Moocs and Badges

The world we live in has experienced three dynamic eras beginning with the Agricultural Era, followed by the monstrous Industrial Era, and the one we currently live in called the Information/Digital Era. Each time period represents drastic changes in our world.  The term revolution is a better fit because it's such a momentous, radical change in how we do things delivering a complete new way in how we live and function.  Each revolution represents total fundamental change.  So why are we still using the same 500 year old educational system?  Why are we teaching the children of today for tomorrow with yesterday's tools and techniques?  Anant Agarwal  states on Ted Talk 2013 that distance education could be transformed successfully through online technology. He addresses this with a discussion about Moocs.

 I find Moocs to be a fascinating component of online learning.  I was totally unaware this even existed.  Moocs (massive open online courses) are free courses delivered through the internet for anyone, anywhere with no limit on enrollment numbers.

The New York Times proclaimed 2012 to be the Year of the Moocs with much enthusiasm and many believed this would shake up the very core of how learning content is delivered.  Mooc creators' vision was to make available the best educational courses from the best schools to anyone worldwide for free with an internet connection.  The vision is a great idea, but there's confusion and conflicting opinions on Moocs.  See the wikimedia.org image below:

Many believed moocs were the economical answer for education, but now many view them as failure with a completion rate of only 4%.  In the article, 4 Lessons We Can Learn from the "Failure" of MOOCs ,  Andrew Miller states, "Education is all about building relationships, focusing on collaboration, constantly providing feedback, and using blended models". These are all proven strategies that work in the online world.  

Moocs are just one element of the online revolution, but the fact they literally shook the traditional education infrastructure is important to note.   Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of Udacity and a pioneer of Moocs, says, "Online education that leaves almost everybody behind except for highly motivate students, to me, can't be a viable path to education.  We look back at our early work and realize it wasn't quite as good as it should have been.  We had so many moments for improvement."  
We are in an educational transformation.  On one end, many are witnesses and contributors while others are unwilling to change and quick to point out the failures.  Our education system is the last system to change in this online revolution, but the continuing technology advances will force a change.  As more educational tools and techniques emerge from this era, the more changes we will see in education.  It's ongoing, just like a lesson plan.  Any effective educator knows that a true lesson plan is never finished, we are constantly tweaking it, changing it, reflecting on it, and then making more adjustments.  This is education at it's best. I don't consider moocs a failure because to consider anything a failure means the game is over.  Just like Sebastian Thrun reflected on what they did and looked at ways to improve.

Everyone remembers a favorite teacher.  What makes us remember that particular teacher?  It's the relationship that teacher built with you as a student.  It became personal. Powerful stuff those relationships and online/blended learning must have it in order to succeed.  It creates collaboration, participation, problem solving, critical thinking, ongoing feedback, etc.  It's a necessary ingredient.  Interesting that this ingredient is same as the one found 500 years ago in our traditional classroom.   We just now have more avenues to build upon it. 

There's been an effort with MOOCs to bring more credibility to student learning by using Open Badges.  This would give students badges that represent achievement of specific skills.  A digital badge can be clicked upon to explain who the badge came from, the specific skills and criteria that was met to receive the badge, and reveal artifacts that lead to the receipt of the badge. Chris Haskell explains in detail that "badges are skills, achievements, and experiences that are meaningful to the individual or community".  This instantly reminds me of my girl scout days earning badges to display on my uniform.  I remember the skill it took and the experiences that came with learning the skill.  Google has recently created a badge system for their online teachers to earn towards their certification.  It gives credibility and depth to the learning process.