March 8, 2015 at 13:02Lectures of the Technopark. Master class by Vladislav Biryukov “Electronic education: instruction for use”
- Tutorial
Online learning, like any other type of knowledge, has its own characteristics. Many of those who first tried this educational format were disappointed without receiving the expected return. On how to get the most out of online learning, says Vladislav Biryukov, an employee of the investment company AyComInvest, engaged in educational projects.
There is a term MOOC(in Russian they often say “Flour” or “Flour”, but I do not like “Flour” because it resembles the torment of sinners, after all it’s not so scary - therefore I’d better use “mook”, although the word doesn’t sound very and beautiful). In addition to MOOC, they also talk about distance / e-education, online learning, etc. By and large, all this is about the same thing, just distance learning appeared a very long time ago, by correspondence. The correspondence format looks like this: you receive a textbook or a training manual by mail, study, write a control, send it back and so on. Then the same training began to be practiced over the Internet. And finally, a few years ago, the MEP appeared. By and large, there is no fundamental difference between these entities, but recently the MEP has begun to have high hopes. They quickly became fashionable - even considered that this thing will fundamentally change the education industry. About what happened with the iPhone at the time. Smartphones, of course, were before its appearance, but when the iPhone came out, it very quickly turned the market upside down. The Apple product, it seems, used all the same technologies, but they were completed, brought to mind, in the aggregate it all looked better. And after his appearance, smartphones became different. Many years ago, it was believed that MOOC would also greatly shake the education market. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. then he very quickly turned the market upside down. The Apple product, it seems, used all the same technologies, but they were completed, brought to mind, in the aggregate it all looked better. And after his appearance, smartphones became different. Many years ago, it was believed that MOOC would also greatly shake the education market. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. then he very quickly turned the market upside down. The Apple product, it seems, used all the same technologies, but they were completed, brought to mind, in the aggregate it all looked better. And after his appearance, smartphones became different. Many years ago, it was believed that MOOC would also greatly shake the education market. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.
What does the abbreviation MEP consist of? "Mass" : here the mass is not the same as MMORPG, it is not millions of people, but, as a rule, thousands. There are even hundreds of thousands, but rarely. We are talking about the number of people who enroll in courses - but get to the end less. "Open" : is it free or is it Open Source, can it be distributed further under a simple license? There is no single answer. Generally free or inexpensive. Again, the freemium model is used there, that is, some part is distributed free of charge, some for money. “Online” : it’s easier here, but there are questions. Is it all in real time or with some kind of delay? As a rule, with a delay. And what is the "Course"? How long is this thing, is it limited in time or can it be spread out within six months? How does the teacher participate in this? There are many different variations for each of these letters, and there is no single understanding of MOOC. But there is Coursera - this is the largest and most famous resource. And for most people, the association is just that: MEP is what Coursera does. But Coursera is also changing over time, so the definitions are floating a bit. In a nutshell, what MOOC consists of. As a rule, from lecture videos, although there may be other options - audio and just text. The text is usually no longer considered MOOC, it is something outdated. There is also a verification system in the form of tests. There is also the term Blended learningblended learning. This is a kind of compromise when we listen to a lecture online, and then we come to the audience for a seminar with a real teacher.
Firstly, it was formed quite a long time ago and has not changed much since then. Look at the recording industry, media, media, journalism: they have been greatly transformed over the past 50 years. They used to print on typewriters, now the correspondent takes pictures on the iPhone, then he says something either on the same iPhone, or writes on a laptop or tablet, everything immediately gets to the network. A completely different rhythm, different instruments, and people have become different. There used to be a lot more money in the media. This technological revolution, which has changed many industries, of course, has also affected education - computers, the Internet have appeared. But the tools that we use in training do not fundamentally change the essence: one person speaks, the others listen, then he listens to them in the exam. And so it goes on for several years until until people finally leave the walls of the institution with some paper crust and say: “That's it, I'm an expert. You can end this and forget like a nightmare. ”
Obviously, other models are possible. MOOC is just an alternative, another model. Worse or better - I do not know, but she is different. Why should education change? This is a very large market, with 4.5 trillion dollars spinning on it. This is gigantic money, and many companies compete for it. The cost of training is growing. It’s hard to say whether education is paid or not. For most students, it’s still paid, considering all factors. In the States, it is completely paid, and this is pretty decent money. Education in good universities costs an average of 40 thousand dollars a year. Many students take loans in order to study. The total debt of American students is about $ 1 trillion. A serious amount that will continue to grow. In my opinion, this is the wrong situation.
Labor market needs are changing. Yesterday some skills and knowledge were needed, tomorrow completely different. New specializations appear, and more and more they say that you can’t learn to be someone once and be one, you need to learn all your life - lifelong learning.
There are problems with diplomas. Many employers say: “So what, do you have this crust? What can you do?". And then unpleasant questions begin.
The culture of information consumption is changing . If earlier we all read “War and Peace”, and this was natural, now it seems to be some kind of transcendental amount of letters that a normal person cannot assimilate. Life is changing, and people are following it.
All these factors indicate that the current education system has many shortcomings. Question: how to do better? For example, transforming a university model of learning with the help of mooches. Now we study for a long time, then, often, we forget all this, we study again at work. It can be done differently: they studied for six months on the course, started working, doing something. We realized that we were learning the wrong thing. Okay, forgot this, learned the following. With such an organization, we lose less time in the case of the wrong choice, maximally accelerating the change of model.
The amount of knowledge determined by the program. A specialty has a curriculum, it is seriously reviewed once a decade, and deviations are rare and insignificant. Along with basic subjects, in any curriculum there are "load" disciplines. If you are supposed to listen to philosophy, please listen. For example, I did not like philosophy in my university. I was interested in it, but the way it was taught was a waste of time. In the case of mooks, you can create yourself such a program as you need. Another question is whether you have the competence to create a really good program, but more on that later.
The possibility of changing the university. Each institution has its own teaching culture, its own stellar teachers, and it is unrealistic to take all the best from different universities with classical education. You can do this with mokas and make a “vinaigrette” to your liking.
Diploma . Now we have one diploma, and it is used as evidence that you are adequate to the system. In fact, he says that you are able to study for five years, not to forget to study, you can learn the simplest things, and in general a normal person. But by and large this is not enough, and the specialization that is written in it does not always mean anything. If we have many of these diplomas, and each of them will be more specific - maybe it will be better.
Classical online education lasts a long time, 4 or 5 years, we get a standard diploma, the program is formed by the university, the courses are long in time. At MOOC, everything is different: short courses, an individual learning path. In classic online education, we pay pretty decent money - just like in regular, non-distance education. For example, at the Moscow Technological Institute (formerly MISiS) a decent IT specialty costs 190 thousand rubles a year. The same thing, in theory, can be studied for free. Question: how much will one correspond to the other? It is very important. Between these two extreme poles there are many intermediate forms of training.
This is a picture of how many companies are involved in sharing this cake. There are many familiar names — Microsoft, EMC, HP, and so on — and many completely unfamiliar ones. This is the entire educational technology market, EdTech. This is not only mooki, a fair amount of them are online courses.
The history of mooks begins in the first half of the 2000s. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was one of the first to put this matter on the stream, starting to post its courses online. They have an OpenCourseWare program - it appeared in 2002, still exists and is revered by many as a very solid example. Probably everyone knows about the Khan Academy (basically it is aimed at schoolchildren, they have the largest audience). Its plus is that it well reveals the concept of online learning. True, this is not entirely mook, but an ideologically close thing. In 2008, the term MOOC appeared, it was proposed by two Canadian researchers who conducted their own experiments. At that time it was a purely academic topic, few knew about it. And at the turn of 2011-2012 there was a hype when numerous projects in the MOOC format immediately began to appear. Everything went, as it is believed, from Stanford University, where they conceived a course on artificial intelligence, and about 160 thousand people signed up for it. And after that, mooki began to develop rapidly. Coursera, EdX, Udacity - this is the so-called Big Three, they just appeared at the same time. A little later, the second wave of those who looked at this big three went and realized that there is probably a future here. In particular, in Europe there are several projects: German Iversity, British FutureLearn, we have a Universarium. They all appeared at the turn of 2013-2014. A little later, the second wave of those who looked at this big three went and realized that there is probably a future here. In particular, in Europe there are several projects: German Iversity, British FutureLearn, we have a Universarium. They all appeared at the turn of 2013-2014. A little later, the second wave of those who looked at this big three went and realized that there is probably a future here. In particular, in Europe there are several projects: German Iversity, British FutureLearn, we have a Universarium. They all appeared at the turn of 2013-2014.
