Massive Open Online School "FutureLearn" Opens

judgecorp writes "Twenty-three British universities are contributing to a British provider of "massive open online courses" (MOOCs) by the name of FutureLearn. Backed by long-established expert, The Open University, which has been doing remote learning for 44 years, the British MOOC provider aims to compete with US outfits such as Khan Academy and Coursera."

Comments

"Compete."

[Joining Yet Again]

The Open University had higher standards before it decided to compete on quantity, and instead just excelled quietly at offering distance learning courses using traditional materials (with alternative versions to fit accessibility needs), optional regular tutorials distributed around the country, residential schools for those who could attend them, summative coursework, and compulsory written examinations.

In the years leading up to the 2012 funding change, it was appointed a new CEO (sorry.. I mean Vice Chancellor) who used to be an executive at Microsoft "education", and since then it's turned more to the style of a business training provider. Which is really sad. I remember chatting with Harold Wilson's son (the PM established the uni - his son is now an excellent mathematics tutor) at a residential school at the beginning of this transformation, and he talked of his regret to witness the decline of accessibility .

Just throwing out extracts of course materials doesn't make for an education experience. It's about interaction, and challenging assessment.

Re:"Compete."

[Joining Yet Again]

To reply to myself, the high quality of OU textbooks are also an important feature. This is why the courses - as is perfectly acceptable at undergraduate level, where you're not learning cutting edge research techniques - had slow update cycles, with some lasting for decades. The fundamentals of Number Theory or Non-Euclidean Geometry (the M203 section dropped in M208, IIRC) won't change, for example. Then it became fashionable to tweak the courses more frequently - the government paid by number of people merely turning up to the final exam (wtf?), so hard courses with high drop-out rates were made simpler, and people discouraged from doing harder courses unless it seemed (too) certain that they were ready. As part of this, rewrites (by often reluctant academics) occurred more often - and IMHO the quality of texts for many courses declined.

More annoyingly, however, qualifications became less challenging.

There are sooooooooooo many brilliant educators still there, as staff and associate lecturers. So, all is not lost. But please, for heaven's sake, stop "competing" for numbers, OU, and instead just offer highly challenging but well-written courses and let those who are smart and hard-working come to you.

Re:"Compete."

[Defenestrar]

While I personally think education for the sake of learning is valuable, the real challenge is getting mainstream HR departments to acknowledge the worth of the system. It's not often that you see an entry level job description list qualifications like this:

1. A 3 years technical experience in a related field, or

2. A B.S. within the field, or

3. A self directed series of (possibly free) online courses which requires us to perform a detailed analysis of your coursework and somehow compute its equivalence to a couple of capital letters from a more traditional education background and then rank you accordingly with every other applicant

It may fly for tech start-ups and direct hires which bypass HR screening, but most resumes still go through HR and if they can't figure out which check box to tic... or worse, if they think you're making up some fly by night claims, the application will never make it to the technical people involved with hiring. Until open learning manages to make a substantial dent on the traditional models for education, it will still be seen as third rate to a few capital letters after ones name. I think that's extremely unfortunate, but I suspect that's the way it will be for a while yet. I applaud the efforts of Future Learn and their partners for one more option. But you're certainly right about needing to maintain quality and an image of quality with the associated courses - and not diluting that for mere "market share".

I dream of the day when anyone from the sub Saharan or Alaskan wilds to the neighborhood barista can complete a standardized set of courses (with automated assignments and exams) and simply claim their degree. To offer master levels with the same thing for graduate courses and a thesis stamped with approval by a certain number of others in the field, and a Ph.D. up for grabs to anyone with the master's coursework and a collection of peer reviewed journal articles.

Re:"Compete."

[Half-pint HAL]

true that throwing extracts on the web doesn't help everyone but clear explanations of topics does help. this does not require two way communication. take a look at Khan Academy.

Khan Academy's problem is precisely that: there are some muddy, woolly and even downright wrong explanations in his vids, because there isn't any direct feedback to prompt the tutor to reformulate.

Thank You

[barlevg]

Thank you, submitter, for including what "MOOC" stands for in the summary. Too much alphabet soup around /. these days, and while Google can usually clarify, it's nice to not have to do the search.

Wishing them the best of luck

[raymorris]

There are some good people at Open University. A commenter mentioned quality. The person at OU who I work with annoys me at times because he insists on top quality. There's no such thing as a quick fix on the software we use - the OU person insists that every change is WELL thought out and implemented in the very best way possible, even if that's a lot more work than doing it the easy way.

Best of luck to my friends at OU in this new endeavour.

Why?

[Chrisq]

The University of London and Edinburgh provide courses through coursera. What does having a "British alternative" give the UK. I would expect that a MOOC provider would cost rather than make money.

Re:Why?

[Half-pint HAL]

The "British alternative" is a red herring and bad PR. FutureLearn is simply an alternative MOOC platform that has been built from the ground up with mobile in mind. Coursera, Udacity and EdX all still assume that the world and his dog only access the internet at a desk, with an unlimited high-speed connection. FutureLearn have a massive potential advantage over their competitors, and they need to start pushing it to build the business before the established players catch up.

Re:Wishing them the best of luck

[Chrisq]

Hurrah for your friend! Yes, this is the historical OU way. Having something excellent but slightly outdated is always better than having a fashionable structure built on sand. I hope that attitude is brought into this project.

... I guess not "posted from my iPhone 5s"

Some MOOCs say they don't know, are experimenting

[raymorris]

> I worry about the educational validity of MOOCs and feel that universities don't really have an idea of what they are for

A Google fellow working on MOOC.org / edX, Dr. Guha, said Tuesday that they most certainly don't know what they are doing, no more than he knew what he was doing when he created RSS, so they are trying to set up a flexible framework in which people can experiment, try things.

Great, although...

[aaaaaaargh!]

On the one hand, such online learning systems are certainly welcome and this sounds like a good program. On the other hand, I cannot help recognizing that some of the courses are advertised like TED talks - with sensational titles and a lot of pseudo-smart attitude like in the recent, sometimes fairly mediocre regional TED talks (some of them remind me of cheap personality training videos). Titles like "The mind is flat: the shocking shallowness of human psychology" or "Sustainability, society and you", "Muslims in Britain: Changes and challenges" do sound a lot like they had been invented by politicians who wanted to implement "governmental education programs" rather than like introductions to real science. There is a reason why courses at university are called "Introduction to Cognitive Psychology", "Syntax II" or "Calculus 1", namely that there is a (hopefully) well-designed curriculum that is intended to improve real knowledge and skills as opposed to sensationalist teaching of (alleged) facts.

Khan Academy and the Open Courseware programme by MIT and other US universities do it the right way, but I'm a bit skeptical about this one. Don't get me wrong, this one is also a good idea, but universities must also resist temptations of advertising, dumbing down, or sensationalizing their offers.

Re:Great, although...

[internerdj]

Here is a thought: a lot of the things that make science interesting (application) are left off or left to the end because a "normal" program or course needs to make sure they get in the core prep work. MOOCs reduce the cost of introducing topics in a compelling way because time isn't at such a premium. It wouldn't hurt to have a Math 001: Cool things you can do in math that introduces the user to different applications before digging into the meat. Hey if you want to know more about the computer graphics stuff you've seen here maybe you should check out our linear algebra course. In a traditonal college this doesn't work because it isn't proper preparation material and you have to waste an instructor's time semester after semester on essentially a sales pitch.

Experience, certs, and other non degree classes

[Joe_Dragon]

need to add up to some thing but then again if you put down I have X that is an equivalent to an degree how much cheeking will HR do?