LTI forumOnline Distance Learning at UH and the MOOC Revolutiongo.herts.ac.uk/online

“…online provision is transforming higher education, giving the best universities a chance to widen their catch, opening new opportunities for the agile, and threatening doom for the laggard and mediocre.”

The Economist, 22 December 2012

Worldwide growth and increasing demand for access to HE

2004

120 million2020

132 million

199168 million

19911993

19951997

19992001

20032005

20072009

20112013

20152017

20190

50

100

150

200

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350

ActualPredicated

Year

(millions)

Enrolled students worldwide

Higher Education and Technology ForumSummary

Technology is now in the right place to seriously change the way in which education is provided, viewed and consumed.

The global surge in demand for Higher Education, especially in ‘middle income’ countries; which are moving towards a liberal democracy; with a growing youth population and lack of in-house capacity.

The UK HE Brand which is recognised and admired globally, linked to strong vocational training qualifications.

Re-imagining Institutional Models in HE - Drivers

• Physical limitations on estate, academic time and lack of capacity to provide HE in an environment where demand is rising

• The global retreat of public funding

• The idea that the existing model is broken and that there are new entrants to the market who are developing different, more efficient models which improve quality, democratise access and lower costs

• We are moving towards a system where content will be free at the point of use the cost of education will reduce

Content, Pedagogy and the Impact of New Technology Platforms

• “The future of education is about data”

• “The cost of providing education online is cheaper than traditional methods”

• Retention and completion rates in online courses is highly variable

• Authenticity, identity verification and anti-cheating strategies in online courses are still big areas of concern

The Emergence of the MOOCs

"The UK must be at the forefront of developments in educational technology. Massive Open Online Courses present an opportunity for us to widen access to, and meet the global demand for, higher education. This is growing rapidly in emerging economies like Brazil, India and China," (David Willetts)

Quick Quiz…

• Youngest Udacity ‘graduate’? – Khadijah Niazi, an 11-year-old girl in Lahore who completed the Physics 100 class

• Most popular course on Coursera?– “How to reason and argue”

• How many students enrolled on it?– over 180,000 students

Quick Quiz…

• Youngest Udacity ‘graduate’? – Khadijah Niazi, an 11-year-old girl in Lahore who completed the Physics 100 class

• Most popular course on Coursera?– “How to reason and argue”

• How many students enrolled on it?– over 180,000 students

• Of the 155,000 people who registered for MIT’s Prototype Circuits and Electronics course:– Percentage aged 18-25 vs over 25? – 45% aged 18-25 vs 55% over 25– Most traffic came from five countries. Which five?– USA, India, Britain, Colombia and Spain– How many passed the course?– 7,200 (less than 5%)

Re-imagining Institutional Models in HE

Free and Open Low cost, value-added eg Certificate of Completion

Accredited Courses

The MOOCs plus Khan Academy iTunesU etc.

Coursera, edX, Udacity and others

2U, OU, University of Pheonix, UH Online

Re-imagining Institutional Models in HE

• Credible qualifications

• Marginal costs are low BUT designing for online learning is costly. Revenue through: ‘freemium’ model; sponsored classes (eg Google); referral fees to potential employers; license to other universities

• Mixing MOOC and in-house provision to expand the range of degrees offered

• The “flipped classroom”: integrating a second virtual university into the standard one…good online classes free academic time for individual tutoring

• Research

How do we respond?

Laggard?

Agile?

Best?

Mediocre?