This is an attempt to visualize the distribution of the largest resources, adjusted for the Russian language. Because it is unlikely that the Lectorium is noticeable on the world market, but for us it is important. And in terms of font size, you can understand the weight of market participants. The largest are Khan Academy, EdX, Coursera, everything else is smaller.
What you should pay attention to when choosing online courses for yourself. The first and most important is the quality of the teachers . As a rule, there are still more good ones that go online, simply because it is a labor-intensive process, and there is very little time and money for any garbage. Nevertheless, there are a lot of mediocre courses, especially paid ones, they are simply trying to do business on them. Course quality (technical execution)- This is corny video and sound quality. This is also very important, because if the lecture of a brilliant teacher was shot in a lousy quality and low resolution, and even the sound is interrupted, there will be little good. The degree of teacher involvement is a very important criterion. Because they can call such a thing when you just watch a video and then answer the tests: "Choose 10 answers from three options." But this is profanity, just a set of lectures. And there is a situation when a teacher dawns and sleeps on forums, explains everything, checks tasks. This is a completely different approach. Good teachers have a ton of other activities, and often they cannot devote all their time to such things. Level of difficulty: still, most MOOCs are introductory courses, quite superficial. First of all, because MOOC are used by universities as their own advertising. And here, of course, it is more reasonable to lay out an introductory course, to hook a person, and then he will come and bring money to the university. Maybe the situation will change over time. Training cost : as a rule, the freemium model is used, where the main functionality is given for free, and then you, depending on your needs, get the right items for some money. Usually the amounts are still small when it comes to classic MOOCs, and you pay for something optional - for example, for a diploma. It is issued digitally and so far most employers are not talking about anything.
According to the time of classes, there are two models:
Each model has its drawbacks. The big drawback of the first option is that you have to wait six months for it. You found an interesting course, and it begins in May 2015. Until this time, you will have time to do a lot of things, maybe the course by that time will become obsolete. On the other hand, a lot of people study at scheduled courses. If at least several thousand people are actively studying, then there will be a decent forum, an exchange of opinions, this is interesting. And in the course, which is always available, there may be one or two cripples: one from Zanzibar, the second - you. It will not be cool.
MOOC is mainly conducted in English. Somewhere there are subtitles, sometimes even in Russian. For example, Coursera is being translated with the help of ABBYY into Russian with subtitles. Implementation technologies are also important. For example, some sites use Flash, so there may be a problem with mobile devices. Not all major services have mobile applications, although they are more or less tightened.
There is a certain description of the course, which tells you what knowledge you need for successful training. Who teaches how many weeks we study, the approximate number of hours per week. If you start to study, it is better to immediately highlight the box in your schedule, otherwise at some point you will find that you are behind everyone, and it’s easier to score than continue to study. What does the course consist of? Video lectures sorted into sections lasting 10-20 minutes. It is believed that this is the clip time during which the average teenager can maintain attention. In addition, additional materials are offered: texts, recommended books, other resources. Verification of tasks: either automated tests, or mutual assessment by students of each other's work. You got the job of one person, he gets someone else's answer. Seeing other people's mistakes, you, therefore, learn yourself, this is a homespun truth, but, on the other hand, if your work got to some hack worker, then nothing good will come of it. A double edged sword. As a rule, there is a forum where the author of the course encourages students to communicate on a topic. This is an interesting thing.
And a rather sharp question about the availability of content at the end of the course, if it is a scheduled course. Often, after the end of the lesson, the materials become unavailable. There are many reasons for this. The first is copyright. These problems are not completely resolved, because many course providers make money on the same material, and if it is always available, it seems to be hindering their business. On the other hand, if the materials are always online, then people will constantly tug on the teacher. He also has his own affairs, he is not ready to do this all the time, especially for free.
Coursera is the most famous, largest in terms of the number of users, most probably multilingual. Materials from most American universities are presented here, and most students are said to be from Asia.
This is a recent screenshot - a total of 800 large-format courses, about 20 in Russian.
What is worth knowing about Coursera? Education is free, certificates are paid. These are the same diplomats - pieces of paper that can be obtained at the end. Recently they introduced such a thing as a specialty - this is a sequence of related courses. Let's say you study journalism. One part “how to write”, the second part - “how to take pictures”, the third part - “how to shoot a video” passed. Thus, they completed the specialty. They also require money for this, but they are small, this is the same money that you pay for certificates at the courses that make up the specialty. Everything is humane enough. Question: how much does this specialty in reality correspond to what you get in a “classical” education, not distance education? The question is very difficult because it’s one thing if you studied at Princeton, the other is somewhere in the vastness of our homeland in a not-so-large large university. You understand, the quality of training, alas, is different.
About 9 million users are registered here. The catalog is quite balanced: there are both practical and academic courses. Coursera works on schedule, that is, you need to wait for the start of training. Although they had experimentally available constantly available courses. The quality and format are rather heterogeneous. Coursera gives a lot of freedom to course developers, and these are either universities or individual teachers. And someone did well, someone did not. Earlier, when Coursera itself took part in this, the quality was more uniform. They have experiments with regional offices - these are some physical organizations where you can come and learn, test your knowledge - the very concept of blended learning (blended learning). We have such a representative office located in Digital October (“Red October”).
There are normal mobile apps for two major platforms. Coursera is generally considered the main apologist for disruptive learning. This is a good place to try yourself.
This is what the diploma you get if you pay $ 50. You can draw one yourself.
edX- The second major resource of the Big Three. What is the difference between him and Coursera? Initially, Coursera is the west coast of the United States, Stanford School. The main life in the States is concentrated on two coasts: there is a western school, and there is an eastern one. EdX - Eastern School - Cambridge, Massachusetts. In principle, these universities from the east are leaders in the list of the main universities in the world, but the western school is also very strong, and they constantly compete with each other. Coursera was initially more focused on internationalization, immediately entered into many agreements with universities in other countries, EdX developed more as a purely American project, but now they have gone in breadth.
Recently, the Russian Ministry of Education has concluded some kind of agreement with EdX. About what - nobody understands, but there is a chance that something good will come out of it. EdX also has free training and paid certificates. Smaller courses are around 300, but they are represented by very good universities and are comparable in level with Coursera. There are fewer users. There is more emphasis on academic disciplines, technology (due to MIT) and medicine. On schedule, everything is arranged similarly to Coursera. And if the latter was created as a commercial project, then EdX is an academic non-profit, and here they were initially quite tough on quality. It is possible that now this will change, because EdX is also changing. They are trying to introduce paid tuition from next year. This is an option, the main part will still be free, but there will be some options for in-depth study,
EdX is not trying to revolutionize education; rather, it is an attempt to improve its quality with online tools.
EdX allows you to study at the top American universities. This is a Shanghai rating, one of the universally recognized. Nd - no data. British Cambridge and Oxford are not represented not only in the main providers of online courses Coursera and EdX, but, as far as I know, have not yet been presented online in the classic free format. They believe that education should remain as it is now, a sort of stronghold of traditionalism.
Third Player - Udacity. It is slightly different from Coursera and EdX. Firstly, it was originally a commercial service, and secondly, it was originally focused on IT specialties. There are very few university courses, but there are university teachers. A lot of commercial companies like Google, Facebook, etc. These companies participate in the creation of courses and carefully look at graduates. There are some chances that if you study well, then they will pay attention to you. Udacity, although a commercial project, but there is an opportunity to learn for free. In general, it turns out a little more expensive than in the previous two projects, but they charge money for working with the teacher when he checks you, advises, etc., and for the certificate. There are much fewer courses (about 40 large) and fewer users. These are IT, mathematics, applied things. English only, decent quality, There are applications for iOS and Android. They focus on those who do not draw a classical college or university (in the States it is, in principle, the same essence, only research is being done at the university, but not at college) and who needs a specialty. What is important, there are prospects for employment in partner companies.
