Pros and Cons of Massive Open Online Courses

Post-secondary schools of all kinds—expensive, elite colleges, state universities, and community colleges—are flirting with the idea of MOOCs, massive open online courses, where tens of thousands of students can take the same class simultaneously. Is this the future of college? Nathan Heller wrote about the phenomenon in the May 20, 2013, issue of The New Yorker in Laptop U. I recommend you find a copy or subscribe online for the full article, but Ill share with you here what I gleaned as the pros and cons of MOOCs from Hellers article. What Is a MOOC? The short answer is that a MOOC is an online video of a college lecture. The M stands for massive because there is no limit to the number of students who can enroll from anywhere in the world. Anant Agarwal is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and president of edX, a non-profit MOOC company owned jointly MIT and Harvard. In 2011, he launched a forerunner called MITx (Open Courseware), hoping to get 10 times the usual number of classroom students in his spring-semester circuits-and-electronics course, about 1,500. In the first few hours of posting the course, he told Heller, he had 10,000 students sign up from all over the world. The ultimate enrollment was 150,000. Massive. The Pros MOOCs are controversial. Some say they are the future of higher education. Others see them as the eventual downfall of it. Here are the pros Heller found in his research. MOOCs: Are free. Right now, most MOOCs are free or nearly free, a definite plus for the student. This is likely to change as universities look for ways to defray the high cost of creating MOOCs.Provide a solution to overcrowding. According to Heller, 85% of Californias community colleges have course waiting lists. A bill in the California Senate seeks to require the state’s public colleges to give credit for approved online courses.Force professors to improve lectures. Because the best MOOCs are short, usually an hour at the most, addressing a single topic, professors are forced to examine every bit of material as well as their teaching methods.Create a dynamic archive. Thats what Gregory Nagy, professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard, calls it. Actors, musicians, and standup comedians record their best performances for broadcast and posterity, Heller writes; why shouldnt college teachers do the same? He cites Vladimir Nabokov as once suggesting that his lessons at Cornell be recorded and played each term, freeing him for other activities.Are designed to ensure that students keep up. MOOCs are real college courses, complete with tests and grades. They are filled with multiple choice questions and discussions that test comprehension. Nagy sees these questions as almost as good as essays because, as Heller writes, the online testing mechanism explains the right response when students miss an answer, and it lets them see the reasoning behind the correct choice when theyre right.The online testing process helped Nagy redesign his classroom course. He told Heller, Our ambition is actually to make the Harvard experience now closer to the MOOC experience.Bring people together from all over the world. Heller quotes Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard president, regarding her thoughts on a new MOOC, Science Cooking, that teaches chemistry and physics in the kitchen, I just have the vision in my mind of people cooking all over the globe together. It’s kind of ni ce.Allow teachers to make the most of classroom time in blended classes. In what is called a flipped classroom, teachers send students home with assignments to listen to or watch a recorded lecture, or read it, and return to the classroom for more valuable discussion time or other interactive learning.Offer interesting business opportunities. Several new MOOC companies launched in 2012: edX  by Harvard and MIT; Coursera, a Standford company; and Udacity, which focuses on science and tech. The Cons The controversy surrounding MOOCs includes some pretty strong concerns about how they will shape the future of higher education. Here are some of the cons from Hellers research. MOOCs: Could cause teachers to become nothing more than glorified teaching assistants. Heller writes that Michael J. Sandel, a Harvard justice professor, wrote in a letter of protest, The thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary.Make discussion a challenge. It’s impossible to facilitate meaningful conversation in a classroom with 150,000 students. There are electronic alternatives: message boards, forums, chat rooms, etc., but the intimacy of face-to-face communication is lost, emotions often misunderstood. This is a particular challenge for humanities courses. Heller writes, When three great scholars teach a poem in three ways, it isnt inefficiency. It is the premise on which all humanistic inquiry is based.Grading papers is impossible. Even with the help of graduate students, grading tens of thousands of essays or research papers is daunting, to say the least. Heller reports that edX is deve loping software to grade papers, software that gives students immediate feedback, allowing them to make revisions. Harvards Faust isnt completely on board. Heller quotes her as saying, I think they are ill-equipped to consider irony, elegance, and†¦I don’t know how you get a computer to decide if there’s something there it hasn’t been programmed to see.Make it easier for students to drop out. Heller reports that when MOOCs are strictly online, not a blended experience with some classroom time, dropout rates are typically more than 90%.Intellectual property and financial details are issues. Who owns an online course when the professor who creates it moves to another university? Who gets paid for teaching and/or creating online courses? These are issues that MOOC companies will need to work out in the upcoming years.Miss the magic. Peter J. Burgard is a professor of German at Harvard. He has decided not to participate in online courses because he believes the college experience comes from sitting in preferably small groups having genuine human interactions, really digging into and exploring a knotty topic—a difficult image, a fascinating text, whatever. Thats exciting. There’s a chemistry to it that simply cannot be replicated online.Will shrink faculties, eventually eliminating them. Heller writes that Burgard sees MOOCs as destroyers of traditional higher education. Who needs professors when a school can hire an adjunct to manage a MOOC class? Fewer professors will mean fewer Ph.D.s granted, smaller graduate programs, fewer fields, and subfields taught, the eventual death of entire bodies of knowledge. David W. Wills, professor of religious history at Amherst, agrees with Burgard. Heller writes that Wills worries about academia falling under hierarchical thrall to a few star professors. He quotes Wills, Its like higher education has discovered the megachurch. MOOCs will most definitely be the source of many conversations and debates in the near future. Watch for related articles coming soon.

