Free MOOC on Blended Learning (Feb 27-May 22)

From Campus Technologies:

University of Central Florida (UCF) and Educause have re-launched a no-cost massive open online course (MOOC) that offers facilitated assistance to faculty members and instructional designers who want to develop blended courses. It is the 5th round of this course.

BlendKit2017: Becoming a Blended Learning Designer, hosted on Instructure‘s Canvas Network, will be facilitated by Sue Bauer and Baiyun Chen, instructional designers at UCF’s Center for Distributed Learning. Throughout the five-week course, participants will explore key issues related to blended learning and best practices. They will also receive step-by-step guidance on developing design documents, creating content pages and other materials needed for a blended course.

The MOOC includes:

  • Practical step-by-step “how to” guides;
  • Assessment and critique on design work from course experts and peers;
  • Blogging and social networking opportunities; and
  • Weekly webinars with guest presenters.

BlendKit2017 runs Feb. 27 to May 22. The course is free, but students can choose to participate in the $89 certification track to have their portfolios reviewed (this is optional!). The track includes a certificate and digital badge from UCF and Educause.

 

GROOC–add to your vocabulary

MOOCs, and now GROOCs…

According to the article: “McGill University is partnering with edX to launch what they institutions are calling a “GROOC,” or a massive open online course (MOOC) for groups. The new course, “Social Learning for Social Impact,” launches next month and “aims to inspire social change through global collaboration of like-minded people working to create positive, sustainable impact,” according to a news release.”

Can researchers predict MOOC dropouts?

It might be useful analytics to predict any (not only MOOC) dropouts

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a “fairly accurate” means of determining when students will drop out of a massive open online course. Researchers took a number of factors into consideration, including “time spent per correct homework item and amount of time spent on learning resources such as video lectures.” CampusTechnology.com