Robert Maguire has profiled a math MOOC funded by the Gates Foundation and launched at the University of Wisconsin LaCrosse that had an unexpected effect: though it was offered worldwide, it was widely embraced around the state by high schools and led to deeper coordination between high school and college students, teachers, and administrators in order to avoid the “redemial math trap and close what we might call the “Preparation Gap.” From McGuire’s interview with two representatives from the college:
McGuire
The way MOOCs are growing I imagine a lot of graduating high school seniors are thinking about using them this summer, whether they’re being driven to it by the necessity of a placement exam or for enrichment or to stay sharp for college. What would you advise a graduating high school senior who’s thinking about taking a MOOC?
Kosiak
A MOOC can be helpful to show what a college course actually looks like, how it’s done and what to expect in their first year of college.
McHugh
Over summer, taking a MOOC is going to help them learn how to be an independent learner, how to study, how to find that internal motivation, how to seek out resources, recognizing that they do have multiple ways they learn, and they need to find that strategy within themselves.
Students might look at what’s aligned with their discipline of study. If someone’s looking at going into a history major, then they might look for some different history MOOCs. They can use the MOOC as a way to find out, “Is this something I am really passionate about and want to study for the next several years of my life.”
This is proof positive of an idea Noel B. Jackson floated which I mentioned yesterday: MOOCs not only expand open access to what, for convenience sake, I’ll call the Third World (Globalization), but they can strengthen local and regional communities in the (f/c/s, again) First World. They not only expand the net to wire more nodes, but they deepen the connections around each node. MOOCs can potentially have “glocal” impact. In the case of the MathMOOC at UWL, the connections are spanning vertically across the different levels of the education system. This might take the teeth out of the objections of MOOC skeptics, who dismiss MOOCs as trojan horses for neoliberalism or digital colonialism.
This “localizing” side-effect of MOOCs targets a serious problem that so many college teachers face: beset with near illiteracy and/or innumeracy in their students, they find themselves asking, “How did these kids get into college?” This often happens with writing skills. The college teacher faces a dilemma: should I teach them the content, or teach them how to write? If you just teach the content, then a) they aren’t likely to grasp it as roundly, since you can’t cleanly separate the ability to write clearly and the ability to think clearly, and b) you shirk your responsibility as the “last line of defense” before the students get out into the real world bereft of solid writing skills. If you teach them how to write, you’re not teaching the content. And if you try to split the difference, well, as Lao Tzu says, “if you chase two rabbits, both get away.”
Better coordination between high school and college teachers and administrators could help close the “preparation gap” that frustrates so many teachers and short-changes many students.
By the way, MOOC News and Reviews is a treasure trove of information about the cluster of issues orbiting the MOOC-ment.
(image courtesy of http://www.apartmenttherapy.com)
Very interesting! This is probably similar to the way marketing via Google – though intended or assumed to reach a ‘global’ or at least country-wide target group – finally helped small businesses to sell to their local clients.
It seems people have adopted the usage of internet based tools to explore their immediate neighborhood (and companies as Google have reacted to that by offering more localized search results).