MIT OpenCourseWare- It is rather a library archive than the classic MOOC service. There are more than 2 thousand courses, but not all of them are the same programs as on Coursera or EdX. Often this is just some kind of training manual, a set of textual information about what is going on in this course, a list of references, etc. MIT has been constantly working on replenishing this library since 2002. Recent courses are quite comparable to Coursera, they can be uploaded to EdX, since MIT is its partner. If you are interested in engineering (in which MIT is traditionally strong), you can dig there and probably catch something interesting. They still have lectures in the iTunes service iTunes U, something has been posted on Youtube. But I would not advise starting with this project, because MIT has not yet brought its library to its normal form. This is all for experts.
We have already talked about Khan Academy . They have an interesting format. Instead of a talking head, as in most online courses, which is interspersed with slides, here is a board on which the teacher draws and explains. For schoolchildren, this is much better. I would not say that Khan Academy is intended only for schoolchildren, there are a lot of interesting things, in particular, partnership programs with NASA, with decent museums. You can learn quite interesting things for yourself, even if you studied well at school at one time. Now they are trying to launch new courses in cooperation with universities, this is already taking them to a higher level.
Udemy. If so far we have been talking about services that look like a supermarket - everything is laid out on the shelves, everything is centralized - then Udemy is more like a market. There are many stalls where teachers can sell their own courses, and someone comes to buy. The sales scheme is standard - incomes are divided into 50 by 50. Training is mainly paid, but there are also free courses and very inexpensive ones — some money that you don’t mind spending. Here is a slightly different format of courses - they are short, on average, for several hours. Udemy covers a very wide range of topics, including dog training, but there are academic things. International and affordable at any time, which is very nice, that is, you can always learn. The quality is different. Udemy is useful for gaining some practical skills, that is, academic disciplines are stupid to study there,
Lynda . This is a rather interesting project, many IT specialists have heard about it. It has existed since 1995. This is a family business, organized by husband and wife, and they have never managed to attract outside investors. The project still feels good, because during this time they managed to agree with different companies and use Lynda for corporate training. And this is other money. Here, mainly IT, business, design, photography - short courses for several hours. Quite a lot of users - 4 million, courses are available at any time, in English. This is a subscription service, that is, they do not provide content for free, you need to pay certain money every month, and for this you will receive a certain amount of information. You can take one new course per week. In principle, a solid option for practical training, like Udemy.
Sailor Academy . They agreed with many American universities that their courses are counted in the university program, that is, you can listen to the course here and then check the box in your diary. This is all already going to the official diploma. That is, in principle, this is a real American higher education. Not all courses and not all colleges are accredited, but there are quite a few.
IversityIs the German answer of Coursera. Europe became worried after some time, because talk of a brain drain wasn’t from scratch. You studied well at Coursera once, completed the course, studied two, completed the course, then you received an invitation: "Let us come to us to study already live, will we pay you a scholarship?" Of course you have to go. Why not? Thus, good students from different countries are attracted to America. Europe is worried and is trying to do something of its own. Made soundly, but a little straightforwardly, in German. While there are few courses, about 30, academic disciplines, a lot of technology. Iversity does not collaborate with universities, but directly with European teachers who do the courses. Scheduled training, and since there are few courses, you have to wait a long time. The choice is small, little available at this particular moment. Languages German and English, even one Russian course appeared. Made with high quality, solid - you can try the German school.
FutureLearn . This is already the British answer of Coursera. Also free training, 100 courses. Academic disciplines, quite a lot about culture and medicine. British universities, of course, on a schedule, in English. There are similar projects in France and Spain, but I don’t mention them, because for most of us this is not applicable. English is known, at the very least, the majority, and few other European languages, although Spain and France also have fairly strong services.
Universarium- this is our answer Coursera, at least, was conceived as such. I don’t know what will happen. He has a rather strange affiliation. Universarium is made by people who work in MIA Russia today (formerly RIA Novosti). On the one hand, this project is financed by commercial funds, and the state does not invest there - at least, as I heard. On the other hand, there is some kind of connection with the state, and the Universarium, it seems, performs some functions of propaganda of the Russian language, somehow contrasted with Western services. What is good and bad here? Free - great. There are not very many courses yet. About 40 are declared, in reality it is less, somewhere around 20-25. Quite a lot of common subjects, there are courses on practical electronics. They are just starting, for the most part these are common things, to expand their horizons. Decent universities are represented, classes are scheduled, in Russian. There is an iOS application. As a result, it was done solidly, but so far somewhat superficially. The Universarium wants to negotiate with universities, take strong courses from them, so that the university will show the whole world how they have developed some direction. That is, the university orders the creation of a course at the Universarium, pays money for it, and the Universum transmits knowledge to users. Perhaps the business model will change over time, but so far it has been like that. That is, the university orders the creation of a course at the Universarium, pays money for it, and the Universum transmits knowledge to users. Perhaps the business model will change over time, but so far it has been like that. That is, the university orders the creation of a course at the Universarium, pays money for it, and the Universum transmits knowledge to users. Perhaps the business model will change over time, but so far it has been like that.
Uniweb is a slightly different topic. Education is paid, prices are quite decent, measured in thousands of rubles. Training of medium duration. This is something like continuing education courses. In the corporate market, it can make quite good money, because companies are more willing to pay for the training of their specialists. There are also decent Russian universities. The business model is this: Uniweb negotiates with universities and prepares courses at its own expense, and then somehow divide the proceeds from the sale. The number of places in the group is strictly limited, that is, it is closer to the classical distance education. On the other hand, this is a new service, a decent interface, so it is logical to attribute them to the new generation of distance education.
Lecture hall- This is a St. Petersburg project. There are still few large courses, less than a dozen, but many popular lectures - about 3 thousand. Video quality is not very good, but from decent universities. Good teachers, academic disciplines, are available at any time in Russian. These are lectures, not courses.
Netology. I thought for a long time whether it should be turned on. I decided what I needed, because they pretty well honed a certain direction. Internet marketers - there is such a group of professions - there are SEO optimization, and just marketers, and SMM, and design. Fashionable professions that are in demand by the market. Tuition is paid, by subscription. For 800 rubles a month you can listen to all 50 courses that they have. These courses are not very long. Plus, they recently launched a model of the profession, similar to Coursera, when you have more information, it is given in a more structured way, but the money there is different - 15-25 thousand rubles. A good, specialized resource in a certain direction. I think that you can learn a lot from them.
Intuition. This is a service with a very long history, exists since 2003. There is a lot of content, about 200 video courses, as well as several hundred courses with text content. General impression: a little old-fashioned, brontosaurus in mothballs. The content is very different in terms of relevance. The interface would be great to update. And their approach is very non-profit. By this they impress, there is no eagerness, they practically do not take money there for anything. But this, apparently, impedes the development of the project. There are quite a lot of content on IT, in particular, on all sorts of vendor stuff.
Two more Russian projects are just starting up - Stepic.org and Hexlet.io/ . There are things about programming, about development, it's all free, but there is still little content. Maybe after some time they will reach a decent level.
A separate big topic, because they began to study a foreign language on the Internet for a very long time, and quite a lot of experience has accumulated here. All projects are quite similar to each other, that is, this is the same freemium (something can be learned for free, something not), and it seems to me that learning a language from beginning to end with their help is unrealistic. But to tighten, maintain the level, if you do not have enough practice, or study in combination with something else - yes, it can be useful.
First LiveMocha Service, the largest on the Internet, there study five million people, and you can communicate with native speakers for free. These are not professional teachers, but ordinary people. You can talk to them, correspond, they will correct you. Everything else for most services is similar - tests, lessons, word cards, grammar exercises and the like. All this can be obtained from books, the difference is small. The only advantage is the presence of live communication for free.
