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Leveraging MOOCs for credit-granting institutions

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Damian Bebell discusses the development, implementation, and evaluation results from an initial empirical study exploring the efficacy of integrating massive online open course (MOOC) content in a traditional, for-credit community college setting.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 20, 2024

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This video video discusses the role of community colleges in the American educational system, highlighting their importance for students who are not ready for traditional four-year universities. It details a study initiated in 2012 by MIT and Harvard, which formed edX, a consortium offering Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) aimed at providing free, self-paced educational opportunities worldwide. The initiative received significant media attention, being dubbed "the year of the MOOCs," with discussions surrounding its potential to destabilize higher education.

The study aimed to examine how MOOC resources could be utilized in community colleges, specifically focusing on a popular MIT course, "Introduction to Computational Thinking," delivered through a blended learning model. This video video involved adapting the course for community college students while maintaining its academic rigor. Research included pre- and post-surveys, interviews, and analysis of student engagement with the course materials.

Findings revealed that students enrolled at community colleges were successful in navigating this challenging course, with a considerable percentage passing their midterm exams. The research showed that a solid prior experience in programming significantly increased the likelihood of success among students. The data indicated that traditional credit-granting institutions could successfully integrate MOOC content into their curricula, enhancing learning opportunities for students.

Ultimately, the initiative showcased the potential for democratizing education and increasing equity through innovative resources, although it also reflected on the challenges and disparities faced by different student demographics based on their backgrounds and previous experiences. The study ended with reflections on the evolving landscape of education and the importance of striking a balance between traditional and innovative educational approaches.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Community colleges provide a role in the American

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educational system that often targets people,

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students or adults who aren't quite ready for a number

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of reasons for a traditional four year university.

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They also provide an educational opportunity for students

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both right out of high school as well as adult learners

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who are pursuing something that is,

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available from a two year associate's degree.

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So most of the community colleges offer two

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year associate's degrees.

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Some students are satisfied

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with ending their higher education at that point.

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Some continue on to a four year school and beyond.

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This, study occurred,

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back in 20 20 12.

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So in May 20th, 2012, a nonprofit consortium was founded

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by MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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and Harvard called edX.

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And edX was one of the first amongst others, like,

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Coursera, other,

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other opportunities called MOOCs.

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And what this meant was it was an acronym for massive

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Open Online course.

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And so these universities with funding,

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and soon they were joined

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by 30 other higher educational institutions from

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around the world, formed a consortia where they contributed

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course content from some of their most popular

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or most interesting courses at each of their universities.

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And so this was a really new development.

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And the idea behind edX is these courses could be completed

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for free by individuals anywhere in the world, self-paced,

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and all of the resources that you would have as a, you know,

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MIT or Harvard student

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or one of these 31 institutions you would

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have available to you.

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And this garnered a lot of public attention.

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The New York Times called it the year of the MOOCs,

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and this was headline news,

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and it was, you know, in, in the press

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and in some circles thought to actually be something

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that could destabilize higher education.

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Like, you know, some

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of our best universities were giving away the product.

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And so the idea of how education

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would respond to this

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or use it was very interesting to many of us who follow this

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and, and pay attention to how technology impacts education.

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And so this had a potential to really, you know, pause and,

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and let us think about what, what higher education

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provided, what were the requirements of a college degree

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and how much of those could be distilled into a

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free online course.

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And, and what would that do to different, you know,

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traditional educational sectors.

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So this study was funded

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by the Gates Foundation in the United States

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Very early on.

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In the first really months of the development of the edX

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and the MOOC movement, there was this effort to understand

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how it could be applied in, in existing educational context.

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So while the whole world is kind of experimenting

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and, you know, I'm signing up for courses

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and my grandmother is signing up for courses

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and everyone can just sort of go online

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and sign up for a free class.

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And the New York Times is writing about this, I'm working

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with a small group of researchers in including some

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of the first edX staff.

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Rebecca Peterson was, was really the lead on our,

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on our papers and our work.

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And I was at Boston College,

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and my role was as a very traditional educational researcher

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who had examined educational technology programs.

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And so partnering with, with MIT

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and the Gates Foundation, we decided

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that there was this opportunity to see how a MOOC

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could be taken and applied into your first question,

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a community college setting.

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So how could this course content, how could this resource?

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And in this case, it was an MIT course that was very popular

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and required of almost all students and all majors.

