Learning How to Teach March 5, 2013 - 3:00am By Ry Rivard CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Amid the various influences that massive open online courses have had on higher education in their short life so far -- the topic of a daylong conference here Monday -- this may be among the more unexpected: The courses may be prompting some faculty to pay more attention to their teaching styles than they ever have before. The conference, organized Monday in Cambridge by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, featured academics and administrators from elite North American universities and other players in the world of MOOCs discussing the rise of online courses and the future of residential colleges and universities. The new attention to teaching methods and learning sciences is coming from two directions: faculty who want to make sure their teaching is up to snuff for a wider audience, and technology that allows new levels of interaction with students, and new understanding of students' strengths and weaknesses. Harvard Provost Alan Garber said the free online courses can invite comparisons of faculty and course shopping by students. That, along with their scale -- tens of thousands of students will sign up for a course, versus only scores for a large traditional class -- means MOOC instructors now “are working at an entirely different level.” “Our faculty are extraordinarily successful,” Garber said. “They are used to winning. And they don’t want to lose this game.” The head of edX, a major MOOC provider founded less than a year ago by Harvard and MIT, said that faculty members looking to adapt their classes to the Web are able to take advantage of technology that didn’t exist before, like instantaneously computer-graded tests. He said research has shown instant feedback improves outcomes. EdX President Anant Agarwal said there is certain learning sciences research that many faculty, including himself, had long ignored as they focused on their own disciplinary fields. “To me, these papers should be must-reads,” he said, citing specifically a 1972 study of memory. Agarwal said that paper was among the research about learning he had not read until recently. He said he thought other faculty were generally unfamiliar with such research. "If we followed it, it was completely by accident," he said. From www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/05/moocs-prompt-some-faculty-members-refresh- teaching-styles 1 5 March 2013 The day of discussion wandered across several key topics, including whether MOOCs can control costs and whether they fundamentally undermine traditional higher education. Panelists found few conclusive answers to key questions about the future of the residential college, which remains the popular vision of college even though it is no longer how many students receive postsecondary education. Reporters were invited to the conference, but most of the proceedings, which included remarks by the president of MIT and the MOOC enthusiast New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, could not be directly quoted according to agreed-to ground rules, though professors were free to talk to the press and top officials were made available for comment at the end of the day. From www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/05/moocs-prompt-some-faculty-members-refresh- teaching-styles 2 5 March 2013 March 4, 2013 Online Education May Make Top Colleges More Elite, Speakers Say By Steve Kolowich Cambridge, Mass. Online education may have arrived at the upper echelons of higher education, but it's not going to make elite colleges any cheaper to attend. Massive open online courses and other online tools, however, may change many aspects of top undergraduate campuses. That was the conclusion of a private summit, held here on Monday and sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, at which many of online education's heaviest hitters discussed the future of residential higher education, particularly at elite institutions, in a digital age. After years of standing by while the online wave gathered momentum at lower-tier institutions, MIT and Harvard last year gave online education a $60-million bear hug by collaborating to found edX, a nonprofit MOOC provider that could also serve as a laboratory for studying the dynamics of virtual classrooms. The universities made it clear then that they intended to use their MOOCs to improve, not supplant, traditional courses. Monday's daylong conference, which was largely off the record except when permission was granted, featured many of the voices commonly associated with the current upheaval in higher education. They included Clayton M. Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor, who gave a crash course in his influential theory of "disruptive innovation"; and Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, an online-lecture repository, who appeared, Oz-like, as a 12-foot-tall talking head projected on the wall above the stage. Online tools that track how much students use certain course materials could give professors insight into how they should design their traditional courses, several panelists said. Professors might be surprised by what the data tell them. Eric Mazur, a professor of physics at Harvard, drew murmurs from the crowd—which mostly consisted of Harvard and MIT faculty members—when he showed research indicating that students at a lecture have brain activity roughly equivalent to when they watch television. Eric S. Rabkin, a professor of English at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, suggested that professors could direct students to learn the most basic material in a course at their own 3 5 March 2013 From www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/05/moocs-prompt-some-faculty-members-refresh-teaching-styles pace, via online modules. Professors could then use the time saved, he said, on the parts of the course that require more thoughtful, individual attention, such as giving feedback on long essays. "Maybe we could have 100 people register for a seminar," Mr. Rabkin said. The students could work through the first 12 weeks independently and online, "and that teacher can finish the seminar five different times in the course of a 15-week semester, spending the last three weeks with each of those groups of 20." Getting Their Money's Worth Some attempts to use MOOCs to improve the experience of traditional students have not panned out. One panelist said early attempts at his university to foster interaction between learners in the traditional and MOOC versions of a course met with resistance from the tuition-paying students, who wanted a distinct experience for their money. Those students may eventually come around, but the amount they are paying for a traditional college experience probably will not—at least not at top colleges. None of the institutions represented at the summit is likely to use any revenue or savings from the use of online tools to lower tuition, said one provost. No one at the session disagreed. It's more likely that online tools will be used to increase value at the same price, said another provost. That means more seminars, more project-based courses, and more mentorship opportunities, he said. That is a privileged position. William G. Bowen, the former president of Princeton University who has studied the efficiency of online tools, reminded the audience that they occupied "really rarefied air" in deciding how they might want to use online education. But professors who are serious about reaching the masses online, he said, will have to think about innovation and design with a broader, more diverse audience in mind. "I would humbly suggest that the kinds of assessment and standards and all the rest that I'm sure are appropriate at MIT and Harvard and so forth," Mr. Bowen said, "have very little relevance for the large parts of American higher education, particularly in the state systems, that are under genuine siege." 4 5 March 2013 From www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/05/moocs-prompt-some-faculty-members-refresh-teaching-styles Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education Welcome On March 3 and 4, 2013, MIT and Harvard University hosted Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education, a Summit at which academic and institutional leaders convened to exchange ideas about the future of higher education at the intersection of on-campus and online learning. The Summit program comprised a broad mix of speakers and panelists, and provided ample opportunities for thoughtful engagement through multiple interactive, working sessions. The aim was to share knowledge and perspectives across institutions, to stimulate our thinking about the future, and to shed light on the emerging opportunities and challenges facing our colleges and universities during this time of tremendous potential for transformation. Participants left the Summit having learned about: • Key challenges and opportunities for merging digital, online educational experiences with on-campus, interactive educational experiences to create a new model of residential education • Best practices and lessons-learned from current online learning efforts • Major barriers to adoption that must be addressed by institutions, faculty, and students to enable a smooth transition to new modes of learning • Critical issues to consider when assessing the new financial models that will drive higher education in a blended online/residential world Participants also gained: • A set of templates for understanding how one can use online methods for different intellectual disciplines • A better understanding of how online tools can provide self-assessment capabilities • Proposals for next steps, both for individual institutions and for the higher education community as a whole From onlinelearningsummit.org/ 5 March 2013 News about outcomes or next steps will be posted on this site. We would like to acknowledge all contributors — the joint MIT and Harvard Summit programming committee, speakers, staff, and attendees — for having made possible these four highly productive and stimulating sessions.