ITunes U. The same iTunes, only on the topic of education. Available on mobile devices and Apple computers. There are many lectures that decent American universities do. Some of this content intersects with MOOC, and some do not. That is, you can listen separately, but the problem is that this content is usually less structured: more lectures and fewer large courses, large formats.
Flooved.com - opensource-project, a collection of free textbooks. It’s somehow easier with textbooks, but in the West they cost a lot of money, like all academic literature. It is customary in the Anglo-Saxon world to make money from this.
Helpouts.google.com- This is Google video chat, where you can declare yourself an expert in some field and teach others through video chat. You will be paid a little more for this. They declared themselves an expert, for example, in buying a refrigerator, and someone is too lazy to study this topic - - you told him everything in 10 minutes, he paid you a dollar. As far as I know, this only works in English and Spanish, and only in the States for Google users who have Google Hangouts. Maybe they have already expanded to other languages and countries. An interesting initiative, it has a future.
Scholar.google.com is a scientific publishing search engine.
There is some controversy between universities and MOOC. On the one hand, MOOCs can serve as advertisements for universities, show how cool they are and attract students there. On the other hand, MOOC compete with an educational institution, that is, it turns out that education can be obtained not in the walls of the university, but in some alternative way. For universities, this is a pretty hot topic. It seems that they need to implement these things, otherwise you will lag behind and you will fall lower and lower in the ratings. But how to implement it in general, but in order not to harm yourself, is not very clear.
A life example of how students can be interested. Doctors study at Stanford, and American doctors need to learn a lot of information, it is given in lectures. There is a teacher, and tells, and tells. At Stanford, attendance at these lectures was 20%. Then they came up with a joint program with Khan Academy, and most of these lectures were done in video format. After the video lecture there is an interactive class where people discuss, check who remembered what, and so on, and attendance increased to 90%. I think that it became interesting to students what kind of a new thing this might be, then attendance will fall again. But at least a short-term effect has been achieved.
The university can expand its own program, because if you have good teachers in mechanical engineering, and in the neighboring university - in the construction of tractors, then you can take a course on tractors from there and train a local assistant to supervise the knowledge in your university. Cheap enough to expand the program. On the other hand, this model of content licensing is rather tight at universities because they are all quite proud, and everyone believes that he has the best. As a rule, not so good universities think so.
This graph reflects one of the main problems that MOOC is blamed for - as a rule, less than 10% of listeners survive to the finish line. But if we look, we will see that it is stupid to blame MOOC for this, because most of the students who enroll in the courses are not going to listen to them. They just came to see what it is who is teaching there. Maybe they just read the name of the course, poked on the record and forgot about it, and there are a lot of such students. Yes, some part is eliminated as you progress through the course. Quite a lot of those who are called passive participants, they just watch and do not participate in the verification work. But if at the beginning of the course there were 10 thousand and 800 remained, this is still excellent, because most normal universities cannot boast of so many people who attended the course.
MOOC has the biggest problem with money, because it is not clear where to get it. It’s like with social networks. When they first grew up, everyone said: “Where are you recruiting users? How will you live with them? ", They say:" Ah, then we'll figure it out. Now let's type. ” They figured out in the end. Now social networks are a normal business, they profit from advertising, games and other things. Perhaps MOOC will somehow succeed when they gain a critical mass of users. But how this will be arranged is now incomprehensible. At the same time, the cost of creating an average course is rather big. 325 thousand dollars is already prohibitive, for the majority 30-50 thousand dollars per course. This is the teacher’s time, the time of the video command, installation, uploading to the network, then the support of courses, that is, quite a lot of costs.
Not all professions can be taught using MOOC. To a surgeon who studied online, I’m unlikely to lie on the table. There is a problem of quality control, quite a lot of cheating. Of course, online cheating is easier than live on the exam.
And there are systemic external problems: both universities are resisting, and employers are still looking askance at these diplomas, which are unclear where they came from and it is unclear what they are carrying, and the state does not really understand what to do about it. I think in the coming years we will also have state regulation. I hope that this will lead not to a ban, but to the recognition of electronic diplomas in one form or another.
And if the MOOC revolution happens, what can happen? It will be more difficult for universities, since they will have to compete not within the city, but within the country or the world. Strong universities will gain an advantage, weak ones will go bankrupt. There were forecasts according to which, in a few years, half of the universities will go bankrupt. Competition among teachers will also intensify, because a good teacher will be able to broadcast to the whole world. Another thing is how much this one simple broadcast is enough. All the same, control, chewing, practice will be required.
What can this give students?
These are the main conclusions that should be drawn from this all. Of course, you need to learn English. It is worth taking a closer look at the ecosystem of educational technologies itself, because it is growing rapidly, and it is quite easy to find a niche that is not yet occupied. Unlike industries that have long been established, the entry threshold is quite low - you can think of something.
“MOOC is able to replace higher education . ” Yes, but for very few people. First of all, for those who have a tendency to self-motivation, self-learning, to search for information on their own. Also, higher education can be obtained far from all directions. Not enough accessible content, many specialties remain outside this movement. Now MOOC is an addition to traditional education, not a replacement.
“MOOC is for students or schoolchildren”. I would say no. This is more for those who have learned something, and then wants to either increase their level, improve, or even change direction. It often happens to people that they have been studying for five years, and then they understand: “What a fool I am! It was necessary to learn differently. ” And another five years - this is generally unrealistic. And MOOC is a fairly simple, cheap and fast way to change or see if it is worth changing horses at the crossing. Maybe this was not a good idea.
“MOOC is better or worse than traditional education”, depending on who thinks how. No better and no worse, there are pros and cons. It's like fast food, for example. Is fast food bad? If you constantly eat hamburgers alone - not very good, but if you are hungry and need to eat fast, then fast food is great. MOOC can be compared to fast food, because in contrast to the classical education, there is a slightly emasculated model, which is as broadcast as possible.
“MOOC is technologically something new compared to the old distance education . ” Nothing of the kind, this is new socially, perceived differently. The same example with the iPhone and smartphones that came before him.
Question: Are there any examples of successful services that normally work?
Answer: Uniweb seems to be making good money; Netology is developing quite rapidly. I do not know if they pay off or constantly use investment injections, but they look quite successful.
Question: Besides LinguaLeo and DuoLingo, are there any examples of online courses using gamification?
Answer: Gamification is popular everywhere. Another thing is that everyone understands it in their own way, and not everyone does it cool, but they try in one form or another.
Question: Is the general dynamics of enthusiasm for online education growing in the world?
Answer:Yes, and the Asians are very actively involved in this. Many students study online, but I think, for the commonplace reason - they are practical, and they have a certain shortage of universities. Still, we are in a better position, we have many good universities. But you still need to use someone else's experience, because learning at Harvard is always interesting.
Question: Why do you think our universities are not actively going in this direction?
