#loocs

Amid all the MOOC mania, the University of Maine at Presque Isle is attempting a different kind of free online offering—one that would swap the scale of a MOOC for the high-touch experience of a conventional online course.

Michael Sonntag, the provost, calls it a “LOOC”: a little open online course.

Small-scale open courses are not an entirely new concept; David Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, began including small groups of non-enrolled learners in an online course at Utah State University when he taught there in 2007.

While Wiley’s foray was an individual effort, Presque Isle’s open courses are an institutional initiative. Officials at the university say they want to experiment with open teaching to the extent that its modest resources will allow. 

We can’t compete with Stanford and the MOOCs” on scale and prestige, says Ray Rice, the coordinator of the OpenU project. But what Presque Isle can offer, says Rice, is a sort of anti-MOOC experience for non-paying students: one that is identical in nearly every way to that of tuition-paying students who are enrolled at the university. "In fact, the OpenU students will learn side-by-side, virtually speaking, with Presque Isle students who are taking the courses for credit."

The lack of “scalability” in the Presque Isle experiment makes it much less significant than the MOOCs as far as redrawing the economics of higher education. But it could shed light on some issues relevant to open education in general. For instance, how important is brand prestige in generating interest in an open course? And how crucial is student accountability and regular contact with an instructor in such courses to performance and attrition rates?

The great impasse of the “MOOC” movement is idea that massive open online courses can never fully replicate the experience of a normal course. It is a matter of simple economics: professors cannot give tens of thousands of students their individual attention. They cannot apply an expert critique to every essay. They cannot hound them if they are not keeping up with the work. In the absence of such instructional rigor, the high-profile universities that have so far signed up to offer MOOCs say they cannot in good conscience give institutional credit to even their most successful MOOC students.

Presque Isle’s project has no burden of massiveness. That means both instructional rigor and pathways to credit are potentially on the table.

Amid all the MOOC mania, the University of Maine at Presque Isle is attempting a different kind of free online offering—one that would swap the scale of a MOOC for the high-touch experience of a conventional online course.

Michael Sonntag, the provost, calls it a “LOOC”: a little open online course.

Small-scale open courses are not an entirely new concept; David Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, began including small groups of non-enrolled learners in an online course at Utah State University when he taught there in 2007.

While Wiley’s foray was an individual effort, Presque Isle’s open courses are an institutional initiative. Officials at the university say they want to experiment with open teaching to the extent that its modest resources will allow. 

We can’t compete with Stanford and the MOOCs” on scale and prestige, says Ray Rice, the coordinator of the OpenU project. But what Presque Isle can offer, says Rice, is a sort of anti-MOOC experience for non-paying students: one that is identical in nearly every way to that of tuition-paying students who are enrolled at the university. "In fact, the OpenU students will learn side-by-side, virtually speaking, with Presque Isle students who are taking the courses for credit."

The lack of “scalability” in the Presque Isle experiment makes it much less significant than the MOOCs as far as redrawing the economics of higher education. But it could shed light on some issues relevant to open education in general. For instance, how important is brand prestige in generating interest in an open course? And how crucial is student accountability and regular contact with an instructor in such courses to performance and attrition rates?

The great impasse of the “MOOC” movement is idea that massive open online courses can never fully replicate the experience of a normal course. It is a matter of simple economics: professors cannot give tens of thousands of students their individual attention. They cannot apply an expert critique to every essay. They cannot hound them if they are not keeping up with the work. In the absence of such instructional rigor, the high-profile universities that have so far signed up to offer MOOCs say they cannot in good conscience give institutional credit to even their most successful MOOC students.

Presque Isle’s project has no burden of massiveness. That means both instructional rigor and pathways to credit are potentially on the table.

Amid all the MOOC mania, the University of Maine at Presque Isle is attempting a different kind of free online offering—one that would swap the scale of a MOOC for the high-touch experience of a conventional online course.

Michael Sonntag, the provost, calls it a “LOOC”: a little open online course.

Small-scale open courses are not an entirely new concept; David Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, began including small groups of non-enrolled learners in an online course at Utah State University when he taught there in 2007.

While Wiley’s foray was an individual effort, Presque Isle’s open courses are an institutional initiative. Officials at the university say they want to experiment with open teaching to the extent that its modest resources will allow. 

We can’t compete with Stanford and the MOOCs” on scale and prestige, says Ray Rice, the coordinator of the OpenU project. But what Presque Isle can offer, says Rice, is a sort of anti-MOOC experience for non-paying students: one that is identical in nearly every way to that of tuition-paying students who are enrolled at the university. "In fact, the OpenU students will learn side-by-side, virtually speaking, with Presque Isle students who are taking the courses for credit."

The lack of “scalability” in the Presque Isle experiment makes it much less significant than the MOOCs as far as redrawing the economics of higher education. But it could shed light on some issues relevant to open education in general. For instance, how important is brand prestige in generating interest in an open course? And how crucial is student accountability and regular contact with an instructor in such courses to performance and attrition rates?

The great impasse of the “MOOC” movement is idea that massive open online courses can never fully replicate the experience of a normal course. It is a matter of simple economics: professors cannot give tens of thousands of students their individual attention. They cannot apply an expert critique to every essay. They cannot hound them if they are not keeping up with the work. In the absence of such instructional rigor, the high-profile universities that have so far signed up to offer MOOCs say they cannot in good conscience give institutional credit to even their most successful MOOC students.

Presque Isle’s project has no burden of massiveness. That means both instructional rigor and pathways to credit are potentially on the table.