Category: Blog

HKU Successfully Concludes First MOOC, Work on Two Other Courses Gearing Up

Panel discussion on Ebola

The second week of December saw the official conclusion of the University of Hong Kong’s first massive open online course (MOOC) HKU01x: Epidemics. Led by Professor Gabriel M Leung, Dean of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, and infectious disease and public health experts from both the University of Hong Kong and international institutions such as the Harvard School of Public Health and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the course reached learners from 173 countries with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. In the end, more than 12 percent of the 10,290 enrolled learners earned a certificate of completion. This is a rather high rate as compared to the typical MOOC completion rate of around 5%, and goes to show the timeliness and quality of the course.

Prof David P. Y. Lung filming our next MOOC – The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia

As to the reasons that the learners complete the course to earn a certificate, adding to the resume, boosting job performance, supporting employment and school applications were often cited. In addition, personal satisfaction through a sense of achievement is also cited as a motivator for completing the course. For example, one learner reported that s/he finished the course “For my personal satisfaction that I can do it at age 77”.

In the beginning months of the new year, the HKU MOOC Working Group, in association with the HKU01x: Epidemics course team and the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU), will review the experience of our first MOOC and dive into the collected data for more insights that will help inform teaching and learning in both online and face-to-face settings here at HKU. Please watch out for information on salon and seminar sessions in the coming few months and make sure to join us for more in-depth discussions.

Prof Chad Hansen filming in the Common Core Lounge for Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought

While HKU01x: Epidemics is a undoubtedly a successful inaugural MOOC at this University measured by reach and impact, guided by the HKU MOOC Working Group, the EPSU instructional designers are working very closely with the course and video teams to ramp up work on three other courses, HKU02.1x: The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia, Part 1; HKUx03x: Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought; and HKU04x: Making Sense of News, which are all scheduled to launch in the first half of 2015. More and updated information of these courses can be found at the HKU’s edX page at https://www.edx.org/school/hkux and this blog.

Rick Levin on MOOCs and the Internationalization of Higher Education

HKU had the fantastic opportunity to welcome the esteemed Professor Richard Levin (Coursera CEO and Yale President Emeritus) for a publically-open keynote speech on the 5^th December. In this captivating and anecdotal talk, Professor Levin drew on his two decades of experience as a leader in higher education to discuss his common challenges and lessons from his time at Yale, his views on the state of higher education in Asia, and his recent decision to join Coursera.

Underpinning much of his discussion of the progressive internationalization of higher education was his view that cross-cultural communication is essential for anyone who aspires to leadership. Testimony to this belief is the work that Professor Levin undertook in Yale to establish a programme for undergraduates in Beijing and increase participation in international work and study programmes; his involvement on the board of the National Committee on United States-China Relations; and the creation of the first liberal arts college in Asia: Yale-NUS (National University of Singapore).

Alongside this growing need for cross-cultural communication as an integral part of the higher education experience are the changing assumptions about how the world works. He noted that international understanding is a core part of the 21^st Century curriculum – a curriculum which has, to a large extent, become internationalized ‘by itself’. He drew on the example of one of the initial courses which he taught in 1974 on the topic of Industrial Organisation in a North American context. He reflected that, from a contemporary perspective, the scope of this course would no longer be sufficient as industries rarely exist within one nation. Multinational communication and industry is central to many of today’s workplaces. Perhaps this insight is one of the factors which led to Professor Levin’s pioneering of online learning environments which enable learners to communicate across contexts and potentially across cultures, too.

After a fascinating exploration of several of his experiences experimenting with online learning spaces in higher education, Professor Levin discussed how he saw the role of Coursera in providing quality education to a global audience. With more than 10 million learners, 875 courses, and 115 partners, this platform is certainly not short of numbers and, by extension, is likely to embody a huge range of cultures, perspectives and areas of inquiry. It seems logical therefore that any discussion today on the internationalization of higher education mention MOOCs and the way in which they can leverage interaction and learning within and across cultures through the lens of subject areas scaffolded by reputable tertiary institutions.

Professor Levin’s passion for this exciting new space was clearly shared by the audience, which consisted of students, faculty, leadership alumni, UGC, school principals, amongst other stakeholders. Questions sparked discussions on how Professor Levin saw the future of Coursera; censorship and quality issues; the possible changing emphases of professoriate evaluation as a result of MOOCs; and considerations of assessment reliability for those considering offering credit-bearing MOOCs.

