In my last update, I was forecasting that I would score a [...]]]> As our regular readers know by now, I have been a participant in the MITx pilot course “Circuits and Electronics” since it launched in March. The course is now moving into week 10 of 14.

In my last update, I was forecasting that I would score a 60% on the midterm exam. I’m happy to report exceeding my personal expectations with a 76% (a low B on the MITx grading scale), which I think  is a relatively accurate reflection of my level of mastery of the material, if perhaps a little generous due to the amount of time allowed (24 hours). According to the NYTimes, approximately 10,000 of the over 120,000 enrolled students took the midterm exam. So far MIT has not shared any information on the overall grade distribution, so I can’t tell you where I fall on the ‘curve’ (or even what the curve looks like).

Since the course is more than 75% complete, I thought it might be reasonable to offer some critical reflection on the course experience.  In previous posts (March 20, April 24), I listed eight positive aspects of my experience. I could (and will) add to that list, but today I’d like to suggest five areas where the online learning experience in the MITx pilot course could be improved. If you’re looking for more student reactions to MITx, you also might enjoy watching videos made by other pilot participants about their experience in the course.

How to make MITx better

1. Equation editor, please! Other MITx students reading this will know exactly what I’m talking about (and surely have the bald patches to show for it). In the course, students often want or need to enter algebraic expressions – in the discussion board, ungraded practice exercises, and in graded homeworks. The system does understand algebraic equivalence, but it does not provide students with an equation editor. This routinely results in long battles with the courseware to overcome syntax errors when entering complex expressions that include fractions, subscripts, exponents, nested parentheses to enforce order of operations, etc.  There’s no way to see how the system has evaluated your expression, so figuring out whether it’s the answer or the syntax that’s wrong can be very frustrating. To see what it looks like to get the immediate feedback of seeing how the system has interpreted your input, play around with Wolfram Alpha.  This is the minimum kind of functionality that MITx should have. Better yet, the courseware should incorporate an actual WYSIWYG  equation editor.
2. Are we there yet? How much further? The video sequences that combine lectures and demonstrations are nicely chunked into reasonable portions. And you can readily see how many segments there are in a given sequence. But there’s no indication of the total length of video in each sequence. Should each student really have to load up each segment of video, check the length in the player, and do the math? From the standpoint of student time management, knowing the total length of the whole lecture segment would be extremely useful and trivially simple to include. Definitely seems like an oversight. It may be worth noting that a few student discussion board threads have noted that some MITx lecture segments are longer than the equivalent classroom lecture videos from 6002 in MIT OpenCourseware, but I think that reflects good instructional design in segmenting the lectures and isn’t something that I think warrants criticism.
3. Online presence for learners. Knowing who’s online and providing some kind of way to communicate synchronously (with opt-in settings for making your online presence visible to others) would be a significant enhancement. In a similar vein, giving students the option to reveal their geographic location and search for others who have made their geographic location visible would be nice. The first few discussion board threads along the lines of, “Anybody else out there in Greece?” were kind of fun, but it’s clear that many students would like to connect with others in their home country or city, and the course platform should probably facilitate that.
4. Student content ratings. The ability for students to rate discussion board content is very well implemented. Now MIT should take this same functionality and apply it to the posted course content – specifically the lecture segments and community-contributed wiki content.
5. Annotation capability for the lecture videos. OK, so this is a a bit of a stretch goal, but this is MIT we’re talking about, so no reason to let them off easy on a difficult coding challenge. Something confusing in the lecture? Find an error in the transcript? It would be so nice to be able to make a note on the fly. And in the spirit of seeing the annotations of others when you’re reading on a Kindle, being able to turn on/off the annotations made by others would be an interesting feature to pilot.

Continuing the spirit of critical reflection in this post, I wanted to draw attention to some reaction MIT’s own faculty to this initiative. I hope we’ll hear more from their faculty and students in the near future as MIT reports on the outcomes of the pilot course. After the announcement and prior to the start of the 6.002x pilot, MIT’s faculty newsletter featured a piece from Provost L. Rafael Reif with the institutional rationale for the initiative (MITx: MIT’s Vision for Online Learning) as well as several interesting editorial pieces from MIT faculty:

The Faculty Chair: Freshman Advising and MITx. Samuel Allen (Professor of Materials Science and Engineering) writes about the crucial mentoring relationship between faculty and undergraduates and posed the question,

“If MITx is wildly successful, what is the future of the residential education experience that has been our mode of teaching for MIT’s entire history?”

A Contrarian View of MITx: What Are We Doing!? Woodie Flowers (Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering) draws an important distinction between education and training, makes interesting comparisons in the relative levels of investment and impact of MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative and the much newer Khan Academy, and considers the possible impact of Apple’s foray into the eTextbook market. Professor Flowers also speculates about goals and motives of MITx and similar initiatives in relation to the competitive higher education market for students and educational content.

“If they [Apple] does for textbooks what iTunes did for music distribution, the tipping point will be passed…holding the for-profit world at bay seems to be one of the unwritten strategic goals of MITx.”

Finally, the editorial board of the newsletter summed up the state of affairs with regard to the changing landscape of higher education:

“The future is murky, and change may happen fast: The 50-minute lecture may turn obsolete overnight, yielding to 12-minute video chunks; we may lead, or we may fall behind; we may resist, or we may embrace; but one thing is clear, we better not ignore.”