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Um, that was like an introduction to computational thought,

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which when you got under the skin of the course,

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you realized it was a lot about like introduction

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to programming and using the Python programming programming

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language to introduce some basic ideas

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around comp computing.

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And this was a foundational course at MIT

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that had been offered for a long time and had evolved

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and served generations of students in, in essence.

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And so this course was developed with a lot of resources,

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and the professor was filmed

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and they created this standalone course.

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And, and I believe you can still sign [email protected]

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and, and take the course.

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It's, introduction to computational thought

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or computational thinking in an MIT.

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This was, 600, I believe, you know,

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and this was a, like this famous distinction.

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And so the experiment here, the idea was,

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was could we take the resources of that course

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and package it in such a way that the resources

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of the MIT, you know,

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tier one Research University could be distilled

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and used in a community college setting for

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not just individuals doing this on their own time,

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but students taking a four credit introduction

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to computational thought.

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So could this course be hosted in a private instance?

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And, and the term that was used,

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and I don't think this is caught on quite as widely

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as MOOC was Spock small private online course.

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And it was basically like the faculty

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at the community college could, could take these resources.

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They couldn't modify the actual course content,

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but they could modify due dates, assignments, hide content,

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add their own syllabi, like use that resource

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instead of like the traditional resource

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that might be used for offering that.

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Some of those like discussion boards that involve thousands

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of people around the world, exercises that are dynamic

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and have, that are truly using the technology

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in a u in unique way.

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So the setup here was to, to offer in,

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in two community college settings near MIT

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and Boston College geographically,

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and these are the Massachusetts Bay Community College

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and Bunker Hill Community College, which were, you know,

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50 year established chartered institutions serving,

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you know, about 10,000 students at each institution.

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So they're major institutions that really do a lot

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of education and serve a lot of role.

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And so they were experimenting

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and, you know, could they bring this together in a blended

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course experience where their students would meet

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with a local professor

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or a local, one of the courses was taught

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by two faculty members in a computer lab once a week

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and then use the course materials as supplemental optional,

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and in some cases, even foundation resources

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for students matriculating and,

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and successful students would result in a grade and,

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and three credits toward their major

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and toward their associate's degree

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if they were in a degree program.

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So there were serious stakes, whereas like, you know,

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my grandmother taking a mooc,

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it's basically just giving them your email address and,

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and saying, you know, requesting access and getting the link

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and what you choose to do with that is your own choice.

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This was a very specific, thoughtful, integrated,

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blended approach of this new resource, this online set

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of resources and tools

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and in an existing traditional educational structure.

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That's a great question.

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And essentially the question from the community college was,

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you know, and other credit granting institutions is could

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they adopt and use these resources

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to benefit their students?

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And to what extent could they modify that for delivery

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and in their own context and would they have better results?

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And these, and,

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and this content that we looked at in particular was

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challenging content, an introduction to, to, to comp,

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you know, programming

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or computational thought does not necessarily come easy.

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And, and, and that is a distinction from the students

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who have been applied and accepted at MIT

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and who have traditionally taken the course.

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So you have many students who are totally unfamiliar with,

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with stem or might be, you know,

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their first time in an academic setting.

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So from the community college perspective,

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this was an opportunity to see if those resources

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could be leveraged for their faculty's benefit

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as well as for their student.

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And then, you know, I think the experiment

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provided an opportunity to be able to look more closely at

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how students perceive and learn in this online or in blended

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and in class settings in general, which is something that,

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you know, good, good at academics

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and good educators are always thinking about.

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What we wanted to do is understand the questions

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that we kind of asked going in as one, as you said,

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could this be done as this a proof of concept?

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But moreover, we wondered whether like different types

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of students or different types of faculty

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or approaches would respond differently.

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So we had these two different schools

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that were implementing this

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with slightly different personalized approaches

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and different backgrounds.

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So we had that opportunity to look at that

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and also to kind of look at how

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like the community college experience compared

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to students taking that same course,

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not only at like in MIT when the,

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in the original offering,

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but in the public MOOC offering during that same period.

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So ultimately it became this proof of concept,

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but it gave us a chance to kind

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of look under the hood a little more deeply.

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And so what we did as researchers is we created pre

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and post surveys of student and faculty experience.

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We conducted focus groups and interviews with those groups.

