Articles in The European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning

Take a look at these articles, appears in EURODL.

The Transition from Distance to Online Education: Perspectives from the Educational Management Horizon
By Tor Söderström, tor.soderstrom@pedag.umu.se,
Jörgen From, jorgen.from@pedag.umu.se,
Jeanette Lövqvist, jeanette.lovqvist@pedag.umu.se and
Anette Törnquist, anette.tornquist@pedag.umu.se,
Department of Education, Umeå University, Sweden.

Abstract

In Sweden, higher education has moved away from distance education, including physical meetings, to online education with no physical meetings at all. This article focuses on the shift from distance to online education using an educational management perspective that is based on economic, staff, and student data collected between 1994 and 2010 (Department of Education, Umeå University). The results showed that in 2005, the number of distance education students increased significantly. In 2007, when all distance courses shifted to online courses, the number of students increased even further. The online courses attract many more students compared to traditional campus courses. Overall, the transition from distance to online courses has contributed to more students, an economy of scale that makes it possible to increase pedagogic development work. The online courses have also contributed to better working conditions for teachers. Without a deliberate educational management strategy, general educational courses might have been discontinued, a choice that would threaten the study of education as an academic discipline per se. As a result of these conditions, we believe ICT pedagogical development needs technical and pedagogical support as well as strategic leadership.
Date of publication: 01.06.2012.
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MOOCs and the AI-Stanford like Courses: Two Successful and Distinct Course Formats for Massive Open Online Courses
By C. Osvaldo Rodriguez, cor_ar@yahoo.com,
 Universidad del CEMA, Av. Córdoba 374, (C1054AAP) Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, http://www.ucema.edu.ar.

Abstract
Open online courses (OOC) with a massive number of students have represented an important development for online education in the past years.

A course on artificial intelligence, CS221, at the University of Stanford was offered in the fall of 2011 free and online which attracted 160,000 registered students. It was one of three offered as an experiment by the Stanford computer science department to extend technology knowledge and skills to the entire world. The instructors were two of the best known experts in the subject of artificial intelligence. Although students would not get Stanford University grades or credit, 20,000 from 190 countries finished the course successfully receiving a “statement of accomplishment” from the tutors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. Udacity is a start-up from the authors of CS221 delivering similar massive free online courses. EdX, a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world, is one of the most recent proposals in this realm.

Massive open online courses known as connectivist MOOCs (c-MOOCs) on the other hand have been delivered since 2008. They are based on the explicit principles of connectivism (autonomy, diversity, openness and interactivity) and on the activities of aggregation, remixing, repurposing and feeding forward the resources and learning.

In the research literature, newspaper and magazine articles both types of OOCs, AI-Stanford like courses (AI) and c-MOOCs, have been identified in many occasions as equivalent.

Distance education (DE) pedagogy can be classified through the evolution of three categories: cognitive-behaviourist, social constructivist, and connectivist. These three current and future generations of DE pedagogy have an important place in a well-rounded educational experience. To a large extent, the generations have evolved in tandem with the technologies and all three models are very much in existence today and are categorized by a set of conditions.

In this paper we study in detail representative courses from AI and c-MOOC formats. We establish that although they share the use of distributed networks the format associated with c-MOOCs, which are defined by a participative pedagogical model, are unique and different from AI. We further assign to the AI to a cognitive-behaviourist (with some small contribution of social constructivist) and MOOCs to connectivist pedagogy.
Date of publication: 05.07.2012.
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Source: The European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning – EURODL