This inspiring keynote gave us all the opportunity to reflect on the world in which we live from the perspective of educators and learners. In order to gain insight into the scope and impact of MOOCs, one need not look past the experience of one of Professor Levin’s colleagues who calculated that, in his first MOOC offering, he had a completion rate of 20,000 learners; around 2.5 times the number of learners he had taught in face-to-face mode over his career! A sincere thanks to Professor Levin and the Coursera team for so generously sharing your experiences and insights with us.

A post from the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU)

Coursera e-learning MOOC

From Silicon Valley to HKU: Conversations with Mariel Reed

On a bright December day, we at HKU were lucky to have two opportunities to meet and talk to Mariel Reed, Coursera Partnership Manager and Co-Founder of Lean In Beijing.

In the first session, Mariel led a discussion with HKU academic staff in which she shared insights into what motivates faculty members to produce Massive Open Online Courses, what Coursera as a MOOC provider learns from its academic collaborators and how it takes advantage of this knowledge to improve and innovate on its platform. While Mariel shared some fascinating examples of Faculty motivations relating to MOOCs, three main areas emerged. Firstly, Mariel talked about professors making a social impact – for example, teaching more learners on one MOOC than in a lifetime of face-to-face lectures. A second motivation stems from a desire to improve teaching and learning with one famous example provided by Andrew Ng, a co-founder of Coursera, whose own teaching benefitted enormously from preparing and delivering his groundbreaking Machine Learning MOOCs. The third and final motivation that Mariel highlighted was the role that delivering MOOCs can play in academic staff’s professional enhancement, with an example of an Ohio State professor whose tenure track progress benefitted from a higher post-MOOC profile.

Along with these insights from faculty, Mariel also shared upcoming Coursera innovations, the highlight being ‘courses on demand’ which seeks to disrupt the current MOOC paradigm – in which the majority of courses mirror their face-to-face counterparts in having defined start and end dates – and replace it with students setting their own pace for study, perhaps finally evidencing the ‘anytime, anywhere’ claim that is often made for the benefits of e-learning. This coupled with Coursera’s continued focus on mobile learning marks exciting times indeed for online learners.

Mariel’s second session of the day was very different but equally rewarding. In ‘My East-West Adventures’, a talk primarily designed for students but with much of interest for faculty too, Mariel reflected on the things she cares about the most and spoke of the lessons learned from her experiences. One guiding and thought-provoking principle in Mariel’s life has been the idea that when considering your path in life, instead of focusing on what you want to do, focus on what problems you can solve. She applied this to her own life’s journey, firstly the leap from Washington D.C. to teaching English and Business at Shihezi University in Xinjiang, in which the issue that was at the forefront of Mariel’s thoughts was the importance of US-China relations. A second concern of Mariel is the development of people and she had a chance to work directly on this in her time in Beijing, co-founding Lean In Beijing which focuses on roles of professional women, and Beijing Commons, a volunteer organization that brings new ideas to life. The third guiding theme of Mariel’s life is that of universal access to quality education, which provides a link between previous teaching posts and her current work for Coursera back in Silicon Valley.

These ideas resonated with staff and students alike, who found Mariel’s vision inspiring and shared their own problems, thoughts and views on future growth. This session was much more ‘conversation’ than ‘presentation’ and was a perfect counterbalance to the previous information-rich seminar; here, participants had time to speak and reflect, and their willingness to share the personally-held beliefs is testament to the relaxed atmosphere that was created. Overall, two highly engaging talks from Mariel – we hope she comes back to visit HKU soon.

A post from the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU)

Coursera e-learning Mariel Reed MOOC

edx/EPSU Bootcamp

On Thursday 25 November, Kathy Pugh (edX Vice President of Education Services) and Remy Mansfield (edX Education Program Manager) sat down with members of the HKU Working Group on MOOCs and the EPSU to discuss MOOC development – past, present and future. Kathy, spearheading Education Services globally for edX, enthusiastically explained how edX has been consistently strengthening its position in China. Remy, who was already known to the EPSU as the face of edX training webinars, announced that he would be assuming the role of HKU’s edX Programme Manager and spoke about some exciting developments on course design and new features of the platform.