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We looked at then and, and analyzed,

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because this course had an online component

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and students are interacting through the edX platform,

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we could analyze onsite and offsite course activities,

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and we could actually use, you know, the data

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and process data to explore

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how students at the community college might be engaging

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with these resources differently, amongst themselves

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or differently than other, groups as I previously said.

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So in looking at that, what we are interested is kind

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of like was success from the community college perspective

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is like, could students be successful in this really

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challenging course and could this

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give them this opportunity?

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And so at midterm, okay,

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and this was a semester long course,

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was here in the community college, United States network

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probably is around 11 weeks, like a September

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through December implementation.

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And, and actually to correct myself,

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this was more like a January to May

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when this study occurred.

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And at midterm, at halfway point, we started with about,

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39

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or 40 students in both settings, about 20 each.

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And so 29 sat for the exam at midterm,

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which was a pretty good number.

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I think people felt really good. Those were high fives here.

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And, and what that meant then is of those students,

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about 90% of them passed the midterm,

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which again, was successful.

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So what that meant was about 10 students out of, out

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of the original group didn't persist in the course long

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enough to, to pass the midterm.

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And that is really impressive, where

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that number was something like, you know, a third of

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that in the online application.

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This was not necessarily an easy course.

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And so as it continued, we continued to kind

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of watch the implementation.

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And so we had, you know, again,

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40 students originally registered across the two community

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colleges, and 73% were there at midterm

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and actively enrolled at the end of that course.

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We were down to 67% of the original registration

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at one setting that was 80%, and at the other that was 53.

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And so we are curious,

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like why did some students successfully make it

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through this really challenging course experience

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and others didn't?

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And so we had the data to kind of support that.

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But first of all, all partners included,

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including the Gates Foundation,

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I think felt this was a really successful proof of concept.

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And the schools themselves decided

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to offer this for course credit.

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And so again, these are students paying tuition

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to take this content in a blended atmosphere

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with a local professor.

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And so, you know, students are registering for this course

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and they continue to offer it at

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both colleges in the future.

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So I think that was something that, you know,

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they maintained it and they didn't need to, I mean,

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we only mandated them do it once for the study.

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And so what this meant

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for them is it meant an unmet curricular

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need could be addressed.

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And that was really important

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because again, some of the framing about this was

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around equity and access to this c content.

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I mean, the higher idea of

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behind MOOCs was this content would be democratized

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and accessible to people who

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weren't at MIT or weren't at Harvard.

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And that was one of the exciting points.

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So overall, I think there was a lot of excitement about just

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that proof of concept

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and that, you know, three, you know, two thirds of students

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made it through the course.

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And, and of those they did very well.

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And the students that didn't typically dropped out within

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the first month, and so they realized they were struggling.

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It was a challenge. And,

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and again, to get back to that,

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like why did some students succeed and not others?

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One of the real predictors, I'll save you

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and your audience, the, the trouble of of

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of reading the paper is, you know,

14:47.395 --> 14:49.075
student's computer science background,

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if a student had any prior experience with programming

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or taking a programming course, if they were,

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had a previous, major DEC declaration

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of computer science, their likelihood

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of being successful in this course was much higher.

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The fact that it was online

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or internet was an access issue, that wasn't the issue.

15:13.635 --> 15:15.175
Um, so students, you know,

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had trouble keeping pace if it was their very first exposure

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to programming or computering science.

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And that was difficult for many students.

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And we had, you know, there were art majors,

15:25.745 --> 15:30.015
there were education majors who were intrigued by the idea

15:30.015 --> 15:31.375
of computational thinking

15:31.515 --> 15:36.055
and the promise of, of getting a MIT accredited class

15:36.715 --> 15:37.735
in their, in their roster.

15:37.875 --> 15:40.455
And it was a challenge. I I'm coming from Boston College,

15:40.655 --> 15:43.015
a private for, you know, a private institution

15:43.195 --> 15:44.855
for your college and the United States.

15:45.595 --> 15:48.175
Um, and, and so that is the essential question.

15:48.235 --> 15:51.255
And so I think that gets at something we can all,

15:51.255 --> 15:53.695
whether we're interested in computational thinking

15:54.115 --> 15:55.175
or online learning

15:55.235 --> 15:57.575
or blended learning, it's that, you know,

15:57.645 --> 16:01.935
what is the core purpose of our educational institutions?

