My Experience With DemoX

After going through the demo course work for DemoX, I think it has many pros and cons.  One of its most valuable assets is its ability to cater to the individual learner.  Courses cater to multiple intelligences through the use of diagrams, videos, readings, and more.  I was impressed to find that you can slow down and speed up videos, add closed captioning, and change the size of the video screen.  The closed captioning even highlights the words as they are being spoken in the video!

I found the demo course to be similar to one taken in Blackboard in many ways.  It provides access to an instructor, an FAQ section for navigational or hardware questions, links to your grades and progress, etc.  After participating in a variety of assessments based on different topics, I feel that there are certain classes that might still be more successful in a physical environment where learning would be hands on.  Chemistry and physics, for example, still seem like good candidates for physical classrooms.  While the videos of experiments and methods of constructing chemical equations were manageable, students would benefit from interacting with the activities and peers in person.  Reading and writing classes seem very efficient in EdX.  Professors are able to breakdown excerpts of literature through videos and provide feedback on student writing with great efficiency. 

Some methods of evaluation seemed ineffective to me.  The peer and self evaluations were not impressive because they were too open-ended.  As a student, I was not able to see how I would be evaluating myself or peers ahead of time.  There was no rubric to help gauge student success.  Additionally, some of their questioning methods were not accurate.  There was a visual identification question that I got wrong and read from the discussion boards that many other students were marked wrong as well.  It seems that there might be a few glitches to work out. 

While MOOCs might become an educational trend temporarily, I do not think they will be the future of higher education because they currently do not offer credit hours toward degrees of any kind at this point.  It will be hard to determine how to create degree programs because no business model exists to help MOOCs sustain themselves.  As Basdevany and Brannon mention in the article, “Most current [MOOC] users are people who have the luxury to learn for the sake of learning, which not everybody can afford.”  While it might be nice to learn more about a topic of interest, the lack of formal accreditation and degree would not help people seek employment opportunities through acquired education.  Employers who did not grow up in the digital age might not be very accepting of MOOCs as an adequate method of obtaining higher education. 
   
I do think that MOOCs will be the future of employee training.  It is a great opportunity for companies to match employees with skills and environments that will help them perform well.  It is also a great way to certify an employee in a new skill or renew licensure for a previously learned skill.  For example, we use a program called Safeschools on an annual basis in my district to learn about copyright laws.  It is an efficient way for employees to review information and employers to avoid liability. 

K-12 schools will also benefit from MOOCs.  As teachers look for ways to create differentiated instruction, online open classes will be a great way for students to work at their own pace.  Students on the ends of the learning spectrum could especially benefit:  Lower students would not fall behind because they could control the pace of their learning, and gifted students could work ahead instead of being inhibited by the pace of the average student. 

At this point in time, MOOCs still seem to be in an experimental state.  Basdevant and Brannon explain that MOOCs have no definitive business model at this time and need to find ways to sustain their education. They grew out of a need for quality higher education, but the programs seem to be too new to acquire any substantial data comparing MOOCs and classroom-based learning.  Until MOOCs can compare success rates and teaching quality in a scientific way, they will remain more of a supplement to classroom learning rather than a primary source of educational content.