George Washington Farewell Address - 1117 Words

Research Paper In 1796, George Washington, who was known as being one of the greatest leaders in history, wrote an important document to the American people. This document was written to inform and help prevent the Americans from making any mistakes or decisions that could hurt the nation and the people in it. You should know that Washington was extremely sensitive to the importance of public appearance and he used his departure from Presidency to publicize a major final statement of his political ideas. He wrote what would later become his Farewell Address. He wrote this document with the help of James Madison’s in 1792. The Farewell Address to the United Nation was never essentially delivered verbally with words, it was first published†¦show more content†¦Such parties may claim to be trying to answer rampant demands or solve serious problems, but their true intentions are to take the power away from the people and place it in the hands of men who don’t deserve it. In the w ords of Washington, he states: However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.† In this quote Washington explains how both parties (Democratic and Federalist) may love their country, but also about how he feared that having separate parties may leave the people loving their parties, more than our country. Ironically, when George Washington became President of the United States in 1789 during his first term, there were no political parties, and looking at today’s society, things have changed. George Washington was clearly very aware of the destructive nature of Political Parties and the harm that it could do to our country, but we have not learned from our mistakes to this day***** add something else/switch Another big point that Washington stressed was that becoming alliances with Foreign nations would endanger the United States. He believed thatShow MoreRelatedGeorge Washington and the Farewell Address717 Words   |  3 Pagesï » ¿George Washington and the Farewell Address As the first president to guide, lead and protect what was very much a youthful, vulnerable, hopeful and energetic nation, George Washington will always hold a special and inalienable place in the minds and hearts of all Americans. 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Commercial law Infringement of Intellectual Property Right

Questions: 1. What infringements of copyright have occurred in the above circumstances ?2. What rights does the trade mark give us to take legal action in against the sellers of the film, and presuming they can be found, the illegal copiers ? 3. Do any criminal acts result from either the actions of the retailers or manufacturers of the pirate DVDs ? If so, what are the maximum penalties for such acts ? Answers: 1: Infringement of copy right In general copy right means a legal right which is preserved to the creator for a specific span of time for print, publish, perform, film, or record any of his literary, artistic, or musical material. According section 1 of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, copyright is any unique literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works, sound recordings, films or any of the printing arrangement of available editions. Section 5B of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 specifically deals with Films. Film includes recording on any of the medium, where moving image can be produced. The sound track supplementary to a film shall also be taken into consideration.[1]Section 6 deals with broadcasting. Broadcasting means and includes transmission of any visual image or sounds to the public. Section 16, 17 also describes the circumstances under which coping a copyrighted item can infringe copyright laws. For a film both of this above mentioned section can be applied. If someone copies the film and shows it or sells it then it infringes the copy right. 2: Infringement of trade mark: According to Trade Marks Act 1994 a trade mark includes any sign able of being represented graphically or which is capable of individualize goods or services of one enterprise to another. A trade mark generally includes designs, letters, numbers or the shape of product or their packaging etc. Arsenal FC plc v Reed [2] was a land mark case in relation to trade mark. Arsenal FC is a football club, which have their own registered trademarks. Matthew Reed had distributed souvenirs with that registered trademarks of the Arsenal FC. Arsenal Football Club takes legal action against Matthew Reed. They alleged that Mr. Reed had violates certain of the registered trademarks. The main judgment was on the question that whether the utilization of the sign harm guarantee of original. The court says that it harms the trade mark laws. The decision is supportive to original product owners who are in the hunt for the enforcement of their rights against suppliers of unauthorized products using their marks. In the light of the case we can say that infringements of trade mark laws for cinematographic films also be happened if someone uses the particular sign or symbols which exclusively preserves for the owner of the films. 