Can MOOCs Reduce Teaching Costs and Provide High
Quality Undergraduate Education?
Uday Sukhatme
“Reinventing Higher Education” Leadership Forum, May 30, 2013
High School
Students
Undergraduate
Education
•
•
•
•
•
•
Careers,
Employment
What high school students want
What employers want
How universities provide desired learning outcomes
My MOOC experience
Comparison of 4 course delivery approaches
Conclusions
Leading MOOC providers - Massive Open Online Courses
What high school students want
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
High quality programs/courses
Learn new things, intellectual excitement
Low cost education
New friendships with students/faculty
Internships, real-life experiences
Become an independent adult
Degree and future careers/employment
Community, campus, social life
Convenience, flexibility
Dreams for a bright future
What employers want (undergraduate learning outcomes)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Communication skills (verbal, written)
Quantitative reasoning
Critical thinking
Integration and application of knowledge
Intellectual depth, breadth, adaptiveness
Understanding society and culture
Values and ethics
Employers, employees
How universities provide desired learning outcomes
•
Courses deliver disciplinary content + high impact co-curricular experiences (RISE = Research,
International study abroad, Service learning, Experiential learning)
•
Courses have interactive aspects like recitations, labs, seminars, discussions, but also much less
interactive aspects like large lectures.
•
Interactive aspects of learning are best handled in face-to-face interactions.
•
Videos of lectures would be an effective way of saving money, as well as freeing up time for other
learning activities like the flipped class room.
•
Technology allows one to progress from a paper text, to e-text, to e-texts with embedded lectures
and animations.
•
Since the cost of higher education is a major concern, ask if MOOCs can be used to reduce
educational costs?
Less interactive learning (large lectures)
Interactive learning (undergraduate research)
My MOOC experience
edX Stat 2.2x
UC Berkeley
General Setup
•
Free 5-week course in probability – second of a 3-course sequence
•
Professor, graduate assistant, undergraduate student + edX infrastructure
•
Courseware (video lectures, 8 homework sets, exams – all open book)
•
Discussion forum (student questions, comments)
•
Wiki (e-text, formulas)
•
Progress (homework 30%, midterm 20%, final 50% - passing score is 40%)
•
Computer graded questions – numerical answers – 2 tries
•
Course Information (from Statistics 2.1x) - 50K students from all countries;
10K took exams; 8K completion certificates. Curiosity and free enrollment
partly responsible for low completion rate.
My MOOC experience
Observations
•
Technology worked very well, but not for all students - frustrating
•
Online lectures very well-delivered – excellent content
•
Can go over lecture multiple times – pause, slow and fast speeds
•
Convenience of working at any hour – very good online text
•
Instant feedback on “course standing” was an encouragement
•
No feedback on mistakes made in homework and exams
•
Discussion forum was very low quality – went on tangents – incorrect,
unreliable responses from fellow students – philosophical digressions –
professors, staff rarely participated – same students responded - no
bonding/friendships formed - no advising services
•
To do really well, needs self-motivation and hard work, but passing a class
with 40% score is not a big barrier
•
Academic honesty difficult to control
A lonely experience
Comparison of 4 course delivery approaches
Consider an introductory physics course, delivered via 4 approaches. Just look at the theoretical
learning component. The laboratory learning component is not included here.
Teaching hours per week
Expected academic value
for motivated student
Teaching
approach
Classroom
lecture
Recitation
Preparation
Expected cost
High ability
students
Average
students
Standard
3
1
12
16
Very good
Good
Flipped classroom
0
3
9
12
Excellent
Very good
Facilitate an
available good
MOOC course
0
2
6
8
Very good
Good
Give credit for
completed MOOC
0
0
1
1
Good
Modest
Cost reduction can be substantial - will be very discipline and course-dependent.
Conclusions
•
MOOCs do not help develop the people skills or provide many of the in depth learning outcomes which
employers and high school students are seeking.
•
Online lectures can help reduce costs by substituting for the less interactive aspects of teaching in
certain courses, particularly large lectures. They do offer convenience for students – savings in time
and travel.
•
Hybrid teaching approaches which make judicious use of high quality MOOC lectures as enhanced etexts will reduce costs while maintaining good learning outcomes for disciplinary content.
The best of both worlds at lesser cost