Firstly edX is preparing to roll out mobile device support which will enable learners to take their studies with them as they travel. Kathy and Remy also spoke of improvements in the learner experience for those based in China, such as consolidation of the video-delivery process which should enhance the Chinese learner experience and has the potential for opening up the platform. In addition to the learner-focused innovations, edX also pointed to how they will be streamlining the video production process for MOOC developers, good news for all of those involved in video production for courses. The EPSU took advantage of this great opportunity to discuss other potential improvements to the platform with Kathy, such as increased flexibility of activity types and more interactive exercises. A fruitful discussion ensued, leaving all parties positive about the developmental roadmap.

All in all, a positive discussion that was good for edX, good for HKU and great news for our online learners.

A post from the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU)

e-learning edX MOOC

What We’re Learning from MOOCs (and the Faculty that Make Them)

Message from Working Group on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

ONLINE REGISTRATION

Abstract
During this discussion, Mariel will dig into the motivations for faculty creating MOOCs and the value of courses to faculty and students. She will share major lessons that Coursera as a company has learned from faculty, and how Coursera is using these lessons to adjust its platform. Finally, she will highlight some general best practices and areas for innovation and experimentation in MOOCs.

Speaker: Ms. Mariel Reed
Coursera Partnership Manager and Co-Founder of Lean In Beijing
Time: 5 Dec 3:00pm – 4:30pm
Venue: 230, 2/F, Knowles Building

About the speaker
Mariel Reed manages Coursera’s university partnerships with schools in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. She has many aliases; she’s known as “Mari” in English, 李曼玉 in Mandarin, and “Mad Dog” from her pirating days on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She was raised by the sea but after studying International Politics at Georgetown University, she headed to teach and trace the Silk Road in Xinjiang, China, through Princeton in Asia. From there, she navigated the international philanthropy and health education landscapes from Beijing and cut her teeth as a community builder. A co-founder of Lean In Beijing, she’s passionate about women’s empowerment. She has deep faith in the power of education and the development of people, and is excited to be at Coursera helping to push the boundaries of what is possible in education around the world.

ONLINE REGISTRATION

Coursera Mariel Reed MOOC

My East-West Adventures in Education

Message from Working Group on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Abstract
In this discussion, Mariel will offer reflections and lessons about the things she cares about most: the development of people and the US-China relationship. She will share how these themes have shaped her experiences as an educator, community-builder, and start-up employee across Washington, D.C. to Xinjiang, China, to Beijing, China, and finally to Silicon Valley.

Speaker: Ms. Mariel Reed
Coursera Partnership Manager and Co-Founder of Lean In Beijing
Time: 5 Dec 5:00pm – 6:00pm
Venue: G.02, Ground Floor, Central Podium
All students are welcome

About the speaker

Mariel Reed manages Coursera’s university partnerships with schools in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. She has many aliases; she’s known as “Mari” in English, 李曼玉 in Mandarin, and “Mad Dog” from her pirating days on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She was raised by the sea but after studying International Politics at Georgetown University, she headed to teach and trace the Silk Road in Xinjiang, China, through Princeton in Asia. From there, she navigated the international philanthropy and health education landscapes from Beijing and cut her teeth as a community builder. A co-founder of Lean In Beijing, she’s passionate about women’s empowerment. She has deep faith in the power of education and the development of people, and is excited to be at Coursera helping to push the boundaries of what is possible in education around the world.

China Coursera Mariel Reed MOOC

MOOCs and University Education: Experience, Lessons and Predictions

In a highly-engaging seminar organised by Information Technology Services, Professor Jeff Haywood (VP, CIO & Librarian, University of Edinburgh) shared his experiences, lessons learnt and predictions relating to MOOCs and university education.

Professor Haywood began his talk by outlining where digital education was at ten years ago: mainstreaming virtual learning environments (VLEs); employing learning activity management systems (LAMS) as a main model for course design; integrating e-portfolios into teaching and learning; and underpinning reflections of the use of technology with the ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’ rhetoric. Since then, there has been a substantial explosion in online applications and identities, evidenced by the open educational resource (OER) movement and the leaps in interconnectivity of people and information. No wonder then that MOOCs have entered the educational arena alongside a range of other innovations and paradigms such as gamification, virtual worlds, e-textbooks and adaptive learning.