Answer:On the one hand, they are afraid, because it is an undermining of their own positions. I am a teacher, I have some cool course, students come to me. I will post this course on the Internet, everyone will listen and watch it for free. What will I do? And universities are also afraid. A double edged sword. On the one hand, MOOCs are dangerous for the traditional education system, on the other hand, they can clearly help it. Universities are a very conservative structure, a lot of inertness, and much could be done better. But how to do it so as not to harm ... Look at journalism. There used to be print media, they lived well, there was a lot of money and advertising. Then everything went to the Internet, budgets fell, advertising on the Internet is cheaper. As a result, there is less money left in journalism, but the content still needs quality. Quality content requires money you can’t send a girl who graduated from college yesterday to write new good articles. There is a contradiction. It’s the same here. IT technologies are good for their replicability, but they undermine the foundations of the traditional industry, which was established before their implementation. Education will somehow experience it
Terms and Definitions
There is a term MOOC(in Russian they often say “Flour” or “Flour”, but I do not like “Flour” because it resembles the torment of sinners, after all it’s not so scary - therefore I’d better use “mook”, although the word doesn’t sound very and beautiful). In addition to MOOC, they also talk about distance / e-education, online learning, etc. By and large, all this is about the same thing, just distance learning appeared a very long time ago, by correspondence. The correspondence format looks like this: you receive a textbook or a training manual by mail, study, write a control, send it back and so on. Then the same training began to be practiced over the Internet. And finally, a few years ago, the MEP appeared. By and large, there is no fundamental difference between these entities, but recently the MEP has begun to have high hopes. They quickly became fashionable - even considered that this thing will fundamentally change the education industry. About what happened with the iPhone at the time. Smartphones, of course, were before its appearance, but when the iPhone came out, it very quickly turned the market upside down. The Apple product, it seems, used all the same technologies, but they were completed, brought to mind, in the aggregate it all looked better. And after his appearance, smartphones became different. Many years ago, it was believed that MOOC would also greatly shake the education market. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. then he very quickly turned the market upside down. The Apple product, it seems, used all the same technologies, but they were completed, brought to mind, in the aggregate it all looked better. And after his appearance, smartphones became different. Many years ago, it was believed that MOOC would also greatly shake the education market. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. then he very quickly turned the market upside down. The Apple product, it seems, used all the same technologies, but they were completed, brought to mind, in the aggregate it all looked better. And after his appearance, smartphones became different. Many years ago, it was believed that MOOC would also greatly shake the education market. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. Now these hopes have subsided a little, and now there are many voices in favor of the fact that nobody needs all this, that nothing will really change in education. I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.
What does the abbreviation MEP consist of? "Mass" : here the mass is not the same as MMORPG, it is not millions of people, but, as a rule, thousands. There are even hundreds of thousands, but rarely. We are talking about the number of people who enroll in courses - but get to the end less. "Open" : is it free or is it Open Source, can it be distributed further under a simple license? There is no single answer. Generally free or inexpensive. Again, the freemium model is used there, that is, some part is distributed free of charge, some for money. “Online” : it’s easier here, but there are questions. Is it all in real time or with some kind of delay? As a rule, with a delay. And what is the "Course"? How long is this thing, is it limited in time or can it be spread out within six months? How does the teacher participate in this? There are many different variations for each of these letters, and there is no single understanding of MOOC. But there is Coursera - this is the largest and most famous resource. And for most people, the association is just that: MEP is what Coursera does. But Coursera is also changing over time, so the definitions are floating a bit. In a nutshell, what MOOC consists of. As a rule, from lecture videos, although there may be other options - audio and just text. The text is usually no longer considered MOOC, it is something outdated. There is also a verification system in the form of tests. There is also the term Blended learningblended learning. This is a kind of compromise when we listen to a lecture online, and then we come to the audience for a seminar with a real teacher.
Why should the education industry change?
Firstly, it was formed quite a long time ago and has not changed much since then. Look at the recording industry, media, media, journalism: they have been greatly transformed over the past 50 years. They used to print on typewriters, now the correspondent takes pictures on the iPhone, then he says something either on the same iPhone, or writes on a laptop or tablet, everything immediately gets to the network. A completely different rhythm, different instruments, and people have become different. There used to be a lot more money in the media. This technological revolution, which has changed many industries, of course, has also affected education - computers, the Internet have appeared. But the tools that we use in training do not fundamentally change the essence: one person speaks, the others listen, then he listens to them in the exam. And so it goes on for several years until until people finally leave the walls of the institution with some paper crust and say: “That's it, I'm an expert. You can end this and forget like a nightmare. ”
Obviously, other models are possible. MOOC is just an alternative, another model. Worse or better - I do not know, but she is different. Why should education change? This is a very large market, with 4.5 trillion dollars spinning on it. This is gigantic money, and many companies compete for it. The cost of training is growing. It’s hard to say whether education is paid or not. For most students, it’s still paid, considering all factors. In the States, it is completely paid, and this is pretty decent money. Education in good universities costs an average of 40 thousand dollars a year. Many students take loans in order to study. The total debt of American students is about $ 1 trillion. A serious amount that will continue to grow. In my opinion, this is the wrong situation.
Labor market needs are changing. Yesterday some skills and knowledge were needed, tomorrow completely different. New specializations appear, and more and more they say that you can’t learn to be someone once and be one, you need to learn all your life - lifelong learning.
There are problems with diplomas. Many employers say: “So what, do you have this crust? What can you do?". And then unpleasant questions begin.
The culture of information consumption is changing . If earlier we all read “War and Peace”, and this was natural, now it seems to be some kind of transcendental amount of letters that a normal person cannot assimilate. Life is changing, and people are following it.
All these factors indicate that the current education system has many shortcomings. Question: how to do better? For example, transforming a university model of learning with the help of mooches. Now we study for a long time, then, often, we forget all this, we study again at work. It can be done differently: they studied for six months on the course, started working, doing something. We realized that we were learning the wrong thing. Okay, forgot this, learned the following. With such an organization, we lose less time in the case of the wrong choice, maximally accelerating the change of model.
The amount of knowledge determined by the program. A specialty has a curriculum, it is seriously reviewed once a decade, and deviations are rare and insignificant. Along with basic subjects, in any curriculum there are "load" disciplines. If you are supposed to listen to philosophy, please listen. For example, I did not like philosophy in my university. I was interested in it, but the way it was taught was a waste of time. In the case of mooks, you can create yourself such a program as you need. Another question is whether you have the competence to create a really good program, but more on that later.
The possibility of changing the university. Each institution has its own teaching culture, its own stellar teachers, and it is unrealistic to take all the best from different universities with classical education. You can do this with mokas and make a “vinaigrette” to your liking.
Diploma . Now we have one diploma, and it is used as evidence that you are adequate to the system. In fact, he says that you are able to study for five years, not to forget to study, you can learn the simplest things, and in general a normal person. But by and large this is not enough, and the specialization that is written in it does not always mean anything. If we have many of these diplomas, and each of them will be more specific - maybe it will be better.
Two advantages of online learning: classic and MOOC
Classical online education lasts a long time, 4 or 5 years, we get a standard diploma, the program is formed by the university, the courses are long in time. At MOOC, everything is different: short courses, an individual learning path. In classic online education, we pay pretty decent money - just like in regular, non-distance education. For example, at the Moscow Technological Institute (formerly MISiS) a decent IT specialty costs 190 thousand rubles a year. The same thing, in theory, can be studied for free. Question: how much will one correspond to the other? It is very important. Between these two extreme poles there are many intermediate forms of training.
This is a picture of how many companies are involved in sharing this cake. There are many familiar names — Microsoft, EMC, HP, and so on — and many completely unfamiliar ones. This is the entire educational technology market, EdTech. This is not only mooki, a fair amount of them are online courses.
The history of mooks begins in the first half of the 2000s. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was one of the first to put this matter on the stream, starting to post its courses online. They have an OpenCourseWare program - it appeared in 2002, still exists and is revered by many as a very solid example. Probably everyone knows about the Khan Academy (basically it is aimed at schoolchildren, they have the largest audience). Its plus is that it well reveals the concept of online learning. True, this is not entirely mook, but an ideologically close thing. In 2008, the term MOOC appeared, it was proposed by two Canadian researchers who conducted their own experiments. At that time it was a purely academic topic, few knew about it. And at the turn of 2011-2012 there was a hype when numerous projects in the MOOC format immediately began to appear. Everything went, as it is believed, from Stanford University, where they conceived a course on artificial intelligence, and about 160 thousand people signed up for it. And after that, mooki began to develop rapidly. Coursera, EdX, Udacity - this is the so-called Big Three, they just appeared at the same time. A little later, the second wave of those who looked at this big three went and realized that there is probably a future here. In particular, in Europe there are several projects: German Iversity, British FutureLearn, we have a Universarium. They all appeared at the turn of 2013-2014. A little later, the second wave of those who looked at this big three went and realized that there is probably a future here. In particular, in Europe there are several projects: German Iversity, British FutureLearn, we have a Universarium. They all appeared at the turn of 2013-2014. A little later, the second wave of those who looked at this big three went and realized that there is probably a future here. In particular, in Europe there are several projects: German Iversity, British FutureLearn, we have a Universarium. They all appeared at the turn of 2013-2014.