3: Criminal remedy Under copyright law: Section 107 specifies that if an individual commits an infringement without the license of the copyright proprietor the person shall be liable for custody for a term not more than six months or a fine not more than 50,000, or both and on conviction on indictment it can fine or custody for a term not more than 10 years or both. If an individual infringes any copyright and transmitting the work to the public in general [section 107(2A)], he shall be punishable with imprisonment not more than three months or with a fine not more than 50,000, or both; and on conviction on indictment it a fine or custody for a term not more than two years, or both.[4] Under trade mark law: A person commits an breach of trademark with no consent of the proprietor can be imprisoned for not more than 6 months or for a fine of 5,000or in case of Indictment the term of imprisonment is 10 years(section 92 of According to Trade Marks Act 1994).[5] Right of the buyers against the seller of the defective DVDs under Sale of Goods Act, 1979 It was found that around 75% of the pirated DVDs were also defective or inappropriate because they have been recorded on very poor quality blank DVDs from which the film cannot be watched properly. The major fact in issues is that the sellers of those DVDs delivered defective goods to the innocent buyers. Section 13 of Sale of Goods Act, 1979 describes the provision relating to sale by description. This section specifically describe that the goods must be according to the description claim by the seller. Section 12 of the Act[6] also specifies about some implied conditions regarding the sale of goods. This section tells that it is implied condition that the seller has the title of the goods which he passes to the buyer. In Beale v. Taylor[7] it was happened that Taylor prints a commercial to sell a automobile telling it as white, 1961, herald. Beale came to examine the car. He did not get a test drive, but sat on the traveler side. After this he also noticed a metallic round on the back of the car which indicates 1200. He purchased the car assuming it to be the 1961 model.[8] But later he found that car is not satisfactory. The mechanic after examination told him that the automobile was combined of two machines together. Beale sue Taylor for breach of contract. Court held that both the parties are innocent because by an ordinary examination of the particular good no one can determine the defect in it. This is a sale by description but the buyer examine the car before buying it. Beale entitled to get the price difference. There are various specific sections of Sales of Goods Act, 1979 which specifically deals with the provisions relating to defect of a good. Section 14 (2) (a) indicate that if the goods can be examined by the buyer at the time of the sale takes place then its the duty of the buyer to check it properly otherwise he cannot claim the defense of defective goods later. Section 15 also specifies that if any good is sold by sample then the sample will represent the whole bulk of product. Section 22 (1) state that when the goods are sold in market overt and the buyer buyers the product in good faith without knowing any defect on it, buyers acquire a good title. In all the above mentioned sections of Sales of goods Act, 1979 indicate that if the buyer is aware that he/she is purchasing a defective goods then he/she never succeed in a case of breach of agreement of sale. But if the buyers are bona fide buyer then he has the right to sue the seller. If the buyers of those pirated DVDs know that the DVDs are pirated then they are well aware about the fact that the seller has no right to sell because they dont have the proper title. So in this case they cannot claim any right against those products. But if the buyers are innocent and relied that the retailer has the proper title to sell it then they can sue the retailer for misappropriation and delivery of defective goods under Sales of goods Act, 1979. References uk, 'Intellectual Property Crime And Infringement - Detailed Guidance - GOV.UK' (2014) https://www.gov.uk/intellectual-property-crime-and-infringement accessed 24 March 2015 uk, 'Intellectual Property Offences - GOV.UK' (2015) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/intellectual-property-offences/intellectual-property-offences accessed 24 March 2015 uk, 'Trade Marks Act 1994 - Publications - GOV.UK' (2008) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/trade-marks-act-1994 accessed 24 March 2015 gov.uk, 'Copyright, Designs And Patents Act 1988' (2015) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents accessed 24 March 2015 gov.uk, 'Sale Of Goods Act 1979' (2015) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54 accessed 24 March 2015 Verma V, 'Beale V. Taylor' (wordpress.com, 2012) https://indiancaselaws.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/beale-vs-taylor/ accessed 24 March 2015 Arsenal FC plc v Reed[2003] ch Beale v Taylor(1967) 3 ALL Er [1] Section 5B of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 [2] Arsenal FC plc v Reed[2003] Ch. [3] Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 [4]Gov.uk, 'Intellectual Property Crime And Infringement - Detailed Guidance - GOV.UK' (2014) https://www.gov.uk/intellectual-property-crime-and-infringement accessed 24 March 2015. [5]Gov.uk, 'Intellectual Property Offences - GOV.UK' (2015) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/intellectual-property-offences/intellectual-property-offences accessed 24 March 2015. [6] Sale of Goods Act,1979 [7] Beale v Taylor(1967) 3 ALL Er [8] Vivek Verma, 'Beale V. Taylor' (Indiancaselaws.wordpress.com, 2012) https://indiancaselaws.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/beale-vs-taylor/ accessed 24 March 2015.