MOOCs | The Innovative Instructor

New in the Higher Ed world was the announcement this week of Kadenze, a new company offering MOOCs in the arts disciplines. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Art Schools Go MOOC, With a New Online Platform (June 16, 2015 – Meg Bernhard), and Inside Higher Ed, Taking the Arts Online (June 16, 2015 – Carl Straumsheim), both ran articles on Kadenze.

The Innovative Instructor has run a number of posts on MOOCs with a range of viewpoints – you can use the search box (above right) and enter MOOC to see them all. The three biggest players in terms of MOOC offerings are Udacity, Coursera, and edX. Udacity specializes in courses on tech and related skills, such as programming, app development, and how to build a startup. Coursera has a broad range of offerings, including courses in data science, public health, education, science, business, and more. edX also offers an extensive list of courses from many disciplines. All three offer their courses for free, but for added fees, certificates are available in many of the courses.

None of the big three however, offer much in the way of art, beyond a history of art course here and there. Kadenze was founded to fill that gap. From The Chronicle article: “The new virtual art school, called Kadenze, has already teamed up with programs at 18 institutions, including Stanford and Princeton Universities, to create a digital platform designed for arts courses. According to a company co-founder, Perry R. Cook, an emeritus professor at Princeton, the platform will be “multimedia rich” and allow students to create online portfolios, upload music files and scanned art, watch videos, and participate in discussion forums.”

Kadenze is offering courses for free, but has a fee basis for those who wish to receive grades and credit. Again, from The Chronicle, “Kadenze will initially offer about 20 courses on subjects including music, art history, and technology and art. Students will be able to enroll in courses and watch videos free, but they will have to pay $7 a month if they want to submit assignments and receive grades and feedback. Fees of $300, $600, or $900 will be charged for courses that are offered for credit.”

The initial set of offerings includes titles such as Careers in Media Technology, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists, Major Mind-Blowing Moments in the History of Western Art, Culture and Art Making, and The Nature of Code. Teaching art to large numbers of students in an online environment will certainly present challenges, so it will be interesting to keep an eye on this experiment. Personally, I am thinking about signing up (for the free version, of course) for the course titled, Comics: Art in Relationship. Maybe Kadenze will have an offering that fits your summer personal development goals as well.

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Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Screen shot of Kadenze website: https://www.kadenze.com/

I’ve been collecting articles that might be of interest to readers of The Innovative Instructor. Here are several to add to your weekend reading list.

Too late for this semester, but Syllabus Design for Dummies, by Josh Bolt, Contributing Editor, for the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Vitae career hub (a good service to be aware of), will give you a head start on preparing syllabi for your spring courses. The introductory guide covers writing expectations and objectives, assignments and grading, which policies and procedures to include, and how best to present your course schedule. Vitae has also announced that it is building a syllabi database.

Another post from Vitae, The Best Teaching Resources on the Web by David Gooblar, PedagogyUnbound.com (another good resource), annotates a number of great sites for instructors, including blogs, non-profit sites, teaching and learning centers, and a list of top pedagogy journals courtesy of the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries).

And take a look at this piece from Inside Higher Ed on The Future of MOOCs by Steven Mintz, the Executive Director of the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning and a Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Mintz describes ten challenges facing the next generation of MOOCs and offers possible solutions: “For the most part, however, MOOCs today have not evolved significantly in approach beyond those available in 2012. If next generation MOOCs are to appear, they will need to draw upon the experience of online retailers, journalism, online dating services, and social networking sites.”

And, speaking of MOOCS, it’s not too late to sign on to the CIRTL MOOC An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching as long as you are in it for the information rather than a certification. Week 5 starts on Monday, November 3, but participants have access to the materials for the entire course. There have been some great videos on topics such as learning objectives, assessment, peer instruction, inquiry based labs, learning through writing, and problem based learning.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Microsoft Clip Art

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A New Face in the MOOC World – An Online Art School Called Kadenze

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