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__MOOCs in High School__

High school use MOOCs as free resource to supplement their curriculum and allow students to customize their learning. Also, completion if MOOCs is a great indicator that students are ready for college-level courses.

Some MOOCs are self-study allowing students to work at their own pace. However, most MOOCs are deadline driven and challenging - requiring from students fair amount of time and commitment. Based on our experience, students are drawn to take MOOCs and determined to complete them with a goal to receive a Statement of Accomplishment from the Ivy League universities to add them to their college portfolios.

Broward College offers a MOOC as a primer in college-level reading, writing and math to help students prepare for a state-required college readiness exam. Since the course began in June, half of the participants have been Broward County high school students. With a $300,000 state Department of Education grant, the college is developing additional MOOCs that are game-based and aimed at increasing college readiness. Those courses should be available statewide in fall 2014. - See more at: [|__http://www.redefinedonline.org/2013/12/high-school-students-try-out-moocs/#sthash.WQ6xGOy0.dpuf__]

Some MOOCs are projected to be offered for credit with online proctored exams

Usually information in MOOCs delivered in 15-minute segments and paused to offer students quizzes.

It’s not easy for high school students to complete online courses - it requires a great deal of organizational skills.

MOOCs usually have high dropout rate, which is not acceptable in K-12 setting. Two of Poly students found it challenging to finish Python course programming assignments, so we encouraged them to take only watch videos and take quizzes.

Robin Worley, a distance-­learning project for Kamehameha Schools, a private college-prep school in Hawaii, created a website k12mooc.org

Jennifer Whiting from Florida Virtual School is convinced that it takes a “caring, interactive teacher” to make a successful student. “That teacher forms a relationship with the student that I don’t think we’re going to get in MOOCs.” []

Coursera, a major MOOC provider, has no current plans to create classes for K–12 students, according to co-founder Andrew Ng. “We are aware that many students at the high school level have been taking courses on Coursera to prepare for college or to gain extra knowledge in topics of interest,” he says. “We do not view MOOCs as a full replacement for traditional education; how­ever, we believe that traditional learning approaches can be improved by implementing education technologies such as online learning to promote better learning outcomes and meet the needs of students at various levels.”

“The Center for Online Learning, Research and Service is studying the effectiveness of MOOC teaching methods, part of the wide-ranging American Council on Education research study on ­whether MOOCs are worthy of college credit. Eventually, the study will track university students to see how those who used MOOCs did compared with those who took conventional courses.”

In Miami-Dade, G. Holmes Braddock Senior High School is piloting a MOOC in computer science. The University of Miami’s Global Academy, an online middle and high school, is offering MOOCs to help students prepare for the Advanced Placement calculus exam and the SAT subject test in biology.

“More high school students in Florida are taking advantage of massive open online courses, or MOOCs”

Read more here: [|__http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/07/3738068/more-high-school-students-in-florida.html#storylink=cpy__]

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“High-school students in Pinellas County are enrolled in a remedial math MOOC offered by St. Petersburg College.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Similarly, Broward College is offering a new MOOC focusing on college-level reading, writing, and math. Half of enrollees are high school students from Broward County, state education officials said.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Broward College is working on additional game-based MOOCs that will be available next year.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">House Education Committee Chairwoman Marlene O’Toole, R-Lady Lake, stressed that massive open online courses were not requirements, but options for Florida students looking to enhance their education.”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/07/3738068/more-high-school-students-in-florida.html#storylink=cpy

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought [|__http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/us/after-setbacks-online-courses-are-rethought.html?_r=0__]

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“A study of a million users of massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, released this month by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education found that, on average, only about half of those who registered for a course ever viewed a lecture, and only about 4 percent completed the courses.”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But a separate survey from the University of Pennsylvania released last month found that about 80 percent of those taking the university’s MOOCs had already earned a degree of some kind. [|__http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2350964__]

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And perhaps [|__the most publicized MOOC experiment__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, at San Jose State University, has turned into a flop. It was a partnership announced with great fanfare at a January news conference featuring Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a strong backer of online education. San Jose State and Udacity, a Silicon Valley company co-founded by a Stanford artificial-intelligence professor, Sebastian Thrun, would work together to offer three low-cost online introductory courses for college credit.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mr. Thrun, who had been unhappy with the low completion rates in free MOOCs, hoped to increase them by hiring online mentors to help students stick with the classes. And the university, in the heart of Silicon Valley, hoped to show its leadership in online learning, and to reach more students.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But the pilot classes, of about 100 people each, failed. Despite access to the Udacity mentors, the online students last spring — including many from a charter high school in Oakland — did worse than those who took the classes on campus. In the algebra class, fewer than a quarter of the students — and only 12 percent of the high school students — earned a passing grade.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">PENN GSE STUDY SHOWS MOOCS HAVE RELATIVELY FEW ACTIVE USERS, WITH ONLY A FEW PERSISTING TO COURSE END

