Reported by Mustard Dui Amu on May 13

Recently, at the LINK2016 Online Education Forum, edX CEO Anant Agarwal shared edX’s exploration and latest progress in MOOC2.0. Mustard Dui compiled the essence of the speech:

Now the courses on the MOOC platform have attracted students from all over the world. It has been four years since the first MOOC was founded, and our MOOC platform has also seen more innovations. Taking on more responsibilities. Now that we are putting more and more courses online, there is almost no marginal cost to education. At the same time, we must also ensure the integrity of MOOCs.

edX’s influence covers the world. In more than 160 countries around the world, we have more than 7 million learners and more than 900 courses taught in different languages. edX is just a platform, a free resource library open to the world. We first took the form of free courses, and currently such courses account for 6%. For this part of the course, sometimes you need to pay part of the fee in order to get the certificate. As this model gradually matures, more than 60% of students finally receive certified completion certificates. And not just a single project, we also combined various subjects into small projects. This is the concept of "Micromaster" we proposed.

Micro Master

Micro Master’s study lasts about six months and is free. It should be emphasized that this is not a degree from a university, but a certificate.

Its marginal cost is also almost "0". If you study for a normal master's degree, the tuition is still very expensive, but if you study for a "micro" master's degree, the cost will be much lower, and the study time is relatively short, only about six months. Judging from the current situation, if students apply for MIT after obtaining a "micro" master's degree, having a "micro" master's certificate will be helpful for applying to MIT. Now we can see the future development trend of education. Obtaining a degree like a "micro" master's degree on the MOOC platform can be said to be a stepping stone. If you hope to enter a university to receive systematic education, it can also help you apply for a better one. 's school.

New exploration of edX

In order to ensure the quality of courses and the validity of MOOC certificates, edX has made many new attempts:

Adaptive learning

edX is already trying to provide students with personalized learning services based on accumulated data. Based on student feedback, the system will automatically make next decisions.

Team (Group Cooperation)

We encourage students to form a study group of several people to work together and discuss in a self-organized manner. At the same time, the teacher can assign group assignments to the entire team.

Video analytics flipped classroom

Another one is video analysis. By observing the videos of students in class, the teacher can find out where the students have problems. Which part of the video has the highest replay rate among students.

In fact, this course is also applied in real campuses. In the form of flipped classroom, students learn new knowledge after class and discuss it in class. After the teacher conducts video analysis, he can even tell how many people did not watch the video during class. If many students play back or pause at the same point, the teacher will naturally find that this is a difficult point for students to understand the knowledge, and will focus on explaining it during the lecture. A practical case of flipped classroom is Tsinghua University’s “Rain Classroom”.

Assessment method: virtual invigilation + peer evaluation

The big challenge facing MOOC is how to ensure that students can maintain integrity while taking this course. edX is also paying great attention to this issue, especially in the "micro" master's program.

Initially, edX took the form of peer evaluation, but many teachers were reluctant to admit the results of peer evaluation. Therefore, our current format is that after students pay the fee to register for the "micro" master's course, they will be divided into N groups, and different groups will conduct mutual evaluations. The exams for the "micro" master's program are also time-limited. For example, if the exam is limited to two hours, the exam can only be submitted within two hours. If the exam is conducted uniformly, it is very likely that after one person finishes the exam, he will tell others all the exam questions. However, the way we are taking it now is that everyone will get different exam papers because the exam questions are random. In addition, we also have a virtual proctoring system to ensure that students do not cheat during the exam. Students' cheating behavior is directly linked to whether they can obtain the final "micro" master's certification certificate.

In the process of studying for a "micro" master's degree, the exam is completed through a computer. There is a camera on the computer to monitor whether you are cheating. If candidates look around during the exam, they are likely to be caught.

After the exam is completed, the completed video will be compressed and uploaded to the cloud server. Then edX will have dedicated staff to review these videos and monitor each student. The people watching the videos are very experienced teachers and staff.

The future of higher education: no restrictions on time, certificates, or content

Future education is unrestricted, and it does not matter time, certificates, or content. In the traditional education scenario, everything is strictly limited. You can only use the teaching materials given by the teacher, you can only attend classes of specific teachers, and you can only listen to them at specific times.

Bachelor’s degree takes four years, and master’s degree takes two to three years. But if you study online, this is no longer restricted. If you want to take a course at Tsinghua University, you can spend six months to get a "micro" master's degree online. If you change your mind later, you can also apply for a "micro" master's degree online. Applying for a "micro" master's degree, such as degrees from other institutions of higher learning in the United States, is also the trend of future education development.