Email from MIT Dean for Digital Learning

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Lerner, Nov 22, 2018.

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  1. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    Fall 2018 Update from the MIT Dean for Digital Learning

     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
  2. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    That looks like marketing-speech to me. (What earthier people who aren't university graduates call "bullshit".)

    If the highlighted text is taken seriously and literally, wouldn't it be an admission that MIT's faculty isn't providing anything of value to their students learning experience?

    I don't doubt that MITx's "MOOCs" are "challenging and rewarding". But I do question whether one can do away with live interaction with university professors, class discussion, interaction with other students (and at MIT many of them are brilliant) quite so easily, without losing something valuable along the way.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
  3. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Were there any costs?
     
  4. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    I think you can watch the video and get a little better picture of the MITX MOOC's.
    Classes at MITX that I took all have a discussion as part of each lesson.
    The discussions are important and mandatory, you get graded and also comments and responses from the professors. The homework had a deadline etc.
    Lectures are broken into 25 to 30 min sessions, it makes it much more flexible than on campus multi-hour lectures. One of the classes I took was an Engineering class with the lectures led by the most principal NASA Engineers and MIT professors who actually worked on the concept, design, implementation, and operation of the spacecraft, orbiters, space shuttle program, they negotiated and lead the NASA and DOD projects.
    I was highly excited to learn and watch recorded lectures from people like Dale Myers (Mr. Myers was the NASA associate administrator for manned space flight in 1970 - An American aerospace engineer who was Deputy Administrator of NASA), Bob Seamans (NASA Deputy Administrator and MIT professor.), Aaron Cohen a Professor who was the Acting Deputy Administrator of NASA, Jeff Hoffman etc. These recorded video lectures as some of the lecturers are no longer a life, these are are a treasure.
    I can't compare these classes to MIT campus-based classes because I never took any of MIT campus-based classes. But I have studied in universities and institutes, one of them is an Institute of Technology ranked 50 worldwide so I can make a comparison.
    I highly recommend these classes.

    The classes are free unless a participant wants to earn a certificate or a credential.
    The certificate signed by the professors was 75$.
    Some classes on graduate level of Micromasters are a more expensive ranging couple of hundreds per class for a verified certificate.
     
    SteveFoerster likes this.

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