16:02.755 --> 16:07.255
We know there is an added value for being on campus at MIT

16:07.255 --> 16:08.535
and having that experience,

16:08.915 --> 16:12.015
but we also know that is something that is very limited

16:13.425 --> 16:15.405
to a very small population.

16:15.865 --> 16:17.565
So I think having reflections

16:17.565 --> 16:20.045
and conversations about what is it

16:20.075 --> 16:22.565
that we're offering in school and in education

16:22.585 --> 16:25.725
and what is that endpoint, I have a unique perspective.

16:25.905 --> 16:27.405
I'm a, I'm a research scientist.

16:27.645 --> 16:29.165
I, I look at study outcomes.

16:30.145 --> 16:32.085
My whole goal is, you know, to help schools

16:32.105 --> 16:34.205
and organizations think about

16:34.205 --> 16:35.925
what success is and measure them.

16:36.745 --> 16:39.805
But too often we're kind of just subject to,

16:39.905 --> 16:41.365
to defining our success.

16:41.585 --> 16:43.885
And so having this reflective opportunity

16:43.945 --> 16:46.285
and thinking about what is the goal

16:46.305 --> 16:48.885
of my four year degree at MIT

16:48.945 --> 16:51.885
or what is the goal of this particular three credit class?

16:52.465 --> 16:55.285
Is it to prepare students for a future, you know,

16:55.485 --> 16:57.805
a prerequisite for something else in computer science?

16:58.145 --> 17:01.485
Or is it truly to get them to understand the,

17:01.825 --> 17:04.725
the cognitive value of computational thinking?

17:04.785 --> 17:06.565
We had to have those conversations.

17:07.065 --> 17:10.165
And what we find is generally that reflection

17:10.165 --> 17:11.245
and that boiling down,

17:11.245 --> 17:14.005
particularly if you have data you can reflect on from your

17:14.005 --> 17:15.605
stakeholders, is,

17:15.705 --> 17:17.685
is valuable no matter what the question is.

17:18.145 --> 17:21.125
So the value of your, the MIT education,

17:21.325 --> 17:23.805
I think MIT enrollment is still pretty strong

17:24.625 --> 17:26.685
and they're, you know, the, the, the, the percent

17:26.685 --> 17:29.565
of students that actually get accepted is still very small

17:29.625 --> 17:31.245
and continues to be more difficult.

17:31.825 --> 17:34.645
So there is something magical about being on that campus

17:35.195 --> 17:36.765
with a cohort of other students

17:36.865 --> 17:39.525
and eating the same food for breakfast

17:39.545 --> 17:40.885
and being in the same dorm

17:41.025 --> 17:44.085
and suffering through the power outage when it happens.

17:44.865 --> 17:48.405
Um, however, there is something very valuable.

17:48.425 --> 17:51.125
And we know that these students got an experience

17:51.905 --> 17:55.685
and a value that was not available to them previously.

17:56.745 --> 17:58.165
And it took a combination.

17:58.165 --> 18:00.805
And we know that if they would've registered independently,

18:00.805 --> 18:02.525
some of them may have been successful,

18:03.145 --> 18:04.485
but during the same period,

18:05.145 --> 18:07.285
and this is where the story comes full circle

18:07.955 --> 18:10.525
with the New York Times declaring, you know, the year

18:10.525 --> 18:13.485
of the MOOCs and the destabilization of higher education

18:13.485 --> 18:17.135
as we know it, what we found is that most grandmas,

18:17.555 --> 18:21.495
and even most well-intended higher education professors

18:22.145 --> 18:24.215
could really easily sign up for a course

18:24.395 --> 18:26.855
and download the syllabus and watch a few videos,

18:27.675 --> 18:29.935
but didn't really have any stakes attached to it,

18:30.475 --> 18:31.735
or didn't have any intention

18:31.915 --> 18:34.815
or maybe even got the knowledge we needed in, in,

18:34.835 --> 18:35.935
in a really quick way.

18:35.955 --> 18:36.975
And we didn't have to go

18:36.975 --> 18:38.935
through the whole nine week experience.

18:40.055 --> 18:41.795
And so the, the pass rates

18:42.255 --> 18:46.675
and the actual number of students who completed this course

18:47.975 --> 18:51.315
was much, much lower in the fully online setting.

18:52.505 --> 18:55.125
And we would expect that given the fact we're just

18:55.125 --> 18:56.205
giving it away to the world.

