said MOOCs could eventually reduce the cost of a




college degree at their institution
86% said MOOCs could eventually reduce the cost of a
degree in general
72% said MOOC students do not deserve credit from
their institution
66% said their institution is unlikely to award credit
79% said MOOCs are worth the hype
IACAC, 2014
 81% said teaching a MOOC caused them to divert time
from other duties such as research, committee service,
traditional teaching
 Nearly ½ thought their MOOC wasn’t as rigorous as the
traditional version
 But they designed it
 The average MOOC requires 100 hours of faculty
preparation, and 10 hours a week when course is in session
 15% taught a MOOC at the behest of a superior
 2/3 of faculty were tenured
 Most faculty had no prior experience with online teaching
IACAC, 2014
 Altruism – a desire to increase access to higher
education
 Didn’t want to be left behind the trend
 Increase their own visibility
 39% among colleagues within their discipline
 34% with the media and general public
 Improve their classroom teaching (38%)
 Elite faculty wanted to remain elite in a new domain
 Increase in pay - 6% hoped for a raise
 1 faculty member taught a MOOC to help get tenure
IACAC, 2014
 MOOCs are Free
 100 hours of faculty time to create
 10 hours a week to teach
 Up to $200,000 to launch a MOOC
 While faculty aren’t being compensated for teaching a
MOOC, the institution is paying to launching it
IACAC, 2014
 Enhanced rigor of online courses
 Ability to build and conduct online courses with much
higher seat caps
 Automated assessment tools
 Flip-the-Classroom, Hybrid courses
IACAC, 2014
1.
2.
Excelsior College, Credit-by-Exam
Georgia Institution of Technology
 Master degree in computer science
3.
University of Maryland University College
 6 introductory courses
 proctored exam, or prior learning assessment
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Central Michigan University
Western Carolina University
State University of New York Empire State College
Kaplan University
American Public University
Regis University
IACAC, 2014
“Problems arise only when we think of MOOCs as university
courses rather than as learning for the masses.”
IACAC, 2014
Katherine Thompson
Associate Registrar
College of DuPage
thompsnk@cod.edu
Sources available upon request
IACAC, 2014