This is an attempt to visualize the distribution of the largest resources, adjusted for the Russian language. Because it is unlikely that the Lectorium is noticeable on the world market, but for us it is important. And in terms of font size, you can understand the weight of market participants. The largest are Khan Academy, EdX, Coursera, everything else is smaller.
What you should pay attention to when choosing online courses for yourself. The first and most important is the quality of the teachers . As a rule, there are still more good ones that go online, simply because it is a labor-intensive process, and there is very little time and money for any garbage. Nevertheless, there are a lot of mediocre courses, especially paid ones, they are simply trying to do business on them. Course quality (technical execution)- This is corny video and sound quality. This is also very important, because if the lecture of a brilliant teacher was shot in a lousy quality and low resolution, and even the sound is interrupted, there will be little good. The degree of teacher involvement is a very important criterion. Because they can call such a thing when you just watch a video and then answer the tests: "Choose 10 answers from three options." But this is profanity, just a set of lectures. And there is a situation when a teacher dawns and sleeps on forums, explains everything, checks tasks. This is a completely different approach. Good teachers have a ton of other activities, and often they cannot devote all their time to such things. Level of difficulty: still, most MOOCs are introductory courses, quite superficial. First of all, because MOOC are used by universities as their own advertising. And here, of course, it is more reasonable to lay out an introductory course, to hook a person, and then he will come and bring money to the university. Maybe the situation will change over time. Training cost : as a rule, the freemium model is used, where the main functionality is given for free, and then you, depending on your needs, get the right items for some money. Usually the amounts are still small when it comes to classic MOOCs, and you pay for something optional - for example, for a diploma. It is issued digitally and so far most employers are not talking about anything.
According to the time of classes, there are two models:
- according to the schedule: the course begins at some specific moment and lasts for some time, for example, three months;
- you can start learning at any time, the course is not tied to time (self-paced model).
Each model has its drawbacks. The big drawback of the first option is that you have to wait six months for it. You found an interesting course, and it begins in May 2015. Until this time, you will have time to do a lot of things, maybe the course by that time will become obsolete. On the other hand, a lot of people study at scheduled courses. If at least several thousand people are actively studying, then there will be a decent forum, an exchange of opinions, this is interesting. And in the course, which is always available, there may be one or two cripples: one from Zanzibar, the second - you. It will not be cool.
MOOC is mainly conducted in English. Somewhere there are subtitles, sometimes even in Russian. For example, Coursera is being translated with the help of ABBYY into Russian with subtitles. Implementation technologies are also important. For example, some sites use Flash, so there may be a problem with mobile devices. Not all major services have mobile applications, although they are more or less tightened.
How a typical MOOC works on the example of Coursera
There is a certain description of the course, which tells you what knowledge you need for successful training. Who teaches how many weeks we study, the approximate number of hours per week. If you start to study, it is better to immediately highlight the box in your schedule, otherwise at some point you will find that you are behind everyone, and it’s easier to score than continue to study. What does the course consist of? Video lectures sorted into sections lasting 10-20 minutes. It is believed that this is the clip time during which the average teenager can maintain attention. In addition, additional materials are offered: texts, recommended books, other resources. Verification of tasks: either automated tests, or mutual assessment by students of each other's work. You got the job of one person, he gets someone else's answer. Seeing other people's mistakes, you, therefore, learn yourself, this is a homespun truth, but, on the other hand, if your work got to some hack worker, then nothing good will come of it. A double edged sword. As a rule, there is a forum where the author of the course encourages students to communicate on a topic. This is an interesting thing.
And a rather sharp question about the availability of content at the end of the course, if it is a scheduled course. Often, after the end of the lesson, the materials become unavailable. There are many reasons for this. The first is copyright. These problems are not completely resolved, because many course providers make money on the same material, and if it is always available, it seems to be hindering their business. On the other hand, if the materials are always online, then people will constantly tug on the teacher. He also has his own affairs, he is not ready to do this all the time, especially for free.
The Big Three
Coursera is the most famous, largest in terms of the number of users, most probably multilingual. Materials from most American universities are presented here, and most students are said to be from Asia.
This is a recent screenshot - a total of 800 large-format courses, about 20 in Russian.
What is worth knowing about Coursera? Education is free, certificates are paid. These are the same diplomats - pieces of paper that can be obtained at the end. Recently they introduced such a thing as a specialty - this is a sequence of related courses. Let's say you study journalism. One part “how to write”, the second part - “how to take pictures”, the third part - “how to shoot a video” passed. Thus, they completed the specialty. They also require money for this, but they are small, this is the same money that you pay for certificates at the courses that make up the specialty. Everything is humane enough. Question: how much does this specialty in reality correspond to what you get in a “classical” education, not distance education? The question is very difficult because it’s one thing if you studied at Princeton, the other is somewhere in the vastness of our homeland in a not-so-large large university. You understand, the quality of training, alas, is different.
About 9 million users are registered here. The catalog is quite balanced: there are both practical and academic courses. Coursera works on schedule, that is, you need to wait for the start of training. Although they had experimentally available constantly available courses. The quality and format are rather heterogeneous. Coursera gives a lot of freedom to course developers, and these are either universities or individual teachers. And someone did well, someone did not. Earlier, when Coursera itself took part in this, the quality was more uniform. They have experiments with regional offices - these are some physical organizations where you can come and learn, test your knowledge - the very concept of blended learning (blended learning). We have such a representative office located in Digital October (“Red October”).
There are normal mobile apps for two major platforms. Coursera is generally considered the main apologist for disruptive learning. This is a good place to try yourself.
This is what the diploma you get if you pay $ 50. You can draw one yourself.
edX- The second major resource of the Big Three. What is the difference between him and Coursera? Initially, Coursera is the west coast of the United States, Stanford School. The main life in the States is concentrated on two coasts: there is a western school, and there is an eastern one. EdX - Eastern School - Cambridge, Massachusetts. In principle, these universities from the east are leaders in the list of the main universities in the world, but the western school is also very strong, and they constantly compete with each other. Coursera was initially more focused on internationalization, immediately entered into many agreements with universities in other countries, EdX developed more as a purely American project, but now they have gone in breadth.
Recently, the Russian Ministry of Education has concluded some kind of agreement with EdX. About what - nobody understands, but there is a chance that something good will come out of it. EdX also has free training and paid certificates. Smaller courses are around 300, but they are represented by very good universities and are comparable in level with Coursera. There are fewer users. There is more emphasis on academic disciplines, technology (due to MIT) and medicine. On schedule, everything is arranged similarly to Coursera. And if the latter was created as a commercial project, then EdX is an academic non-profit, and here they were initially quite tough on quality. It is possible that now this will change, because EdX is also changing. They are trying to introduce paid tuition from next year. This is an option, the main part will still be free, but there will be some options for in-depth study,
EdX is not trying to revolutionize education; rather, it is an attempt to improve its quality with online tools.
EdX allows you to study at the top American universities. This is a Shanghai rating, one of the universally recognized. Nd - no data. British Cambridge and Oxford are not represented not only in the main providers of online courses Coursera and EdX, but, as far as I know, have not yet been presented online in the classic free format. They believe that education should remain as it is now, a sort of stronghold of traditionalism.
Third Player - Udacity. It is slightly different from Coursera and EdX. Firstly, it was originally a commercial service, and secondly, it was originally focused on IT specialties. There are very few university courses, but there are university teachers. A lot of commercial companies like Google, Facebook, etc. These companies participate in the creation of courses and carefully look at graduates. There are some chances that if you study well, then they will pay attention to you. Udacity, although a commercial project, but there is an opportunity to learn for free. In general, it turns out a little more expensive than in the previous two projects, but they charge money for working with the teacher when he checks you, advises, etc., and for the certificate. There are much fewer courses (about 40 large) and fewer users. These are IT, mathematics, applied things. English only, decent quality, There are applications for iOS and Android. They focus on those who do not draw a classical college or university (in the States it is, in principle, the same essence, only research is being done at the university, but not at college) and who needs a specialty. What is important, there are prospects for employment in partner companies.