18:57.065 --> 19:00.005
But I think to the media and to a lot of our most hopeful

19:00.225 --> 19:05.005
and, and many s are, you know, very hopeful by nature felt

19:05.005 --> 19:07.285
that it didn't reach the potential,

19:07.595 --> 19:09.325
that fully online experience.

19:09.625 --> 19:14.085
It fell short, so many people got confused

19:14.185 --> 19:15.245
and got distracted

19:15.245 --> 19:18.165
and didn't get the support they needed at whatever critical

19:18.165 --> 19:20.565
time it was for them to be successful

19:20.565 --> 19:21.685
through the whole course.

19:22.265 --> 19:25.605
Or were able to just get what they needed in a really,

19:25.825 --> 19:27.085
you know, new way

19:27.115 --> 19:30.445
that disrupts higher education a little bit itself.

19:31.105 --> 19:33.565
So maybe there are a few people who might not be going

19:33.945 --> 19:36.365
to community college or might not be registering.

19:36.725 --> 19:37.845
I think MI t's safe,

19:38.425 --> 19:41.045
but I think there are still areas where

19:41.555 --> 19:43.405
this is a changing landscape

19:43.785 --> 19:47.605
and I think we are due for a little bit of destabilization

19:48.185 --> 19:51.245
if it means greater equity for knowledge and content.

Community Colleges and the Evolving Education Landscape

00:00:00 - Community colleges provide a role in the American educational system that often targets people, students or adults who aren't quite ready for a number of reasons for a traditional four year university. They also provide an educational opportunity for students both right out of high school as well as adult learners who are pursuing something that is, available from a two year associate's degree. So most of the community colleges offer two
00:00:34 - Some students are satisfied with ending their higher education at that point. Some continue on to a four year school and beyond. This, study occurred, back in 20 20 12. So in May 20th, 2012, a nonprofit consortium was founded by MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard called edX. And edX was one of the first amongst others, like,
00:01:08 - other opportunities called MOOCs. And what this meant was it was an acronym for massive Open Online course. And so these universities with funding, and soon they were joined by 30 other higher educational institutions from around the world, formed a consortia where they contributed course content from some of their most popular or most interesting courses at each of their universities.
00:01:38 - And the idea behind edX is these courses could be completed for free by individuals anywhere in the world, self-paced, and all of the resources that you would have as a, you know, MIT or Harvard student or one of these 31 institutions you would have available to you. And this garnered a lot of public attention. The New York Times called it the year of the MOOCs, and this was headline news, and it was, you know, in, in the press
00:02:09 - that could destabilize higher education. Like, you know, some of our best universities were giving away the product. And so the idea of how education would respond to this or use it was very interesting to many of us who follow this and, and pay attention to how technology impacts education. And so this had a potential to really, you know, pause and, and let us think about what, what higher education
00:02:42 - and how much of those could be distilled into a free online course. And, and what would that do to different, you know, traditional educational sectors. So this study was funded by the Gates Foundation in the United States Very early on. In the first really months of the development of the edX and the MOOC movement, there was this effort to understand

Exploring MOOCs in Community College Settings

00:03:15 - So while the whole world is kind of experimenting and, you know, I'm signing up for courses and my grandmother is signing up for courses and everyone can just sort of go online and sign up for a free class. And the New York Times is writing about this, I'm working with a small group of researchers in including some of the first edX staff. Rebecca Peterson was, was really the lead on our, on our papers and our work.
00:03:42 - and my role was as a very traditional educational researcher who had examined educational technology programs. And so partnering with, with MIT and the Gates Foundation, we decided that there was this opportunity to see how a MOOC could be taken and applied into your first question, a community college setting. So how could this course content, how could this resource?
00:04:14 - and required of almost all students and all majors. that was like an introduction to computational thought, which when you got under the skin of the course, you realized it was a lot about like introduction to programming and using the Python programming programming language to introduce some basic ideas around comp computing. And this was a foundational course at MIT that had been offered for a long time and had evolved
00:04:47 - And so this course was developed with a lot of resources, and the professor was filmed and they created this standalone course. And, and I believe you can still sign [email protected] and, and take the course. It's, introduction to computational thought or computational thinking in an MIT. This was, 600, I believe, you know, and this was a, like this famous distinction.
00:05:19 - was could we take the resources of that course and package it in such a way that the resources of the MIT, you know, tier one Research University could be distilled and used in a community college setting for not just individuals doing this on their own time, but students taking a four credit introduction
00:05:49 - So could this course be hosted in a private instance? And, and the term that was used, and I don't think this is caught on quite as widely as MOOC was Spock small private online course. And it was basically like the faculty at the community college could, could take these resources. They couldn't modify the actual course content, but they could modify due dates, assignments, hide content, add their own syllabi, like use that resource