Professor Haywood explained that these technologies and approaches are likely to move through a ‘hype cycle’, and that perceptions and actualisations of MOOCs, like other innovations, are likely to shift over time. It was therefore incredibly interesting to hear about how MOOCs are being leveraged at the University of Edinburgh to, amongst other things, build institutional reputation as an early adopter, explore new pedagogical ‘spaces’, share development experiences, and increase the university’s reach. With 16 MOOCs built and 19 MOOCs under construction, the University of Edinburgh has drawn on a huge amount of data to reflect on ways in which learners are engaging with this online environment and forecast probable MOOC developmental pathways. A few of these pathways could include: MOOCs being integrated into the university curriculum; MOOCs as an auto-cohorted group study; or MOOC content and curriculum taught by another college, university or tutor as a small private online course (SPOC).

Professor Haywood closed the seminar by taking a step back and proposing the question of what the ‘traditional’ university will look like in the coming years. The growth of technology-rich teaching and elearning environments which include on- and off-campus components for a broad range of learner types appeared to be a key theme in this discussion. Many thanks to Professor Haywood for sharing his valuable insights and we look forward to future collaborations!

A post from the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU)

EPSU MOOC

MOOCs and the Internationalization of Higher Education

Message from Working Group on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Keynote Summary

You are cordially invited to join the following keynote talk delivered by Professor Richard C. Levin, Coursera CEO and President Emeritus of Yale University:

MOOCs and the Internationalization of Higher Education

Speaker: Professor Richard C. Levin
Date: 5th December, 2014 (Friday)
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre P2, Chong Yuet Ming Physics Building, HKU
All are welcome

Abstract
In this keynote talk, Professor Rick Levin will reflect on a career of over two decades of leadership in higher education. He will discuss common challenges and lessons from his experiences at Yale, his views on the state of higher education in Asia, and his recent decision to join Coursera.

About the Speaker

Richard C. Levin is the Chief Executive Officer of Coursera. He is the Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Economics and Director of the Project on U.S.-China Relations at Yale University. He recently completed a twenty-year term as Yale’s President, during which time the University invested over $5 billion in the renovation and construction of its facilities, advanced economic development and home ownership in New Haven, purchased and began to develop a 136-acre campus in nearby West Haven, strengthened its programs in science, engineering, and medicine, established a goal of reducing campus greenhouse gas emissions by 43%, and undertook a major set of initiatives to internationalize the University – extending need-based financial aid to international students in Yale College, making international experiences the norm for all undergraduates, and planning and opening Yale-NUS College in Singapore as a model of liberal arts education for Asia.

Professor Levin serves on President Obama’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. He is a director of American Express and C3 Energy. He previously served on a bipartisan commission to recommend improvements in the nation’s intelligence capabilities, and he co-chaired a review of the nation’s patent system for the National Academy of Sciences that led to the passage of the America Invents Act of 2011. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Professor Levin and his wife Jane have four children and seven grandchildren.

e-learning MOOC

MOOCs, SPOCs and BOOCs: Improving the learner experience in and beyond campus

On 28 October, HKU welcomed Professor Armando Fox (the Director of MOOCLab, EECS, UC Berkeley), Professor T.C. Pong (Senior Advisor to Executive Vice-President and Provost, HKUST), and Professor Bob Fox (Deputy Director, Learning and Teaching Unit, School of Education, UNSW) to share their insights on a range of topical MOOC- and SPOC-related issues from their own contexts. From HKU, Professor Nancy Law (Deputy Director of the Centre for Information Technology in Education, HKU) and Professor David Lung (Lady Edith Kotewall Professor in the Built Environment, HKU) shared their in-house perspectives and experiences. The key themes discussed included the potential benefits of auto-grading; the interplay between SPOC (Small Private Online Courses) and MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) development; leveraging big data to enhance learning; enabling a positive washback from online to on-campus learning; and forecasting possible future directions of the ‘MOOC movement’.