Some other projects
MIT OpenCourseWare- It is rather a library archive than the classic MOOC service. There are more than 2 thousand courses, but not all of them are the same programs as on Coursera or EdX. Often this is just some kind of training manual, a set of textual information about what is going on in this course, a list of references, etc. MIT has been constantly working on replenishing this library since 2002. Recent courses are quite comparable to Coursera, they can be uploaded to EdX, since MIT is its partner. If you are interested in engineering (in which MIT is traditionally strong), you can dig there and probably catch something interesting. They still have lectures in the iTunes service iTunes U, something has been posted on Youtube. But I would not advise starting with this project, because MIT has not yet brought its library to its normal form. This is all for experts.
We have already talked about Khan Academy . They have an interesting format. Instead of a talking head, as in most online courses, which is interspersed with slides, here is a board on which the teacher draws and explains. For schoolchildren, this is much better. I would not say that Khan Academy is intended only for schoolchildren, there are a lot of interesting things, in particular, partnership programs with NASA, with decent museums. You can learn quite interesting things for yourself, even if you studied well at school at one time. Now they are trying to launch new courses in cooperation with universities, this is already taking them to a higher level.
Udemy. If so far we have been talking about services that look like a supermarket - everything is laid out on the shelves, everything is centralized - then Udemy is more like a market. There are many stalls where teachers can sell their own courses, and someone comes to buy. The sales scheme is standard - incomes are divided into 50 by 50. Training is mainly paid, but there are also free courses and very inexpensive ones — some money that you don’t mind spending. Here is a slightly different format of courses - they are short, on average, for several hours. Udemy covers a very wide range of topics, including dog training, but there are academic things. International and affordable at any time, which is very nice, that is, you can always learn. The quality is different. Udemy is useful for gaining some practical skills, that is, academic disciplines are stupid to study there,
Lynda . This is a rather interesting project, many IT specialists have heard about it. It has existed since 1995. This is a family business, organized by husband and wife, and they have never managed to attract outside investors. The project still feels good, because during this time they managed to agree with different companies and use Lynda for corporate training. And this is other money. Here, mainly IT, business, design, photography - short courses for several hours. Quite a lot of users - 4 million, courses are available at any time, in English. This is a subscription service, that is, they do not provide content for free, you need to pay certain money every month, and for this you will receive a certain amount of information. You can take one new course per week. In principle, a solid option for practical training, like Udemy.
Sailor Academy . They agreed with many American universities that their courses are counted in the university program, that is, you can listen to the course here and then check the box in your diary. This is all already going to the official diploma. That is, in principle, this is a real American higher education. Not all courses and not all colleges are accredited, but there are quite a few.
IversityIs the German answer of Coursera. Europe became worried after some time, because talk of a brain drain wasn’t from scratch. You studied well at Coursera once, completed the course, studied two, completed the course, then you received an invitation: "Let us come to us to study already live, will we pay you a scholarship?" Of course you have to go. Why not? Thus, good students from different countries are attracted to America. Europe is worried and is trying to do something of its own. Made soundly, but a little straightforwardly, in German. While there are few courses, about 30, academic disciplines, a lot of technology. Iversity does not collaborate with universities, but directly with European teachers who do the courses. Scheduled training, and since there are few courses, you have to wait a long time. The choice is small, little available at this particular moment. Languages German and English, even one Russian course appeared. Made with high quality, solid - you can try the German school.
FutureLearn . This is already the British answer of Coursera. Also free training, 100 courses. Academic disciplines, quite a lot about culture and medicine. British universities, of course, on a schedule, in English. There are similar projects in France and Spain, but I don’t mention them, because for most of us this is not applicable. English is known, at the very least, the majority, and few other European languages, although Spain and France also have fairly strong services.
Universarium- this is our answer Coursera, at least, was conceived as such. I don’t know what will happen. He has a rather strange affiliation. Universarium is made by people who work in MIA Russia today (formerly RIA Novosti). On the one hand, this project is financed by commercial funds, and the state does not invest there - at least, as I heard. On the other hand, there is some kind of connection with the state, and the Universarium, it seems, performs some functions of propaganda of the Russian language, somehow contrasted with Western services. What is good and bad here? Free - great. There are not very many courses yet. About 40 are declared, in reality it is less, somewhere around 20-25. Quite a lot of common subjects, there are courses on practical electronics. They are just starting, for the most part these are common things, to expand their horizons. Decent universities are represented, classes are scheduled, in Russian. There is an iOS application. As a result, it was done solidly, but so far somewhat superficially. The Universarium wants to negotiate with universities, take strong courses from them, so that the university will show the whole world how they have developed some direction. That is, the university orders the creation of a course at the Universarium, pays money for it, and the Universum transmits knowledge to users. Perhaps the business model will change over time, but so far it has been like that. That is, the university orders the creation of a course at the Universarium, pays money for it, and the Universum transmits knowledge to users. Perhaps the business model will change over time, but so far it has been like that. That is, the university orders the creation of a course at the Universarium, pays money for it, and the Universum transmits knowledge to users. Perhaps the business model will change over time, but so far it has been like that.
Uniweb is a slightly different topic. Education is paid, prices are quite decent, measured in thousands of rubles. Training of medium duration. This is something like continuing education courses. In the corporate market, it can make quite good money, because companies are more willing to pay for the training of their specialists. There are also decent Russian universities. The business model is this: Uniweb negotiates with universities and prepares courses at its own expense, and then somehow divide the proceeds from the sale. The number of places in the group is strictly limited, that is, it is closer to the classical distance education. On the other hand, this is a new service, a decent interface, so it is logical to attribute them to the new generation of distance education.
Lecture hall- This is a St. Petersburg project. There are still few large courses, less than a dozen, but many popular lectures - about 3 thousand. Video quality is not very good, but from decent universities. Good teachers, academic disciplines, are available at any time in Russian. These are lectures, not courses.
Netology. I thought for a long time whether it should be turned on. I decided what I needed, because they pretty well honed a certain direction. Internet marketers - there is such a group of professions - there are SEO optimization, and just marketers, and SMM, and design. Fashionable professions that are in demand by the market. Tuition is paid, by subscription. For 800 rubles a month you can listen to all 50 courses that they have. These courses are not very long. Plus, they recently launched a model of the profession, similar to Coursera, when you have more information, it is given in a more structured way, but the money there is different - 15-25 thousand rubles. A good, specialized resource in a certain direction. I think that you can learn a lot from them.
Intuition. This is a service with a very long history, exists since 2003. There is a lot of content, about 200 video courses, as well as several hundred courses with text content. General impression: a little old-fashioned, brontosaurus in mothballs. The content is very different in terms of relevance. The interface would be great to update. And their approach is very non-profit. By this they impress, there is no eagerness, they practically do not take money there for anything. But this, apparently, impedes the development of the project. There are quite a lot of content on IT, in particular, on all sorts of vendor stuff.
Two more Russian projects are just starting up - Stepic.org and Hexlet.io/ . There are things about programming, about development, it's all free, but there is still little content. Maybe after some time they will reach a decent level.
Foreign language
A separate big topic, because they began to study a foreign language on the Internet for a very long time, and quite a lot of experience has accumulated here. All projects are quite similar to each other, that is, this is the same freemium (something can be learned for free, something not), and it seems to me that learning a language from beginning to end with their help is unrealistic. But to tighten, maintain the level, if you do not have enough practice, or study in combination with something else - yes, it can be useful.
First LiveMocha Service, the largest on the Internet, there study five million people, and you can communicate with native speakers for free. These are not professional teachers, but ordinary people. You can talk to them, correspond, they will correct you. Everything else for most services is similar - tests, lessons, word cards, grammar exercises and the like. All this can be obtained from books, the difference is small. The only advantage is the presence of live communication for free.
