How MOOCs led me to Harvard

Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

In a way, MOOCs have led me to Harvard. A few days ago, I presented the first draft of a game designed for learning Spanish during the 2015 Heritage Language Research Institute sponsored by National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC) and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), at Harvard University. This Institute “brings together researchers from language sciences and education to focus on fostering new research in heritage language and to promote the heritage language agenda in academia and society at large” (NHLRC, n.d.).

I’m interested in Spanish heritage learners' linguistic variations, syntax, socio-cultural language norms, and pedagogy theories that explore best teaching practices for this particular linguistic group. Therefore, I often attend conferences and symposiums regarding this topic. Harvard hosted the 2015 Heritage Language Research Institute and I decided to go and dive into new learning.

2014... the year I juggled MOOCs

By Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

I had an intense relationship with MOOCs in 2014. As all intense “relationships”, I loved them, hated them, invested a lot of time on them, or abandon them. MOOCs surprised me with new knowledge (i.e. gamification), or satisfied my pedagogical learning needs (i.e. EdTech and blended learning). I defended MOOCs against those who desperately wanted them to fail based on their high dropout rate, but also, I raised my voice against those MOOCs that experimented with students and neglected their needs.

Throughout 2014, I witnessed the evolution of MOOCs and I confirmed my thesis that MOOCs are just the beginning of an important revolution in e-learning. According to Shah D. (2014) 400+ universities offered over 2400+ MOOCs in 2014. At the beginning, all MOOCs were Massive and Open. At the end of the year, some evolved to be less massive, and less open.

The learning MOOC perspective

By Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

MIT and Stanford sponsored the “Learning with MOOCs: a practitioner’s workshop” on August 12-13, 2014 in Cambridge, MA. It was not clear for me who could attend to the workshops,  but I think that the event was “for invitation only”. Thankfully, MIT and Stanford transmitted some of the conferences live through webcast. Hence, I could have access to the keynote speaker conference.

It is interesting how the organizers divided the workshops. They used the modality of “tracks” (a 15 minute talk followed by 45 minutes facilitated discussion) to explore MOOC’s teaching, design, research, and technology. The workshop program was very interesting. Check the program here for more information.

Nanodegree to level up your career!

By Ramón Talavera-Franco

 @ratafra 

Nanodegree is a new job-focused credential that Udacity––in partnership with AT&T––will offer starting fall 2014. The first nanodegrees are focused on gaining entry-level software skills. The courses will be completed in 6-12 months and it is expected that students invest 10 hours per week. The cost is $200.00 US per month; however, AT&T is offering scholarships to non-profit organizations such as Genesys Works and Year up. In addition, AT&T will offer 100 paid internships to top students who complete a nanodegree. So… do you want to level up your career?

Sebastian Thurn, a research professor at Stanford University, and Udacity co-founder & CEO, explained that nanodegrees are the solution for those who