{"id":10706,"date":"2013-05-02T17:02:10","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T23:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=10706"},"modified":"2013-05-02T20:12:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T02:12:23","slug":"moocs-dominate-faculty-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=10706","title":{"rendered":"MOOCs dominate faculty discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Chamillard, associate professor, College of Engineering and Applied Science, is ready to take the plunge into the latest trend sweeping higher education, Massive Open Online Courses or, MOOC, for short.<\/p>\n

\"Tim<\/a>
Tim Chamillard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chamillard will be the first UCCS faculty member to offer a course without tuition or traditional enrollment processes. He plans to offer the course this fall and is excited about the potential, sharing his enthusiasm and concerns with faculty and staff who attended a May 1 forum in the University Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to talk about attrition,\u201d Chamillard said. \u201cYou start off with 160,000 and only 10 percent of them finish. So that\u2019s only<\/i> 16,000 people who learn new stuff that otherwise wouldn\u2019t have access to it. That\u2019s bigger than any classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chamillard\u2019s course in beginning game programming is laden with the writing of computer code. He quickly admits it won\u2019t be for everyone and may initially attract those more interested in playing \u201cPlants vs. Zombies\u201d than developing the sophisticated programming that makes such games work.<\/p>\n

Bursting onto the scene in the past 18 months at universities such as Harvard, Stanford and MIT, MOOCs have the potential to change the paradigm of higher education. The courses are free and available to anyone with a computer and internet connection across the globe. Thousands — or hundreds of thousands — of students enroll for reasons that range from personal knowledge or entertainment to earning college credit.<\/p>\n

The idea of free classes that are open to anyone with interest, without prerequisites, and with students located all over the world, is difficult to grasp and prompted questions about the role of faculty, how students learn, and how that learning is assessed emerged in Wednesday\u2019s forum.<\/p>\n

While the concepts of assessment, grading and the economics of offering courses on such a large scale are still evolving, UCCS administrators urged faculty to \u201cget on board\u201d before all questions are answered and destinations determined.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s stipulate that MOOCs are not the same learning experience as an in-classroom experience,\u201d Chamillard said. \u201cOne of the biggest problems is that if I get 10,000 students, I will not grade their assignments! It\u2019s just not going to happen. You can\u2019t do it. You can\u2019t scale up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Different was a consistent theme.<\/p>\n

\"Venkat<\/a>
Venkat Reddy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIn fall 2011, our campus launched four undergraduate degree completion programs in business, criminal justice, health sciences and nursing.\u00a0 Since then, these programs attracted over 3,500 enrollments with minimal to no marketing.\u00a0 This shows the pent up demand for online programs and classes from our students,\u201d Venkat Reddy, dean, College of Business, \u00a0and executive director of online program development, said. \u00a0\u201cThrough these degree completion programs we are helping a student who graduated from Lamar community college complete her undergraduate degree in nursing without leaving her community.\u201d<\/p>\n

CU Boulder recently joined a MOOC consortium and CU is considering a system-wide contract to provide faculty members tools needed to present a sophisticated MOOC experience. At Boulder, four courses quickly enrolled 36,000 students.<\/p>\n

Plans are underway for a Blackboard course for faculty who are interested in learning more about MOOCs or online education in general. Faculty interested in receiving more information should contact \u00a0Kelli Klebe, dean, Graduate School, kklebe@uccs.edu<\/a>, or KrisAnn McBroom, administrative assistant, Graduate School, kmcbroom@uccs.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To see a video about MOOCs shown at the forum, see<\/p>\n