# Tweets from Coursera Partner's Conference

As many times before (most recently, [Beyond the PDF 2 in Amsterdam](http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/22/tweets-from-beyond-the-pdf-2.html)), I've archived my tweets from [the recent Coursera conference](http://conference.coursera.org/), cleaning them up just a little bit (I took out most retweets, but included a few). See also [my impressions from the conference](http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/04/06/impressions-from-the-first-coursera-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](http://conference.coursera.org/) 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)

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# 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](http://www.theawl.com/2013/02/how-to-save-college)
- 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](http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/12/05/worlds-largest-university-opens-almost-all-its-materials/)
- @cvhorii Global perspective 1-way cultural flow? [Can glob courses help our international students](http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/12/05/worlds-largest-university-opens-almost-all-its-materials/) …
- @icpetrie When will Harvard step u and translate a Chinese course into English? Why [only one-way](http://open.163.com/)?
- @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](http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/current-status-research-online-learning-postsecondary-education), 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)](http://reganmian.net/wiki/flipped_classrooms) … Let's continue the conversation!
- @preset Cool, awesome notes. Added [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QJMiAWDmFRv4y9KM-cbg2S6oC2BPaPd7_tyStULd6pQ/edit)
- Created [open Google Doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QJMiAWDmFRv4y9KM-cbg2S6oC2BPaPd7_tyStULd6pQ/edit) to track notes and other artefacts from #courseraconfatpenn please add!
- P2PU's ["Mechanical MOOC"]("Mechanical MOOC") automatically assigns students to groups of 10, and creates group mailing lists
- [Blog of Pamela Fox](http://blog.pamelafox.org/) 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](http://reganmian.net/wiki/learning_from_data) #lak13
- [How I got all the photos integrated with my wiki notes from sessions](http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/01/25/integrating-iphone-photography-with-wiki-for-note-taking-during-conference/)
- 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](http://reganmian.net/wiki/flipped_classroom), and [learning analytics](http://reganmian.net/wiki/learning_from_data).