Strengths And Weaknesses Of Moocs

The topic covered was a common ground for the diverse group of people, she demonstrated the issue of the availability of education. She argued that education was not readily available to everyone as well as it being unaffordable at a university level. Her proposed idea was building a website that included online courses from the best universities (TED, 2012), a website such as Coursera.

Cloud computing is on the rise. Cloud computing is a style of computing where software and virtualized hardware is provided over the internet (O’Brien & Marakas, 2011). The seven most common uses of cloud computing include: infrastructure as a service, private cloud or hybrid cloud, test and deployment, big data analytics, file storage, disaster recovery and backup (Ferkoun, 2014). The biggest advantages of cloud computing include increasing competitiveness through cost reduction, greater flexibility, and elasticity and optimal resource utilization (Ferkoun, 2014). Cloud computing basically uses the internet to provide for the computing needs of the end users.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are one of the revolutionary trends in education across the world. Many controversies surround it with some education stakeholders viewing it as very costly but of little value. In addition, other critics consider it a cheaper model of teaching especially in higher education (Vimeo, 2014). Cheaper in the sense many students can be reached wherever they are with no travel needed, by a single instructor, but of little value in the sense that there is no face to face interaction between the student and the instructor. For instance, Dr. Karen Head and Thomas

“This approach considers the student a motivated learner and the faculty a facilitator for learning. They challenge the 'sage on stage' and encourage the faculty to 'be the guide on the side'” (Bajaj). Additionally, Massive Open Online Courses allow class preparation, discussions, and practical learning. While some educators feel MOOCs are a threat to an educator, Gita Bajaj provides the examples of Wikipedia or the Khan Academy, where any professor could add a video courses. The author also mentions how one professor can influence millions of students by independently developing lectures and offer courses online.

One of the biggest concerns about online education today is something that Thomas Friedman calls the “ambition gap” (354). The new American generations are becoming less motivated and less ambitious than the rest of the world. Not only is sending american jobs to other countries cheaper but the individuals are much more productive and willing to do the work. Education Online would be enabling these next generation of students laziness. In a Ted Talks seminar, Anant Agarwal, the head of edX, tells his audience why Massive Open Online Courses still matter. Agarwal talks about the changing generations and how we ought to keep up with technology and embrace it in the way we educate. Agrawal insists,” so rather than driving our kids into a classroom, herding them out there at 8 o’clock in the morning-- I hated going to class at 8 o’clock in the morning, so why are we forcing our kids to do that? So instead what you do

Many people still prefer traditional universities as the best way to get knowledge and a degree but online education is also a good proven alternative. Through online education students can study in the environment they find comfortable and the time they are free. All of this is for free as most online course which universities offer don’t have any fee or if some courses have then that is very less as compared to the price of normal course at a university. This is the reason which gives online education an edge over traditional classroom learning. By using online education students can

Accepting the fact that face-to-face lectures have to be revolutionized, Bonvillian and Singer also state that conventional university education is also the grounds for research and innovation. Although, being under scrutiny and criticism for high expenses and increasingly inefficient teaching methods by US politicians, Bonvillian and Singer suggest that conventional education promotes critical thinking and mentoring amongst students. A growing concern for universities, Bonvillian and Singer describe, is to devise the cost structures for these revolutionary approaches to higher education. It is a tough decision for universities whether to charge students for MOOC courses that are free currently to recover money spent on the substitution of face-to-face lectures with seminars and other methods. Another problem is how much to charge to achieve success with their online

Educators have experimented with various methods of on-line education since internet access became widely available on college campuses. While this has led to a range of online educational practices, the impetus for the modern MOOC is grounded in MIT’s2002 OpenCourseWare initiative (Lowe x). That year MIT professors voted to post their course content online as part of an effort to democratize the education traditionally given only students enrolled at “elite” universities. This move propagated a wave of calls for more “open” university content online. In response to this call, George Siemens and Steven Downes created what is widely consider to be the first MOOC, CCK08 – Connectivism and Connective Knowledge., Decker explains that these two professors at University of Manitoba took a course with 25 traditional tuition-paying students and allowed 2,300 other students to participate without receiving credit (4).

