Harvard online course experiment

MOOC philosophy has always come across as "Go big or go home." But some of the most interesting experiments occurring right now would better be described as "Divide and conquer." These undertakings — one an experiment at Harvard (MA) and the other a longer-term commitment at the University of Michigan — are allowing schools to try out new practices from a narrower perspective, while still impacting the broader workings of the institution.

International Ties

The population of non-U.S. students at the University of Michigan has increased every year over the last decade. The 2,619 students from China, Hong Kong and Macau make up 44 percent of the institution's international enrollment in the 2014-2015 academic year. Yet that's a pittance compared to the nearly 23,000 Chinese students who have registered for "Model of Thinking," one of U Michigan's first massive open online courses to be produced in Mandarin for the China market through its Coursera ties.

Coursera's site features Chinese-language courses from four schools in China, including Peking University and Shanghai Jiao Tong U. But over the last couple of years the company has announced deals with three Chinese firms, NetEase, Hujiang and Guokr, to launch Chinese-language versions of its English-language courses.

As one of the first four institutions to sign up with Coursera in 2012, it makes sense that U Michigan would participate in the China projects, alongside other Coursera members. But beyond that, said James DeVaney, assistant vice provost of Digital Education & Innovation at the university, this project could also be considered an extension of the school's own ties to the country. The institution has been undertaking research, education initiatives and partnerships with Chinese universities "since James Angell was president," he noted (Angell's term lasted from 1871 to 1909.)

Although the courses are just beginning to crank up, DeVaney expects to see two promising outcomes:

Dropout rates will probably stink in China too, but the data will be rich.DeVaney said that it's a "fair assumption" the university will see the same kind of low completion rates in the China MOOCs as it does in its English-language MOOCs. But even rock-bottom rates may not matter, he pointed out: "One of the issues with the completion rate as a metric is that we're finding that the students participating in MOOCs don't always intend to complete [them]. That's not their learning objective."

MOOCs equate to research hotbeds for the schools that undertake them, and the China efforts should be no different. "There's lots of experimentation with different forms of video, with different interaction tools, with tools that live outside these classrooms, which may impact the overall level of engagement," DeVaney explained. "There are many different 'micro experiments' going on within each of these courses. What will emerge over the next two, three, four years is more compelling and comprehensive learning analytics data about these courses that will go deeper than just the completion statistic."

Faculty can improve their instruction in the face of diversity.What's most profound for institutions participating in non-traditional MOOCs, said DeVaney, is what faculty learn from those teaching experiences that they can bring back and apply in residential learning environments. He cited the example of Margaret Wooldridge, a professor of mechanical engineering who teaches "Introduction to Thermodynamics: Transferring Energy from Here to There," a MOOC being offered three times this year on the NetEase China Web site.