MOOCs, KOOCS, and SMOOCHs (or, Reports of the Death of Traditional Higher Education Have Perhaps Been Slightly Exaggerated)

MOOCs, KOOCS, and SMOOCHs

(or, Reports of the Death of Traditional Higher Education Have Perhaps Been Slightly Exaggerated)

David Evans
Tech-Connect
Harrison-Small Auditorium
University of Virginia
1 May 2013

This talk is about my experiences developing open courses with Udacity, and makes the case that scale enables new and exciting opportunities in education because of the economics of amortizing development cost over a large number of students, but more importantly because of the possibility for scale to produce effective learning communities and inspire amazing contributions. The last part of the talk is about what the University of Virginia should do as a leading public institution.

UVa Today Article: Evans: U.Va. Should Be a Global Leader in MOOCS, Online Learning, UVaToday, 1 May 2013.

Slides: [PDF] [PPSX]

Announcement:

The Tech-Connect Community invites you to join us Wednesday, May 1st from 12:00 to 1:30 PM in the Harrison-Small Auditorium for our first brown bag of 2013.

We continue with the popular topic of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). UVa's own Professor David Evans will share some of his experiences from developing two open, online courses for the Udacity platform. His Computer Science 101: Building a Search Engine was one of the first courses produced by Udacity. (To date more than 200,000 students have enrolled in CS101.)

Please try to save May 1st for this special opportunity to gain insight into MOOC development, from one of the first Udacity developers. After the presentation, Dr. Evans will entertain questions from the audience. Cookies and bottled water will be provided.

Registration for the event is not required, but it helps us with planning. To save a seat, while they last, please contact Mary Hanna at mhanna@virginia.edu. In the meantime, to learn more about Dr. Evans' recent MOOC activities and the origins of Udacity, check out these resources: