Experiences from two years of MOOCs at Caltech: A WEST Public Seminar

Since April 2012, Caltech has offered 7 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Astronomy, Biology, Computer Science, Economics, and Planetary Science for free to anyone in the world. Come hear how our faculty have adopted their courses to the MOOC platform, the different ways we've produced, structured, and delivered each course, and the impact MOOCs have had on our community, including faculty, students, staff, and alumni, and beyond.

Leslie Maxfield is the Director of Academic Media Technologies, an IMSS group that creates videos about Caltech's research and discoveries, supports new technology initiatives, and provides event and lecture recordings, broadcasts, and audio visual support. Her team's MOOC support includes all aspects of creating the video modules, from the initial crafting of the right recording and technology solution to showcase each unique teaching style, to the recording, editing, and posting to the platform. Leslie is a graduate of Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley, and has served on the boards of Caltech's SURF program and TEDxCaltech.

This talk, part of the CTLO's Workgroup on Educational Science and Technology (WEST) public seminar series, will give an overview of the following:

- Caltech's pre-MOOC online education activities
- Components of MOOC platforms
- Different ways courses have been produced and delivered
- Required campus support to produce a course
- Facts: # of participants, issued certificates, completion rates
- Public and private use of MOOCs for Caltech courses + the flipped classroom model
- Other peer universities MOOCs + vision
- What we're starting to learn from MOOCs
- What's next at Caltech

Whether you like MOOCs or not, they have invigorated our faculty's teaching, changed the Caltech classroom experience, and vastly broadened Caltech's educational outreach.

Online resources about Caltech's MOOCs:

- Caltech's Online Education programs: http://online.caltech.edu
- Caltech Coursera courses: https://www.coursera.org/caltech
- Caltech edX courses: https://www.edx.org/school/caltechx
- Caltech MOOC Report: April 2012 - 2013 <video>: http://youtu.be/g6sJ-q6WmzY
- First MOOC offerings faculty panel discussion - 3/5/2013 <video>: http://bit.ly/1qUK9iM