Tweets from Coursera Partner's Conference

April 6, 2013, [MD]

As many times before (most recently, Beyond the PDF 2 in Amsterdam), I've archived my tweets from the recent Coursera conference, cleaning them up just a little bit (I took out most retweets, but included a few). See also my impressions from the conference.

Before the conference

Will be in Philadelphia for #CourseraConfAtPenn Fri+Sat. Anybody wants to meet to talk about #oa, #btpdf2, learning, #OER?
The Coursera Partners' Conference gets underway tomorrow, April 5th, 2013. We're stoked! #CourseraConfAtPenn
If you’re hashtag is 18 characters, you’re doing it wrong. Looking at you, #CourseraConfAtPenn.
@Akibaedx Great to see that edX and Coursera are hanging out :) Very interested in research on flipped (PhD stud from UofT)

First day

Great name tags, able to see name and affiliation without leaning in. Makes connecting online names to faces much easier
@derekbruff @rschwartz418 It does, but it's the easiest thing to work with. And students can mix and match.

Silfen forum

going to overflow room to see panel on MOOCs. Very meta. Will there be computer grading of questions?
Interested in talking to anyone researching MOOCs/flipped classrooms from persp. of education/learning sciences/CSCL
@icpetrie MOOCS are a) revolutionising education, b) more of the old, c) just the top of the iceberg, d) hype :)
Can MOOCs support non-high performing learners? Old q, OCWs, Hewlett Foundn, P2PU etc have struggled w/ a long time
MOOCs are at the Altavista stage, Google hasn't even come out. Friedman good at catchy phrases
Friedman: MOOCs instead of F16s in Egypt
@dankonecky I would love to see MOOCs/OER from institutions in Egypt. Course on history of Arab region, by a local uni
@hong_chau Make it happen, let's adapt some self-organisation from the original cMOOCs! :)
Given that we are so eager to reach low-performing students, will Coursera partner with any community colleges?
#CourseraConfAtPenn hash tag length is killing me. Er, I mean challenging me to be concise.
Watching Coursera lectures at 2x speed has spoilt me. Not about concentration length, but cognitive bandwidth #tooslow
Very US-centric MOOC discussion, weird given the very international audience at #courseraconfatpenn
@veletsianos UofT has partnered with both (but no EdX courses live yet). My own research more on flipped. But also doing institutional rsrch
All the people on the panel talking about the wonder of four-year degrees need to read this
Nostalgy for brick-and-mortar: Beyond row three, it's all distance education anyway
Would love to hear EU perspective on MOOCs - how does it look different in the European context? /c @gideonshimshon
@gideonshimshon Nice, wish they had released open data sets, not just PDFs :)
Discussion abt rest of world similar to OCW-be generous and share. But awesome stuff happening in the rest of the world
@cvhorii Global perspective 1-way cultural flow? Can glob courses help our international students …
@icpetrie When will Harvard step u and translate a Chinese course into English? Why only one-way?
@dankonecky Are there learning scientists working seriously on this, or is it all CS/ML people? #wanttobepartofit
+100 “@rschwartz418: Shouldn't we all have watched lectures, panels, & keynotes before #CourseraConfAtPenn and spent time interactively?”
@rschwartz418 We need flipped conferences, not just flipped classrooms!
@derekbruff @rschwartz418 Agree that platforms don't support. Talked abt this at #p2pu, supporting learning journeys
@D_Carchidi @cristofolo @bederson I think faculty roles will change significantly, for the better.
@amywoodgate @rschwartz418 Maybe next conf should be more like a cMOOC, less like an xMOOC? :)
@bederson Great, very useful link, thanks a lot. Backchannel more rewarding than panel right now
The big loser of the conference so far: AltaVista. #CourseraConfAtPenn
@taevans Yeah compare cMOOC/xMOOC, part of open internet or closed garden? Course ends vs community continues
@bederson My problem is that there is too little research really problematising the f2f teaching/learning in h.ed.
And thanks to all the Twitter-panelists as well! ;)

