This one won't be a surprise for most people....
Coursera
... and actually, MOOCs in general.
We all know how fantastic MOOCs are and how they are almost as addictive as Kopparberg pear cider. What's that you have never tried? Get yourself to a decent pub with a decent wi-fi signal and a decent selection of Swedish ciders and tell me that it isn't the most addictive substance in a world. Take a course in Animal Psychology or some outlandish course you wouldn't have touched with a barge pole when you were at uni and try and tell me that MOOCs aren't the greatest thing to hit the internet since that jumping dinosaur game on the google page.
But why am I talking about MOOCs now, well the last class I did was about lifelong learning. I created a lesson based on that topic because I was getting a bit frustrated with my students moaning (is moaning the right word? ehm yeah I think so) about how they are not getting what they expected from their university experience. Some of the complaints were:
It has always amazed me that we always wait until we are given the knowledge, especially in formal education. We shouldn’t wait for a teacher or a professor to give us knowledge, we can be active and find the knowledge. We don't wait until somebody shows us how to operate a new device or gadget, we go out there and find the knowledge, why don't we use the same mentality for our formal education?
With that in mind I created a lifelong learning worksheet (attached below).
One of the activities involved getting the students to find four MOOCs they would like to take, two related to their major, two they are just interested in. The response was quite amazing, the students had no idea that so much knowledge was available to them. I explained to them if they took one of these courses every semester for the next 4 years, that would be 8 certificates they would have from the best universities in the world.
Imagine how much knowledge they would have.
Imagine how good it would look to a potential employer.
Imagine the improvement in their English.
It is beautiful and it is there for them.
My class is very unique, I make the syllabus, I set the assignments, I have complete freedom over everything. Next semester I will tell my students that if they enroll in a MOOC I will accept the assignments they do for the MOOC as assignments in my class. We need to encourage our students to find the knowledge they need.
* - My students are all international students, studying a 4 year undergraduate course at a Korean university in English.
Coursera
... and actually, MOOCs in general.
We all know how fantastic MOOCs are and how they are almost as addictive as Kopparberg pear cider. What's that you have never tried? Get yourself to a decent pub with a decent wi-fi signal and a decent selection of Swedish ciders and tell me that it isn't the most addictive substance in a world. Take a course in Animal Psychology or some outlandish course you wouldn't have touched with a barge pole when you were at uni and try and tell me that MOOCs aren't the greatest thing to hit the internet since that jumping dinosaur game on the google page.
But why am I talking about MOOCs now, well the last class I did was about lifelong learning. I created a lesson based on that topic because I was getting a bit frustrated with my students moaning (is moaning the right word? ehm yeah I think so) about how they are not getting what they expected from their university experience. Some of the complaints were:
- The low English level of the Korean professors*.
- Korean professors not being interested in the class, lack of passion.
- Classes are a waste of time as students can't understand the professor.
- Korean professors speaking in Korean for Korean classes.
It has always amazed me that we always wait until we are given the knowledge, especially in formal education. We shouldn’t wait for a teacher or a professor to give us knowledge, we can be active and find the knowledge. We don't wait until somebody shows us how to operate a new device or gadget, we go out there and find the knowledge, why don't we use the same mentality for our formal education?
With that in mind I created a lifelong learning worksheet (attached below).
One of the activities involved getting the students to find four MOOCs they would like to take, two related to their major, two they are just interested in. The response was quite amazing, the students had no idea that so much knowledge was available to them. I explained to them if they took one of these courses every semester for the next 4 years, that would be 8 certificates they would have from the best universities in the world.
Imagine how much knowledge they would have.
Imagine how good it would look to a potential employer.
Imagine the improvement in their English.
It is beautiful and it is there for them.
My class is very unique, I make the syllabus, I set the assignments, I have complete freedom over everything. Next semester I will tell my students that if they enroll in a MOOC I will accept the assignments they do for the MOOC as assignments in my class. We need to encourage our students to find the knowledge they need.
* - My students are all international students, studying a 4 year undergraduate course at a Korean university in English.