[|__http://www.gse.upenn.edu/pressroom/press-releases/2013/12/penn-gse-study-shows-moocs-have-relatively-few-active-users-only-few-persisti__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Penn GSE study analyzed the movement of a million users through sixteen Coursera courses offered by the University of Pennsylvania from June 2012 to June 2013. The project aimed to identify key transition points for users – such as when users enter and leave courses – as well as when and how users participate in the courses. The study also considered how engagement and persistence vary based on various course characteristics. The courses studied ranged widely in topic, target audience, length of study, instructional time, use of quizzes and assignment of homework, and other dimensions. While a few courses were oriented toward college preparation (e.g., “Calculus: Single Variable”), most focused on occupational skills (e.g., “Cardiac Arrest, Resuscitation Science, and Hypothermia”) or were geared toward personal enrichment (e.g., “Greek and Roman Mythology”). Researchers include Laura Perna, Alan Ruby, Robert Boruch, Nicole Wang, Janie Scull, Chad Evans, and Seher Ahmad.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Emerging findings:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Course completion rates are very low, averaging 4% across all courses and ranging from 2% to 14% depending on the course and measurement of completion.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Across the 16 courses, completion rates are somewhat higher, on average, for courses with lower workloads for students and fewer homework assignments (about 6% versus 2.5%).
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Variations in completion rates based on other course characteristics (e.g., course length, availability of live chat) were not statistically significant.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The total number of individuals accessing a course varied considerably across courses, ranging from more than 110,000 for “Introduction to Operations Management” to about 13,000 for “Rationing and Allocating Scarce Medical Resources.”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Across all courses, about half of those who registered viewed at least one lecture within their selected course. The share of registrants viewing at least one lecture ranged from a low of 27% for “Rationing and Allocating Scarce Medical Resources” to a high of 68% for “Fundamentals of Pharmacology.”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">From comments: [|__http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/us/after-setbacks-online-courses-are-rethought.html?_r=0__]
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">allowing students to vote with their page views and pick the best instructors for any given material
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MOOCs behave too much like regular college classes - only run once a year or less
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">don't bring on multiple different lecturers teaching the same topics at the same time, so students interested in a topic are not able to choose between instructors.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">more careful to distinguish between MOOCs and online courses in general (which are thriving).
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Non-MOOC online courses have similar student/faculty ratios to traditional (non-lecture hall) classes, and thus can be much more effective
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Since it is practical to communicate with each individual student even more than in a regular classroom (where a few active students may dominate the discussion), it is potentially better than the traditional classroom for many purposes.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Professors in Deal to Design Online Lessons for A.P. Classes [|http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/education/professors-in-deal-to-design-online-lessons-for-ap-classes.html__]

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“professors at Davidson College in North Carolina will design online lessons for high school students in Advanced Placement courses in calculus, physics and macroeconomics and make them widely available through the College Board and edX, a nonprofit online education venture.”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Great Infographics with statistical data: [|http://www.quicklessons.com/blog/2013/12/are-moocs-the-future-of-online-education/__]

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MOOCs don’t have a defined pedagogical format for organizing teaching and learning. According to Lave & Wenger (1991) MOOCs form Communities of Practice (CoP) sharing a common understanding of purpose, process, and domain.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The definition of a Massive Open Online Course or MOOC changes rapidly, and it’s still on the experimental or beta stage. MOOCs can be considered as the next step in the evolution of e-learning.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MOOCs have similar and distinct features with traditional online education.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The traditional online courses are based on the Learning Management System. MOOCs can be setup on any learning platform. MOOCs require a variety of social media and online tools. MOOC designers have to rethink how to accommodate the massive student body by automating, peer-to-peer grading, online forums, and providing certifications.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> MOOCs are learner-centered. Students pick up courses based on their interests. They actively involved in the discussions

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The effect of MOOCs can be transformative and have considerable impact.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MOOCs are not unified and often provide different learner experience.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MOOCs allow people to create connections via working on collaborative papers and sometimes new job opportunities can be found.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The term MOOC was mentioned by two individuals:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bryan Alexander and Dave Cormier created an acronym CCK08 which means Connective Knowledge course, a fully open online course