Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX was clear about the goal of the organization: Educating 1 billion students in the next 10 years. By 2015, Open edX—a non-profit organization established in Boston, MA—has reached 5 million students from more than 196 countries. The organization partners with 90 educational institutions in 40 countries, and offers 700+ courses online. According to these numbers, reaching the 1 billion students goal
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.
To read week 1 click here To read week 2 click here To read week 3 click here To read week 4 click here
Registering for a MOOC while working full time and being a part time Ed.D. student is challenging. Complying with its pedagogical components (videos, readings, assignments), and participating in its forums, groups, hangouts, etc., is a major task, especially, when the course is designed using the same concept of a course taught at a university level. The huge difference between them both is that a course taken at a university offers credits towards a degree while MOOCs do not offer those credits. Hence, if MOOCs pedagogical and assessment demands are similar to college courses, shouldn’t students receive recognition according to those demands?