Blended Learning in Community Colleges Experiment

00:06:22 - that might be used for offering that. Some of those like discussion boards that involve thousands of people around the world, exercises that are dynamic and have, that are truly using the technology in a u in unique way. So the setup here was to, to offer in, in two community college settings near MIT and Boston College geographically, and these are the Massachusetts Bay Community College and Bunker Hill Community College, which were, you know,
00:06:56 - you know, about 10,000 students at each institution. So they're major institutions that really do a lot of education and serve a lot of role. And so they were experimenting and, you know, could they bring this together in a blended course experience where their students would meet with a local professor or a local, one of the courses was taught by two faculty members in a computer lab once a week
00:07:29 - and in some cases, even foundation resources for students matriculating and, and successful students would result in a grade and, and three credits toward their major and toward their associate's degree if they were in a degree program. So there were serious stakes, whereas like, you know, my grandmother taking a mooc, it's basically just giving them your email address and, and saying, you know, requesting access and getting the link
00:07:58 - This was a very specific, thoughtful, integrated, blended approach of this new resource, this online set of resources and tools and in an existing traditional educational structure. That's a great question. And essentially the question from the community college was, you know, and other credit granting institutions is could they adopt and use these resources to benefit their students?
00:08:29 - and in their own context and would they have better results? And these, and, and this content that we looked at in particular was challenging content, an introduction to, to, to comp, you know, programming or computational thought does not necessarily come easy. And, and, and that is a distinction from the students who have been applied and accepted at MIT and who have traditionally taken the course. So you have many students who are totally unfamiliar with,
00:08:59 - their first time in an academic setting. So from the community college perspective, this was an opportunity to see if those resources could be leveraged for their faculty's benefit as well as for their student. And then, you know, I think the experiment provided an opportunity to be able to look more closely at how students perceive and learn in this online or in blended and in class settings in general, which is something that,

Exploring Diverse Approaches in Community College Courses

00:09:29 - and good educators are always thinking about. What we wanted to do is understand the questions that we kind of asked going in as one, as you said, could this be done as this a proof of concept? But moreover, we wondered whether like different types of students or different types of faculty or approaches would respond differently. So we had these two different schools that were implementing this with slightly different personalized approaches and different backgrounds.
00:10:00 - and also to kind of look at how like the community college experience compared to students taking that same course, not only at like in MIT when the, in the original offering, but in the public MOOC offering during that same period. So ultimately it became this proof of concept, but it gave us a chance to kind of look under the hood a little more deeply. And so what we did as researchers is we created pre
00:10:32 - We conducted focus groups and interviews with those groups. We looked at then and, and analyzed, because this course had an online component and students are interacting through the edX platform, we could analyze onsite and offsite course activities, and we could actually use, you know, the data and process data to explore how students at the community college might be engaging
00:11:02 - or differently than other, groups as I previously said. So in looking at that, what we are interested is kind of like was success from the community college perspective is like, could students be successful in this really challenging course and could this give them this opportunity? And so at midterm, okay, and this was a semester long course, was here in the community college, United States network
00:11:32 - through December implementation. And, and actually to correct myself, this was more like a January to May when this study occurred. And at midterm, at halfway point, we started with about, 39 or 40 students in both settings, about 20 each. And so 29 sat for the exam at midterm, which was a pretty good number.
00:12:05 - And, and what that meant then is of those students, about 90% of them passed the midterm, which again, was successful. So what that meant was about 10 students out of, out of the original group didn't persist in the course long enough to, to pass the midterm. And that is really impressive, where that number was something like, you know, a third of that in the online application. This was not necessarily an easy course.

