edX to offer Rice courses on the Web
Starting next fall, more students across the world will be able to experience a virtual Rice education. Along with five other major universities from around the globe Rice is joining online education platform edX.
According to Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives Caroline Levander, edX President Anant Agarwal came to Rice in January to speak to the faculty about his platform. The Faculty Senate later unanimously approved a resolution allowing Rice to pursue a partnership with edX.
edX, founded by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute for Technology, is an educational platform that offers free massive online open courses, or MOOCs. Rice will use OpenStax Tutor, a learning analytics program, to help instructors and students track progress, according to an edX press release.
Last summer, Rice joined Coursera, another online course provider. edX differs from Coursera in that it is a nonprofit organization and it is committed to open access for students, Levander said.
"From a faculty perspective, those priorities align more with our university mission," Levander said. "[edX's priorities] signal a commitment to learning first, profit second."
Rice is one of two universities worldwide which has joined two online course platforms. Levander said university leaders wanted to be a part of both programs to make a big contribution to the development of this field.
"One thing to say about Rice is that it's very ambitious," Levander said. "We're doing both because our university leadership really wants Rice to distinguish itself."
Currently, Levander said she has a call out to Rice faculty members for proposals for online courses, with a deadline set for mid- March. A faculty panel will then review the proposals and decide which courses will be offered through edX. At least four courses will be offered beginning next fall. Thus far, Levander said she has received proposals from faculty in all disciplines.
"We want to show people who encounter Rice curriculum online the full range of options that students have on campus," Levander said.
More than 80,000 students enrolled in Rice's first online course, Introduction to Python, which ran from October to December 2012. Approximately 4,000 students successfully completed the course, which is a typical completion rate for online courses, according to Levander. Department chair and professor of computer science Joe Warren co-taught the course and said he thought it was successful.
"Our class is currently the highest-rated/ reviewed MOOC of all time, according to the major MOOC review sites," Warren said.
Warren said one benefit of an online class was that the large class size helped make teaching errors noticeable.
"If one student makes an isolated error, it's probably a problem with the student's understanding," Warren said. "If thousands of students make an error, it's probably the instructor's fault."
In addition to the Coursera course, Warren also taught COMP 160: Intro Computer Game Creation, a blended online course. Brown College freshman Lauren Staal said she enjoyed the online component of the course.
"We would watch lecture videos online on our own time and then come to class to work on our projects and ask questions," Staal said. "I like this much better than traditional in-class lectures because I think class time with the professor and TAs is better spent asking questions and working on assignments than just sitting and listening. Also, we could pause and replay the video lectures, which is a huge bonus over in-class lectures.
Warren said he recommended that professors who are considering teaching a MOOC create an online component for their on-campus course first.
"Think and learn about how to use this technology," Warren said. "Once your class is in an online form, build an open-enrollment version of the class - a MOOC. Having tens of thousands of students take your class will improve the quality of education delivered by your class to both on-campus and online students."
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