MASSIVE OPEN ON-LINE
COURSES (MOOCS)
Faculty Council
December 2012
Bruce W. Carney
Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost
A brief (and incomplete) history
 The Khan Academy. Free on-line brief lectures
prepared by Salman Khan has evolved into an
enterprise with 3500 videos. The total number of
lessons delivered exceeds two hundred million.
www.khanacademy.org
 The effort is funded by foundations and individuals;
volunteers act as coaches and teachers.
 The lessons are quite good, although they’re
necessarily static.
The next steps
 Salman Khan  Sebastian Thrun + Peter Norvig.
 July 2011 on-line course in Artificial Intelligence.
 160,000 enrolled; 28,000 completed.
 Top 1,000 students were asked for resumes.
 Three major platforms emerged quickly.
• With funding from Charles River Associates, Thrun
founded Udacity.
• Courses, assessments, certificates are free.
• Focus is on STEM courses.
• Revenue generation uncertain but may come from
modest per-student costs for tutoring, authenticated
certificates, advertising, or, most likely, career
placement services.
www.udacity.com
• Dec 2011: MITx; May 2012: joined by Harvard, each
investing. $30M. UC Berkeley, Univ. of Texas
system, and Wellesley have also joined. Non-profit,
led by Anant Agarwal from MIT.
• The first course enrolled 122,000 students.
• The revenue model has not been developed or,
at least, it has not been revealed.
• Courses have fixed terms, unlike Udacity.
• Class discussion boards, automated assessment,
lectures and quizzes. Cannot handle essays etc. yet.
https://www.edx.org
• Founded by Daphne Koller & Andrew Ng (Jan 2012)
• It is a for-profit company, with significant backing,
and appears to be driven to provide a larger suite
of courses. The business model is unclear.
• It partners only with “elite” universities, mostly
schools in the U.S., and comparable foreign schools.
• Coursera is primarily a platform, with faculty
at member universities developing and
delivering course content, exams, etc.
https://www.coursera.org
Comparison of Course Offerings
FIELDS
Coursera (199)
Udacity (18)
edX (8)
Computer Science
37
13
7
Other STEM
53
4
0
Bus./Finance/Econ.
23
1
0
Environmental Sci.
9
0
0
Social Sciences
15
0
0
Languages
0
0
0
Humanities/Arts
20
0
0
Health Affairs
39
0
1
Education
2
0
0
Law
1
0
0
Issues requiring consideration
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Quality of instruction: are static courses
suitable, especially if they’re not residential?
Can student-only discussion groups work?
Credentialing the courses.
Course credit? Beginning to emerge in high
schools and now at Antioch University.
Revenue generation?
How can development of such courses improve
our residential courses, our new hybrid courses
in particular?
Why should we engage?
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Work with peer universities to learn how to
provide quality on-line education, whether it’s to
build up our “brand” or to provide major
national and international public service.
Learn how to redesign our own courses.
Be part of the rapidly-evolving higher education
endeavor.
What are we doing vis-à-vis MOOCs?
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Conversations with the deans — identify
a set of courses for initial offering.
Establish an advisory committee to help
us identify opportunities and risks, both
financial and instructional.
Are there selective, revenue-generating
opportunities for us beyond the
platforms desribed earlier?
Provost’s Task Force on MOOCs: Goals
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Direct the development of 3-5 MOOCs.
Develop quality standards and a process for
reviewing, approving, and establishing MOOCs
at UNC-CH.
Evaluate infrastructure needs.
Explore development of MOOCs for
improvements to residential courses,
continuing education, and supplemental
academic support.
Would like to deliver some by Fall 2013.
Provost’s Task Force on MOOCs: Membership
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Carol Tresolini, Chair (Vice Provost)
Valerie Ashby (Chemistry)
Rob Bruce (Friday Center)
Larry Conrad (ITS)
Mike Crimmins (Arts & Sciences)
Gary Marchionini (SILS)
Bill McDiarmid (Education)
Sarah Michalak (Library)
Eric Muller (Law; Center for Faculty Excellence)
John Paul (Public Health)
Dwayne Pinkney (Vice Provost)
Doug Shackleford (Kenan-Flagler Business School)
Louise Spieler (Journalism)
Graduate On-line Courses at UNC
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2tor partnership: MBA@UNC. Small
classes; mostly synchronous learning;
equivalent to residential experience.
Expensive: $89,000 for two years. 2tor
does the recruiting; we control
admissions; content; delivery.
2nd 2tor partnership: MPA@UNC. A very
similar program set up in the School of
Government.
Undergraduate On-line Courses at UNC
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2U (= 2tor) Semester On-line (SON)
Synchronous instruction in small
classes for credit.
Announced partners are Brandeis,
Duke, Emory, Northwestern, Notre
Dame, Rochester, UNC-CH, Vanderbilt,
and Wake Forest.
MOU signed November 20, 2012.
Undergraduate On-line Courses at UNC
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Cost to students is $1400/credit hour.
Universities may limit the number of
their students taking such classes.
We will be offering a few classes, but via
the Kenan-Flagler Business School.
For UNC, this business model probably
cannot work at large scale.