Professor Armando Fox kick-started the discussions by recounting how he and his team redesigned a software engineering course in light of workplace demands identified by software companies, such as dealing with legacy code and working with non-technical customers. Innovations to the course included the integration of auto-grading strategies which encouraged learners to iteratively improve their code based on computer-generated feedback. The MOOC was also run as a SPOC for on-campus students, enabling a four-fold increase in student intake, providing more learner practice, redirecting teaching assistants’ attention from grading to higher-value forms of feedback, and ultimately increasing course ratings.

This potential of MOOC development to positively impact on on-campus learning was a theme which emerged at several points, notably in Professor T.C. Pong’s presentation on “BOOCs: Blending Online and On-Campus Courses”. He drew on the example of his MOOC “Introduction to Computing with Java”, which was initially offered to on-campus students in a ‘flipped classroom’ mode, to explain the positive correlation between students’ performance and the amount of time they spend viewing the lecture videos. For the flipped classroom, it was seen that smaller class sizes performed better for in-class activities but no difference in performance was seen for online activities. This interesting finding hints at the potential of MOOC resources to enhance out-of-class learning materials for on-campus learners in order to create high-value interactions in in-class settings.

In addition to the idea of MOOCs serving as a catalyst for developing blended or ‘flipped’ courses, Professor Pong spoke about tools being developed by HKUST to enable learning analytics. This resonated with Professor Nancy Law’s presentation, which explored the challenges associated with leveraging the unprecedented scale of online data to improve learning and teaching. She proposed activating a pedagogical design cycle to position education as a design science which generates theory from practice. The importance of appropriate assessment models, the integration of interdisciplinary expertise, and the need for policy and governance on data privacy and data sharing were also discussed. Preliminary explorations on analysing large amounts of data have been undertaken in HKU’s Common Core Curriculum, generally characterized by large class size and diverse student background. Lessons learnt from this context aim to inform discussions on how to scale up analyses against the backdrop of the challenges she mentioned earlier.

Participants had the opportunity to hear Professor David Lung’s experience of developing the MOOC, “The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia”. He highlighted the need to begin planning and preparation with a substantial lead time in order to assemble and work across teams to adapt subject matter for a MOOC audience, develop media content, deal with copyright issues, and design a pedagogically-sound learning experience. The potential benefits of this process on existing university courses were reiterated by Professor Lung. In the context of a MOOC on Architecture, he noted that he had developed a data bank of media artefacts for future use and further developed professional and student networks, amongst other benefits.

The event ended with an engaging round-table discussion which expanded on the core issues by drawing on expertise of participants from a range of contexts. Professor Bob Fox shared the institutional workflows associated with MOOC development at UNSW and summarised several of the recurring themes when he emphasised the importance of using MOOCs to incubate innovation and generate data analytics to support the student learning experience.

A post from the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU)

edX flipped classroom MOOC SPOC

CETL Seminar: Unprecedented Outreaching via MOOCs: Landscape, Issues, and Opportunities

Watch the video

Slides Download

Speakers: Professor Ricky Kwok, the Chairman of the HKU MOOC Working Group
Date : 30 October 2014 (Thursday)
Time : 12:45pm – 2:00pm
Venue : Room 321, Run Run Shaw Building

Organized by Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL)

Abstract:

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is touted as being able to bring seismic change to higher education. While such change still remains to be seen, MOOCs have already polarized the higher education community. Indeed, some people wholeheartedly embrace MOOCs as the ultimate form of e-learning or even the real killer-app of the Internet but many others dispose of the notion and treat MOOCs as another bubble waiting to burst. Big questions such as “What values do MOOCs bring back to campus?”, “What is the business plan to make this sustainable?”, etc. keep baffling all major stakeholders of universities.

HKU, like many other world-class universities, has joined edX to deliver MOOCs. In this talk, the speaker, currently overseeing the development of HKU MOOCs, will share his views on the MOOC phenomenon, issues (pedagogical, coordination, etc.) involved, and opportunities available.

About the Speakers:

Ricky Kwok is Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at HKU. His research and teaching interests are mainly about large scale distributed computing systems. Currently Ricky is serving as the Chairman of the HKU MOOC Working Group, which advises the Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) on pertinent issues about MOOCs, such as strategic directions, courses development, and technical matters.

For information on registration, please contact:
Ms Ivy Lai , CETL
Phone: 3917 8996; Email: laichun2@hku.hk.

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