Digital Lifestyle: Education & Learning

MOOC: stand for massive open online courses. Many organizations are offering these online courses to students all over the world, free of charge. Anyone who has an Internet connection and the will to learn can access these great courses from excellent universities and get a credential at the end of it.

Nowadays, our classrooms does not change much compare to a hundred years ago, or even five hundred years ago. Education really has not changed in the past 500 years. The last big innovation in education was the printing press and the textbooks, but everything else has changed around us, from healthcare to transportation, everything is different, but only education hasn't changed. But now, a number of organizations are applying technologies to education through MOOCs to increase access to education, to create a blended model of learning.

The cost of higher education tuition has been increasing at almost twice the rate since 1985.

The millennial generation is built differently, kids are really different. The millennial generation is completely comfortable with online technology. So rather than driving the kids into a classroom, herding them out there at 8 o'clock in the morning, instead what we do is let them watch videos and do interactive exercises in the comfort of their dorm rooms, bedroom, dining room, bathroom, or wherever they most enjoyable. After that, giving some interpersonal interaction. They can have discussions amongst themselves, with accompany of their friends, solve problems together, work with the professor and have the professor answer their questions.

Only a little over half of recent college graduates in the United States who get a higher education actually are working in jobs that require that education.

So what are some key ideas that makes all of this work?

The first idea is active learning. Rather than have students walk into class and watch lectures, MOOCs replace this with “lessons”. Lessons are interleaved sequences of videos and interactive exercises. So a student might watch a five to seven minutes video and follow that with an interactive exercise. The effect of active learning comes early on newspaper: in 1972, Craik and Lockhart said and discovered that learning and retention really relates strongly to the depth of mental processing. Students learn much better when they are interacting with the material.

Lessons are interleaved sequences of videos and interactive exercises.

The second idea is self-pacing. Many students like scrambling, and taking notes on lectures, then they would lose the lecture for the rest of the hour, because they cannot catch up when they take notes. Instead, wouldn't it be nice with online technologies, such as offering videos and interactive engagements to students? They can hit the pause button, or rewind the “professor”. Heck, they can even mute the “professor”. So this form of self-pacing can be very helpful to learning.

They can hit the pause button, or rewind the “professor”.

The third idea is instant feedback. With instant feedback, the computer grades exercises. Since MOOCs can teach numerous students, how could a professor marks 150,000 students? Also there will be some of work that the professor forget to mark, or other human errors and accidents occur. So with instant feedback, students can try to apply answers. If they get it wrong, they can get instant feedback. They can try it again and try it again, and this really becomes much more engaging.

The computer grades exercises.

A Facebook-like feedback system.

The final idea is gamification. All learners engage really well with interactive videos. Teenagers would sit down and shoot aliens all day long until they get it. So these gamification techniques also applied to MOOCs. For instance, students can learn chemical equation like the way they design with Legos: the equation was ripped into different “pieces”, and they were instructed to put pieces in right sequence. Similarly, this can also be graded by the computer.

Teenagers would sit down and shoot aliens all day long until they get it.

Students can learn knowledge like the way they design with Legos.

Now this is all not just in the future. This is happening today. MOOCs are applying these blended learning pilots in a number of universities and high schools around the world, such as Tsinghua University. The blended model of education can really help revolutionize. MOOCs license their courses to other universities, where the university that licenses it with the professor can use these online courses like the textbook we use today. They can use as much or as little as they like, and it will becomes a tool in the teacher's arsenal.