By now, this is old news. Last week, you all must have seen an announcement that Wellesley has joined edX and that we plan to offer four courses through edX in what President Bottomly called a Grand Experiment. This decision came after an almost a yearlong internal conversations on what should be Wellesley’s strategy around the MOOCs and generally online education. I am so glad that we are entering into this partnership and that it is clearly an experiment. There are far too many questions than answers and as true academics, when we seek answers, we engage in experiments. There is simply no other way to find out than getting our hands and feet wet.

In general the extended Wellesley community seems excited about this decision. The student reporter who interviewed me on this topic was very excited and talked about how the newspaper, in an earlier editorial had supported Wellesley getting into this realm. She was also excited about the course she was enrolled in and her hands on experience. But, everyone also has a lot of interesting and important questions.

One of the questions that is asked often is how the typical small, discussion based classes fit into this model. When you have thousands of interested students enrolled in the class, it is hard to imagine a replication of this. It is a valid question for which there is no clear answer than to point to the very active discussion forums that now have a highly diverse pool of opinions and interesting discussions arising from it. But, as a faculty, how does one manage this in terms of volume and quality, and above all, find the time it takes. Different faculty teaching these courses seem to have different approaches to dealing with these discussion groups, some are actively engaged and some just plain don’t go to the discussions. They let their TAs keep an eye on it.

Whereas it is impossible to imagine how to replicate the small classes and discussions in a MOOC, it is not inconceivable to think of a differential system for MOOCs. Something that parallels the developing area of certification. Today, some of the MOOCs provide certificates based on online grading. edX is thinking of introducing a different type of certificate for those who will take a proctored exam, which they are doing in collaboration with Pearson. This option came about as an answer to the academic integrity question. There are some who believe that even this method is open to cheating, but that does not go too far, because by that argument, other similar proctored exams such as SAT, GRE and GMAT  won’t pass that test either.  In any case, just the same way that new methods such as these are appearing for assessment, may be we can come up with a differential system for discussion based classes, where only a handful of students willing to pay a certain amount will be admitted to a different type of discussion sessions using technologies like like Google Hangout or Adobe Connect with the faculty member. The rest will be using the discussion forums available. Not sure whether this is a practical idea to test or not! Just an idea. However, no one will argue that based on what we know today, there is no real replacement in the virtual world to replicate the face to face small classroom experience. There are many factors that complicate the virtual methods. I am sure this will improve in due course.

Integrity question is another major one and as I explained above, the MOOCers are seriously thinking about this and finding acceptable solutions to this.

How about the assessment? This is a big one. Currently, this is done either through Peer assessment (like Coursera) or through the autograder system in edX. Both have their issues. Peer grading assumes a level of honesty on the part of peers, which may be a huge assumption. Though they provide clear rubrics, the grader is going to exercise some level of subjectivity. This is all taken care of by having multiple peers grade the same work etc. etc. The autograder has its own issues in that it is great for certain types of testing. I have been extremely impressed by the autograder in edX and the thought that has gone into it for testing computer programs. But…. it also has its own issues. For eg. in the last midterm I took, one of the questions was just three lines long and was very confusing. Honor code suggests that we don’t go out to look for explanations (this would not have helped anyways) and the discussion forums are a No No during the exams. I lost the points for this and it was really frustrating. But, this is just one example. I have been super impressed otherwise.

This is a big issue in liberal arts colleges, where a significant number of classes require the students to write essays. Of course, the AI researchers in MIT are already working on autograders for essays based on certain rubrics, but this will be a hard sell. The claim is that the longer essays (over a period of time) are easier to grade and are more reliable (because of the amount of information available) than short answers. But, not many are going to go for either peer grading or autograding as a way to give a College Blessed certificate. On the other hand, if we decide to try this as an experiment, we may learn about various aspects of peer grading. This is precisely why this should be viewed as an experiment at this stage.

There are many other questions – is the College willing to accept online classes for credit? how will the faculty time spent on this be treated, rewarded, accounted for in promotion and tenure? etc. etc.

We are eagerly awaiting the Grand Experiment and being a partner. Given the bright minds at the College, I am sure that we will be creative and will be a significant contributor to the advancement of the MOOCs in as yet unexplored areas of the curriculum and have some answers the questions. Then, we will reset and decide where this takes us.