Success Rates in Community College Courses

00:12:36 - of watch the implementation. And so we had, you know, again, 40 students originally registered across the two community colleges, and 73% were there at midterm and actively enrolled at the end of that course. We were down to 67% of the original registration at one setting that was 80%, and at the other that was 53. And so we are curious, like why did some students successfully make it
00:13:08 - and others didn't? And so we had the data to kind of support that. But first of all, all partners included, including the Gates Foundation, I think felt this was a really successful proof of concept. And the schools themselves decided to offer this for course credit. And so again, these are students paying tuition to take this content in a blended atmosphere with a local professor. And so, you know, students are registering for this course
00:13:39 - both colleges in the future. So I think that was something that, you know, they maintained it and they didn't need to, I mean, we only mandated them do it once for the study. And so what this meant for them is it meant an unmet curricular need could be addressed. And that was really important because again, some of the framing about this was around equity and access to this c content. I mean, the higher idea of behind MOOCs was this content would be democratized and accessible to people who
00:14:11 - And that was one of the exciting points. So overall, I think there was a lot of excitement about just that proof of concept and that, you know, three, you know, two thirds of students made it through the course. And, and of those they did very well. And the students that didn't typically dropped out within the first month, and so they realized they were struggling. It was a challenge. And, and again, to get back to that, like why did some students succeed and not others?
00:14:43 - and your audience, the, the trouble of of of reading the paper is, you know, student's computer science background, if a student had any prior experience with programming or taking a programming course, if they were, had a previous, major DEC declaration of computer science, their likelihood of being successful in this course was much higher. The fact that it was online or internet was an access issue, that wasn't the issue.
00:15:15 - had trouble keeping pace if it was their very first exposure to programming or computering science. And that was difficult for many students. And we had, you know, there were art majors, there were education majors who were intrigued by the idea of computational thinking and the promise of, of getting a MIT accredited class in their, in their roster. And it was a challenge. I I'm coming from Boston College, a private for, you know, a private institution for your college and the United States.

Redefining Success in Online Education

00:15:48 - And so I think that gets at something we can all, whether we're interested in computational thinking or online learning or blended learning, it's that, you know, what is the core purpose of our educational institutions? We know there is an added value for being on campus at MIT and having that experience, but we also know that is something that is very limited to a very small population.
00:16:17 - and conversations about what is it that we're offering in school and in education and what is that endpoint, I have a unique perspective. I'm a, I'm a research scientist. I, I look at study outcomes. My whole goal is, you know, to help schools and organizations think about what success is and measure them. But too often we're kind of just subject to, to defining our success. And so having this reflective opportunity and thinking about what is the goal
00:16:48 - or what is the goal of this particular three credit class? Is it to prepare students for a future, you know, a prerequisite for something else in computer science? Or is it truly to get them to understand the, the cognitive value of computational thinking? We had to have those conversations. And what we find is generally that reflection and that boiling down, particularly if you have data you can reflect on from your stakeholders, is, is valuable no matter what the question is.
00:17:21 - I think MIT enrollment is still pretty strong and they're, you know, the, the, the, the percent of students that actually get accepted is still very small and continues to be more difficult. So there is something magical about being on that campus with a cohort of other students and eating the same food for breakfast and being in the same dorm and suffering through the power outage when it happens. however, there is something very valuable.
00:17:51 - and a value that was not available to them previously. And it took a combination. And we know that if they would've registered independently, some of them may have been successful, but during the same period, and this is where the story comes full circle with the New York Times declaring, you know, the year of the MOOCs and the destabilization of higher education as we know it, what we found is that most grandmas, and even most well-intended higher education professors
00:18:24 - and download the syllabus and watch a few videos, but didn't really have any stakes attached to it, or didn't have any intention or maybe even got the knowledge we needed in, in, in a really quick way. And we didn't have to go through the whole nine week experience. And so the, the pass rates and the actual number of students who completed this course was much, much lower in the fully online setting.

Challenges of Online Education Access and Equity

00:18:55 - giving it away to the world. But I think to the media and to a lot of our most hopeful and, and many s are, you know, very hopeful by nature felt that it didn't reach the potential, that fully online experience. It fell short, so many people got confused and got distracted and didn't get the support they needed at whatever critical time it was for them to be successful through the whole course. Or were able to just get what they needed in a really,
00:19:48 - that disrupts higher education a little bit itself. So maybe there are a few people who might not be going to community college or might not be registering. I think MI t's safe, but I think there are still areas where this is a changing landscape and I think we are due for a little bit of destabilization if it means greater equity for knowledge and content.

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