Cloud computing can be understood as a multifaceted infrastructure of hardware, software, storage and processing available to be used as a service. With the use of cloud computing, without even knowing how it works, one can access a large number of the most sophisticated supercomputers of the world and their respective processing powers without being overwhelmed with space or information. Cloud computing allows access to computer networks located at various places in the world and thus offers the speed of

Many Americans may find the thought of any new type of online education extremely hard to contemplate. That is to say, massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer a variety of classes for anyone that would like to pursue cost-effective online learning. As the MOOCs evolve, everyone will learn to navigate through this new online learning lifestyle. People must begin to examine the different points of view about the future of MOOCs. Karen Head and Thomas Friedman both give a very extensive analysis of their personal experiences with MOOCs. Karen Head has had the pleasure of planning, teaching, and evaluating the MOOCs first hand. Whereas, Thomas Friedman has been studying MOOCs, their effects, and how they will impact education in the future.

The introduction of cloud computing infrastructure has brought in many changes to the infrastructure of any IT organization. Cloud computing has become the latest and most advanced infrastructure service to date. More and more companies are migrating to cloud computing service as days go, as they provide more flexibility and scalability and user friendliness in many aspects of an IT infrastructure.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) is a platform or model where learning or any other content is made available online to any one who is interested to learn or acquire information without having to be physically present in a learning set up.A good number of people have written articles and some have given talks on MOOCs;Among the Contributors include Aaron Barlow, Siân Bayne, Nick Carbone, Kaitlin Clinnin, Denise K. Comer, Glenna L. Decker, Susan Delagrange, Scott Lloyd DeWitt, Jeffrey T. Grabill, Laura Gibbs, Kay Halasek, Bill Hart-Davidson, Karen Head, Jacqueline Kauza, Jeremy Knox, Steven D. Krause, Alan Levine, Charles Lowe, Hamish Macleod, Ben McCorkle, Jennifer Michaels, James E. Porter, Alexander Reid, Jeff Rice, Jen Ross, Bob Samuels, Cynthia L. Selfe, Christine Sinclair, Melissa Syapin, Edward M. White, Elizabeth D. Woodworth, and Heather Noel Young Dr Karen Head and Thomas Friedman. This essay attempts to compare and contrast the views of Dr Karen Head and Thomas Friedman in as far as the effectiveness of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is concerned.

The term “massive open online learning” refers to the recognition that a very large number of students, interested in learning content online, may register to take an educational course over the internet. MOOCs create educational content to be learned online, over the internet, without a cost attached to it. (Marques 2013) The amount of registered learners can be in the hundreds (100s) and up to thousands (1,000s). Participating students can contribute to the course as often as they.

Massively open online courses (MOOC) platform rests on “self-service” and utilizing EdX to allow students the opportunity to obtain certificates of completion, versus degrees. The university will pay EdX a fee based on generated revenue for initial courses and “production help” revenue base for course development, with a potential for future licensing. The passing rate is anticipated to increase an estimate 60 to 91 percent, causing scrutiny and angst amongst traditional block and mortar educators; this translates to a speculated decline in educational quality and as well as the demise of trained educators.

In the last millennium, collegiate level learning has become one of the central tenants of Western Culture; this ancient system of sending our brightest youths to epicenters of knowledge is falling from grace and has become an enormous waste of time, wealth, and resources. The invention of the Internet has had an enormously profound effect on people, especially their ability to access knowledge. Because of this change, all of society’s structures have had to adapt and embrace a new way of being, fitting into the molds of expedited process created by the internet. Institutions across the world have attempted to keep pace with these advancements to varying degrees of success, however western societies have only made small steps towards a full adjustment to the world’s new reality. Higher education is superfluous in the modern world; it is excessively wasteful and unnecessary because of its reliance on the wealth of citizens and state, technology’s newfound ability to streamline education, and a system of learning that does not prioritize long-term retention of knowledge.