ITunes U. The same iTunes, only on the topic of education. Available on mobile devices and Apple computers. There are many lectures that decent American universities do. Some of this content intersects with MOOC, and some do not. That is, you can listen separately, but the problem is that this content is usually less structured: more lectures and fewer large courses, large formats.
Flooved.com - opensource-project, a collection of free textbooks. It’s somehow easier with textbooks, but in the West they cost a lot of money, like all academic literature. It is customary in the Anglo-Saxon world to make money from this.
Helpouts.google.com- This is Google video chat, where you can declare yourself an expert in some field and teach others through video chat. You will be paid a little more for this. They declared themselves an expert, for example, in buying a refrigerator, and someone is too lazy to study this topic - - you told him everything in 10 minutes, he paid you a dollar. As far as I know, this only works in English and Spanish, and only in the States for Google users who have Google Hangouts. Maybe they have already expanded to other languages and countries. An interesting initiative, it has a future.
Scholar.google.com is a scientific publishing search engine.
Why MOOC Universities?
There is some controversy between universities and MOOC. On the one hand, MOOCs can serve as advertisements for universities, show how cool they are and attract students there. On the other hand, MOOC compete with an educational institution, that is, it turns out that education can be obtained not in the walls of the university, but in some alternative way. For universities, this is a pretty hot topic. It seems that they need to implement these things, otherwise you will lag behind and you will fall lower and lower in the ratings. But how to implement it in general, but in order not to harm yourself, is not very clear.
A life example of how students can be interested. Doctors study at Stanford, and American doctors need to learn a lot of information, it is given in lectures. There is a teacher, and tells, and tells. At Stanford, attendance at these lectures was 20%. Then they came up with a joint program with Khan Academy, and most of these lectures were done in video format. After the video lecture there is an interactive class where people discuss, check who remembered what, and so on, and attendance increased to 90%. I think that it became interesting to students what kind of a new thing this might be, then attendance will fall again. But at least a short-term effect has been achieved.
The university can expand its own program, because if you have good teachers in mechanical engineering, and in the neighboring university - in the construction of tractors, then you can take a course on tractors from there and train a local assistant to supervise the knowledge in your university. Cheap enough to expand the program. On the other hand, this model of content licensing is rather tight at universities because they are all quite proud, and everyone believes that he has the best. As a rule, not so good universities think so.
This graph reflects one of the main problems that MOOC is blamed for - as a rule, less than 10% of listeners survive to the finish line. But if we look, we will see that it is stupid to blame MOOC for this, because most of the students who enroll in the courses are not going to listen to them. They just came to see what it is who is teaching there. Maybe they just read the name of the course, poked on the record and forgot about it, and there are a lot of such students. Yes, some part is eliminated as you progress through the course. Quite a lot of those who are called passive participants, they just watch and do not participate in the verification work. But if at the beginning of the course there were 10 thousand and 800 remained, this is still excellent, because most normal universities cannot boast of so many people who attended the course.
MOOC has the biggest problem with money, because it is not clear where to get it. It’s like with social networks. When they first grew up, everyone said: “Where are you recruiting users? How will you live with them? ", They say:" Ah, then we'll figure it out. Now let's type. ” They figured out in the end. Now social networks are a normal business, they profit from advertising, games and other things. Perhaps MOOC will somehow succeed when they gain a critical mass of users. But how this will be arranged is now incomprehensible. At the same time, the cost of creating an average course is rather big. 325 thousand dollars is already prohibitive, for the majority 30-50 thousand dollars per course. This is the teacher’s time, the time of the video command, installation, uploading to the network, then the support of courses, that is, quite a lot of costs.
Not all professions can be taught using MOOC. To a surgeon who studied online, I’m unlikely to lie on the table. There is a problem of quality control, quite a lot of cheating. Of course, online cheating is easier than live on the exam.
And there are systemic external problems: both universities are resisting, and employers are still looking askance at these diplomas, which are unclear where they came from and it is unclear what they are carrying, and the state does not really understand what to do about it. I think in the coming years we will also have state regulation. I hope that this will lead not to a ban, but to the recognition of electronic diplomas in one form or another.
conclusions
And if the MOOC revolution happens, what can happen? It will be more difficult for universities, since they will have to compete not within the city, but within the country or the world. Strong universities will gain an advantage, weak ones will go bankrupt. There were forecasts according to which, in a few years, half of the universities will go bankrupt. Competition among teachers will also intensify, because a good teacher will be able to broadcast to the whole world. Another thing is how much this one simple broadcast is enough. All the same, control, chewing, practice will be required.
What can this give students?
- More flexibility and less freedom. If now you can run away from a lecture, then here you cannot run away from yourself.
- Less live communication.
- Those who know English will have more benefits.
- Globalization of education and increased mobility. Now education in us and in the States is very different. Maybe in 10 years these differences will not be so dramatic, and if you want to go to another country, then you do not have to confirm all your diplomas.
These are the main conclusions that should be drawn from this all. Of course, you need to learn English. It is worth taking a closer look at the ecosystem of educational technologies itself, because it is growing rapidly, and it is quite easy to find a niche that is not yet occupied. Unlike industries that have long been established, the entry threshold is quite low - you can think of something.
Five myths about MOOC
“MOOC is able to replace higher education . ” Yes, but for very few people. First of all, for those who have a tendency to self-motivation, self-learning, to search for information on their own. Also, higher education can be obtained far from all directions. Not enough accessible content, many specialties remain outside this movement. Now MOOC is an addition to traditional education, not a replacement.
“MOOC is for students or schoolchildren”. I would say no. This is more for those who have learned something, and then wants to either increase their level, improve, or even change direction. It often happens to people that they have been studying for five years, and then they understand: “What a fool I am! It was necessary to learn differently. ” And another five years - this is generally unrealistic. And MOOC is a fairly simple, cheap and fast way to change or see if it is worth changing horses at the crossing. Maybe this was not a good idea.
“MOOC is better or worse than traditional education”, depending on who thinks how. No better and no worse, there are pros and cons. It's like fast food, for example. Is fast food bad? If you constantly eat hamburgers alone - not very good, but if you are hungry and need to eat fast, then fast food is great. MOOC can be compared to fast food, because in contrast to the classical education, there is a slightly emasculated model, which is as broadcast as possible.
“MOOC is technologically something new compared to the old distance education . ” Nothing of the kind, this is new socially, perceived differently. The same example with the iPhone and smartphones that came before him.
Questions and answers
Question: Are there any examples of successful services that normally work?
Answer: Uniweb seems to be making good money; Netology is developing quite rapidly. I do not know if they pay off or constantly use investment injections, but they look quite successful.
Question: Besides LinguaLeo and DuoLingo, are there any examples of online courses using gamification?
Answer: Gamification is popular everywhere. Another thing is that everyone understands it in their own way, and not everyone does it cool, but they try in one form or another.
Question: Is the general dynamics of enthusiasm for online education growing in the world?
Answer:Yes, and the Asians are very actively involved in this. Many students study online, but I think, for the commonplace reason - they are practical, and they have a certain shortage of universities. Still, we are in a better position, we have many good universities. But you still need to use someone else's experience, because learning at Harvard is always interesting.
Question: Why do you think our universities are not actively going in this direction?
Answer:On the one hand, they are afraid, because it is an undermining of their own positions. I am a teacher, I have some cool course, students come to me. I will post this course on the Internet, everyone will listen and watch it for free. What will I do? And universities are also afraid. A double edged sword. On the one hand, MOOCs are dangerous for the traditional education system, on the other hand, they can clearly help it. Universities are a very conservative structure, a lot of inertness, and much could be done better. But how to do it so as not to harm ... Look at journalism. There used to be print media, they lived well, there was a lot of money and advertising. Then everything went to the Internet, budgets fell, advertising on the Internet is cheaper. As a result, there is less money left in journalism, but the content still needs quality. Quality content requires money you can’t send a girl who graduated from college yesterday to write new good articles. There is a contradiction. It’s the same here. IT technologies are good for their replicability, but they undermine the foundations of the traditional industry, which was established before their implementation. Education will somehow experience it