Coursera's Signature Track

When disruptive innovations arrive in an industry, people often judge their impact by what they see at that initial entry point.  However, those innovations undergo constant improvements, taking them on a trajectory far beyond their industry entry point.

One of the objections to MOOCs is the fact students can't get a validated certification of what they've learned in the course.  Coursera has already taken steps toward remedying that.  There is now a Signature Track which allows you to get certification that you have successfully passed the course.

For the course I'm just starting, Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship, I have just received a message offering me the option to take a Signature Track, which will get me certification.  Coursera will validate that I am who I say I am in two ways - through video identification as I sit in front of my computer, and by verifying my identity by matching up to my typing pattern.  For this I would pay $69, although I'm given a early-bird discount to $39 for this new feature.  Taking the course without credit is still free.

Coursera has moved swiftly along the path of sustaining innovation.  Those venture capitalists who invested in Coursera are going to start seeing revenue!

Higher Education at the Crossroads

Last night on TVO's always-intelligent The Agenda with Steve Paikin, there was a very interesting discussion of higher education.  Many people are convinced that higher education is in for a huge disruption, enabled by new digital learning technologies that not only allow many people to experience education and do it in a cost-effective way, but arguably improve the learning experience on several measures by allowing it to be personalized and self-paced.


The Agenda's panel of intelligent, articulate folks from Ontario post-secondary institutions weren't buying it.  They fervently felt that online education was very much a sustaining innovation that could improve the existing institutions.  Only the participant from Athabasca University, a flexible online post-secondary institution, saw the possibility of online education displacing existing institutions.  (I'm oversimplifying here).  Most were creatively looking at how they could exploit the technology to improve their existing offerings - like some University of Toronto approaches that 'flip the classroom'.  But most gave off an air of relative complacency, especially the participant from a community college.

As for the idea that Paikin floated about whether we needed to have more co-operation between universities and community colleges, there were some platitudes, but true feelings emerged when there was a bun fight about whether university or college graduates experience higher employment placements.

Interesting program.

I am in the midst of teaching my Managing Innovation course to MBA students at Queen's and their final project is to come up with a great innovation in the post-secondary education field.  I'm dying to hear what approach they'll take.  Will they go for a sustaining innovation that sticks to the existing business model but makes it much better (either through introducing online learning or some other approach completely) or will they jump into disruption with both feet and seek to overturn the existing system?  Will they look at the total population, or focus in on some segment of the market (perhaps business education, since that's what they've involved in themselves)?  I'm open to all approaches, and I can't wait to hear what they have to say.

Coursera takes off

Coursera has just announced that they hit three million students during March.  One year.  Three million students.  These students took over ten million courses.  Quick - do the math.  That's over three courses per student on average.  That would make me not so unusual for registering for ten:  I've completed three, am in the midst of five (two very half-heartedly), have abandoned one, and one more has just started.

I'd be very interested to see a breakdown of the geographic distribution of the students.  Certainly, I found the distribution in World History Since 1300 to be very broad and the students very diverse.

edX, the Harvard-MIT platform has far fewer courses, and far fewer students (in the thousands, not the millions as far as I can see).  Is there a critical mass factor in course selection?  Will more people 'shop' for courses, where there are more courses?  The bigger you are, the bigger you'll get?

As a frequent-flyer member of Coursera, so to speak, I'm certainly more likely to browse the courses there.  However, I did register for an edX course recently: Michael Sandel's famous Harvard course on Justice.

Top 10 Things about 'A History of the World Since 1300'

I've written a few times about MOOCs, massive open online courses (here,  here, here, and here).  I loved the first course I took at Coursera - A History of the World Since 1300.

And here's the Top 10 things I liked:

The professor: 

Jeremy Adelman was fabulous.  He's a superb story-teller with an extraordinary command of language and history is after all a fascinating story.  I would take any course from him, just to luxuriate in his teaching style again.

The global point of view:

The course was a fantastic survey of a wide swath of history.  And it delivered on its promise of taking a world view.  Despite coming from an American university, it did not overemphasize the US story, nor betray an American point of view on subjects.  Like so many westerners, my (modest) knowledge of history centred on Europe.  This course greatly broadened my horizons.  "Europe was just a side show in WW II".  That statement startled me, but it's clearly true when you look at what happened in Asia and Russia.  That's typical of the mental readjustment I experienced.

The focus on major currents of history:

There was more emphasis on the major ebbs and flows of history, and less on particular political figures and dates.  The big theme of the course was the long term - though sometimes discontinuous - march of our world from isolated, self-sufficient villages to a interrelated, interdependent global society.  History seen through this lens has a certain inevitability.  Specific decisions in particular countries of situations caused blips in the details, but history moves inexorably forward.

The relative datelessness:
Liberation from the tyranny of dates!  The course infrequently mentioned specific dates.  This sometimes had the disadvantage of leaving me a bit at sea: was this happening in China at the same time as that development in India, or after it?  However, overall, I loved the approach of looking at broad sweeping patterns rather than specific dates.

Emphasis on Ideas:
Adelman talked a lot about ideas and their influence on history.  Sometimes we can be discouraged about how little attention is paid to big ideas.  But this course illustrated the incredible impact of ideas, sometimes suddenly but usually gradually over a long period.  We heard more about philosophers, scientists and economists than about politicians. Queen Victoria got a passing mention, but the likes of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin and Adam Smith were central figures.

The students:

I loved the variety among the 90,000 students in the course.  From highly educated, to those who had not had access to higher education.  Current students to retirees.  Scientists to humanists.  Soldiers to housewives.  We heard from these students in the discussion forums and the live-streamed Precepts.  I had my papers marked by students from Germany, Australia, Chile, Austria, China, US and India.  What a 'global feeling'.

The 'extras':

However, the course was greatly enriched with the Global Dialogues, mostly conversations with some of the leading lights of the Princeton History department, the discussion forums, and the precepts with students.  The textbook was excellent, although it was a lot of reading per week.

The homework:
While relatively straightforward, the homework questions, and for that matter the quizzes, were well thought out and unambiguously stated.  The essays forced me to crystallize my learning, and it was illuminating to both grade others' papers and to receive the grades myself.  The essays were generally of very high quality and good learning tools.  About 3-5% of the students wrote the essays, so I assume the ones who would produce the best essays self-selected to write them.

The technology:

I loved that the video was such high quality, that the navigation was intuitive, and that it just plain always worked.