Check the Showcase schedule page to see which sessions have videos available. Pictures from the event are also available on CIT’s Flickr page.

We want to thank all the faculty presenters and staff who participated in this year’s event and hope you’ll join us for next year’s Showcase.

The CIT’s annual Instructional Technology Showcase was held last Friday, April 27th at the Duke University Bryan Center.  Faculty and staff from Duke and other local institutions attended the annual one-day conference, featuring sessions on iPads, Sakai, social media, alternate reality games, and many other topics.

Throughout the day attendees used social [...]]]>

The CIT’s annual Instructional Technology Showcase was held last Friday, April 27th at the Duke University Bryan Center.  Faculty and staff from Duke and other local institutions attended the annual one-day conference, featuring sessions on iPads, Sakai, social media, alternate reality games, and many other topics.

Throughout the day attendees used social media to share insights about particular sessions and their overall experience at the CIT Showcase. We used the social media curation tool Storify to combine and curate the event Twitter feed and Flickr stream to capture the experience and give a feel for the event through social media. Check out the Storify story about the 2012 Showcase.

Thank you to all who attended, we look forward to seeing you next year!

If you are interested in incorporating sustainability principles into your courses, consider attending the 3rd annual Duke Trillium Workshop on Sustainability Across the Curriculum, May 9, 2012, and/or becoming a Trillium Fellow and redesigning your course to include sustainability content and methods.

To apply complete the brief application form by Friday 5/4/2012.

The CIT Student Technology Ambassador Program is a new student group on campus aimed at fostering personal relationships between faculty and undergraduates, developing faculty members’ social media skills, [...]]]> Guest blog post by STAP program founding team Ben Cook (Trinity ’15), Stephanie Downey (Trinity ’14), and Jenny Su (Trinity ’15).

The CIT Student Technology Ambassador Program is a new student group on campus aimed at fostering personal relationships between faculty and undergraduates, developing faculty members’ social media skills, and bringing innovative technology to Duke’s campus.

About STAP

The CIT STAP pairs interested faculty with engaged undergraduates, who will support the faculty in developing their social media skills. The program begins with personal relationships, and develops over the course of one-on-one meetings as a faculty-student pair develops a mutual understanding of goals and needs. Our friendly and energetic STAP students are ready to help professors find and master a wide variety of social media platforms and other innovative technologies, and are happy to work on a schedule that meets the faculty member’s needs.

What the program looks like

An interested faculty member should fill out a brief initial application form, to give STAP some basic information about themselves and their social media goals. Based on this initial assessment, the faculty member will be paired with one of the trained STAs, and the two will have an initial meeting to become acquainted and plan their goals. In the next meeting, the student will work with the faculty member on plans to incorporate the social media platform more effectively into the classroom, and in future conversations the STA will follow up on implementation and help tackle any new issues that arise.

Examples of possible social media platforms:

• WordPress can help students share documents to make a communal class blog, where students can view and comment on each other’s work and generate a class publication.
• Twitter provides an easy way to document and share notes about relevant experiences outside the classroom.
• Computer Science Department classes are currently taking advantage of Piazza, which enables students and faculty to ask and answer questions and make announcements about class information; Piazza may be useful in other disciplines as well.
• Poll Everywhere lets faculty get feedback from students using a cell phone or laptop. Student input appears in real time on the poll in the form of free comments, graphs, or multiple choice responses.
• Any class can create a Facebook group, which allows the students to ask and answer each other’s questions, post class notes, and even post videos related to the course material.
• LinkedIn will allow faculty with a large alumni database to easily manage their alumni contacts. Professors can even use LinkedIn to provide job recommendations to current and past students, join groups related to their field, and connect with colleagues.

For other ideas, check out the CIT’s new blog post: Six Ways to Use Social Media in Education.

How STAP participation can benefit faculty:

Education: By enabling students and faculty to become more actively involved in discussions both in- and outside the classroom, both will become more passionately engaged in course material and beyond, thereby enriching the learning experience, deepening understanding and mastery of content, and furthering the educational mission of the university.

Relationships: Many faculty complain that they never get a chance to really get to know their students. Undergrads rarely come to office hours, and even if they do the conversation is limited to the scope of the syllabus and the gradebook. This is where STAP comes in. Through social media, faculty and students can connect in a exciting new way, fostering passion and engagement that will help build close relationships and bring teaching and learning to a whole new level.

General knowledge: In this day and age, especially in the university environment, faculty should be familiar with the social media their students are embracing, because this is a good way to meet undergraduates “where they are.” Faculty who want to know more about the educational applications of social media, and become conversant with hashtags, memes, and tweets are welcome to get involved!

How to get involved:

If the CIT Student Technology Ambassadors Program is of interest to you, please fill out the brief initial faculty application form. The information you provide will help STAP contact you for an initial meeting, determine your skill set and needs, and pair you with an eager and compatible student ambassador.

If you are a student interested in becoming a student technology ambassador, please fill out the student application form. The information that you provide will allow us to contact you concerning your potential involvement and later pair you with faculty with whom you share interests.

We look forward to hearing from you!