EFTA00682777.pdf

From: The Modem World Global History since 1760 Course Team <noreply@soursera.org> To:, Subject: Final Message Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 18:46:52 +0000 jeffrey epstein, The latest information from The Modem World: Global History since 1760 on Coursera. Dear fellow learners, This is a good time to take stock of the experience we have had together. Although this surely is "distance learning," your responses to the course have been enormous and vital. Some of you have pointed out errors and offered alternative interpretations. But what stands out is that this course has helped a great many people think about our common history and that this has enriched their lives. Professors learn as they develop a course; good ones learn more as they teach it and hear the ways their students respond. More than 5,000 of you participated in the mid-course survey. The responses to the open-ended questions take up hundreds of pages. Here is a link to the quantitative responses so that, if you are interested, you can see in a completely anonymous way how your fellow students responded to those questions. In addition, many of you have posted comments. Some of you have written emails directly to me. And I've encountered a number of you in person as I travel from place to place. Everywhere, whatever the constructive criticisms, the responses have been as gratifying as any teacher could ever hope to experience. In my career as a teacher, no experience has been more satisfying than this one. Thank you. Since a number of you have asked about some of the course statistics, glad to share some with you, in addition to the quantitative data in the survey. The number of students that enroll in a MOOC (in this case around 47,000) is not a very interesting number. Many of those students never even try out the course. About 26,000 people around the world sampled this course at some point, perhaps just glancing at part of a video presentation. Of these, my estimate is that somewhat more than half of those — maybe 13-15,000 — decided to give the course a go and really work at it. Of that number, it seems that about half of those were determined to take all the quizzes, more or less on time. Almost 5,000 students earned Statements of Accomplishment, the large majority of those Distinguished. Since this is one of the longest courses on Coursera, running the length of an entire 14 week semester (not counting spring break), earns no formal credit, and is usually a significant addition to EFTA00682777 the very busy lives practically everyone leads, that represents a striking level of commitment to studying and reflecting on modern world history. In addition to that number, I estimate that a roughly comparable number, perhaps another 5,000 or so, are auditing the course thoroughly — taking some or none of the weekly quizzes — but nonetheless working their way through the material. (The 92 presentations already have 945,840 unique views, which screens out students who streamed or downloaded the presentation more than once.) Those working for the Statements wrapped up around May 7; but about 5,000 students were still actively viewing presentations during the last week, including presentations along the entire length of the course. So my impression is that a majority of those who decided to tackle this have pretty well stayed with it, despite the large time commitment it entails. The course will remain available until the end of this month. Then we will put it in the garage for rest and refit. Thanks in part to your comments we hope to make a variety of fixes, correcting inadvertent errors, improving map animations, etc. As an example of the importance of your input, we really noticed how valuable many of you found the transcripts, which were largely machine-generated. So we will improve the quality of the transcripts, hoping someday to find the funds to translate them into other languages so that we, in effect, can offer subtitles to help students whose English skills are more limited. We plan to offer the course again in Spring 2014, beginning in January. Some of you have asked what else U teaching. For now anyway, my other duties (I am a dean at my university and have some other obligations) limit how much I can teach at all. But you've got me thinking... My teammates at Virginia (Brandon and Stace) agree, though, that your responses vindicate our choice to use the kind of format we did, as if you were in my office (which is where we filmed), offering a mix of outlines and many sorts of images — even the occasional film or audio clip. And as those of you who took the quizzes know, it was not that easy to do well if you did not pay attention — many of you working out your own ways of taking notes or reviewing the material at your preferred pace (including the impatient fast forwarders!). As I mentioned in an earlier message, developments like this course are themselves becoming an interesting facet of modern history. One point I stress is that my university, and others, is now reaching a very large number of non-traditional students, who are at least as eager to learn as many of those we see in our classrooms. Institutions of higher education will need to think hard about how we can serve — and learn from — more students like you. Thank you and best wishes, Philip Zelikow EFTA00682778 Visit this class to continue learning Go to Class Unsubscribe • Discuss the course in class forums • Visit support • Please do not reply directly to this email EFTA00682779