Keynotes

Getting ready for #Courseraconfatpenn keynote. Good wifi and power - let's see how much twitter activity
@derekbruff Interesting. Seems like all the focus (not only there) is on purely online though.
@derekbruff A lot of prescriptive stuff, I need theories to fuel my research.
Coursera, has it really only been one year? Amazing.
3.1 mlm students, 333 courses, 2330+ instructors Koller,
Koller proud: 30 of top 60 universities worldwide, #1/#2 in 14 countries
Largest course: Think again, how to reason and argue 180k.
Made $222k on signature track in 11 weeks
Money will be shared back w/unis, Koller with cheques. 1000 applications accepted for financial aid.
Students signing up for signature track to signal commitment to finishing course, higher completion rates
40% of Coursera users in dev'l world (3% in Africa), Khan acad 80% in US (surprising)
Looking forward to first Coursera course in Hindi, or ki-Swahili!
@amywoodgate Sustainable if people pay I guess, and can easily be outsourced to low-cost countries.
Retention funnel: enrolled 31k-56k, submitted assignment 900-6.5k, earned SoA 1-3k. Similar numbers at UofT.
Interesting that Coursera is doing A/B testing - students want to see people's faces
@amywoodgate I don't think paying people in low-cost countries lower (but fair) salaries is exploitation, but agree with you on ideal
New tools for smaller groups coming,
Mobile app coming over the next year
App platform sounds interesting, physics simulator, note taking tool, etc
@EvansCowley Maybe it should be toggleable :)
@EvansCowley You'd think but people tend to really enjoy lectures. I think short demos, 2x speed, pause able, with screen can work well
Wonder if there's a mismatch between attendees at \nand keynotes… Talking about system issues, but attendees are more instructional designer/online learning people who are carrying out mandates from provosts centrally?
Looking forward to first panel on participation in MOOCs, getting concrete
xMOOCs? Never lonely in a cMOOC-just lost.RT @hong_chau: Werbach: #MOOCs r lonely. Students desperately want community. #CourseraConfAtPenn
@hong_chau One course I took, people posted hundreds of intros first week. Afterwards, almost no activity...
Discussion about "personality cult" around lecturers, and how attitudes of first-gen "pioneers" transferred upon 2d gen
/We/ may want community but Edinburgh data suggested only 10% actually wanted to be part of a community #CourseraConfAtPenn
+100 “@hong_chau: Advice for @coursera and the next #CourseraConfAtPenn... Snacks during break?”

Afternoon panels

Excited abt next panel on flipped teaching. Doing rsrch on that myself.
@taevans Would also be useful with wiki to collect notes/artefacts/papers etc. MOOC-style! :)
Great panel on flipped classrooms, all notes (incl questions) … Let's continue the conversation!
@preset Cool, awesome notes. Added here
Created open Google Doc to track notes and other artefacts from #courseraconfatpenn please add!
P2PU's "Mechanical MOOC" automatically assigns students to groups of 10, and creates group mailing lists
Blog of Pamela Fox who is talking right now

Day 2

Good morning #courseraconfatpenn, great breakfast but a bit claustrophobic poster session :)
Fostering inter school collaboration - retitled: "News from the front lines"
Dutch-speakers dominante in the room. Goeden Morgen! ik spreek een beetje Nederlands :)
Dutch researchers are #2 in the world in individual productivity, after the Swiss.
Interesting idea from Leiden: Use MOOCs for student mobility (important in European concept)
Call for empirical collaborative research on MOOCs, great - hope this happens
RT Next time, need focus groups for topic areas, for instructors to meet and share ideas.
@coxvaxie Wonder how many people here are faculty, as opposed to instructional designers etc. How to get invite more
MIT faculty was told by administration: Not allowed to give guest-lecture in Coursera, we're on #EdX only.
Distinguishing between cooperation and collaboration - collab implies interdependence
@Afilreis "The quizzes are silly" @DaphneKoller shoots back "They are not" everyone laughs
Shoutout to #lak13 learning analytics conference starting in 2 days in Leuven
Dillenbourg suggests universities organising exams for each other's MOOCs, undercutting Pearson
Duke has one FT staff member assigned to a course while it's running...40hrs/wk dedicated to that course. Dillenbourg: plagiarism and cheating, we still need proctored exams to give credit
Panel on learning from data looks popular, room filling up fast. Looking forward to Dillenbourg and others
Dillenbourg: We're academics, we love data, put data in our coffee, brush our teeth with data
China not well represented. Language issues, or internet access? Subtitled OCW courses massively popular there.
Dillenbourg is doing amazing research on MOOCs, two open postdocs and 2 PhDs.
Notes from session on data analytics and MOOCs #lak13
How I got all the photos integrated with my wiki notes from sessions
Would love to see foreign-language MOOCs used in language classes in N-Am #ich-will-lernen #apprendiamo
Thank Daphne&Andrew for confusing us so much over past yr - in the most positive way. Yes, making our lives interesting

See also my notes on flipped classrooms, and learning analytics.

Stian Håklev April 6, 2013 Philadelphia, USA

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