The MOOC Experience: Faculty Reflections

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are growing in popularity at colleges and universities across the country at a rapid pace. They are the newest type of online learning experience open to people around the world.

I will be part of a panel discussion at William Paterson University offered by the Technology Across the Curriculum and Instructional Research Technology group and Co-Sponsored by the NJEDge Academic Technology Group. The event, "The MOOC Experience: Faculty Reflections," is on October 29, 2013. We will discuss the brief history of the MOOC, design principles, and the experience of teaching/facilitating a MOOC.

After light refreshment at noon, the panel discussion will  start at 12:30.  Following the discussion, the NJEDge Academic Technology Group will continue this discussion its first meeting of the academic year.

SITE: William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Library Auditorium, Building 10, Wayne, New Jersey 07470

For registration information: http://njedge.net/events/

The event will be streamed live and later archived at NJVID.Net.

About the Panelists

I have been designing and teaching online courses since 2000. I was the Manager of Instructional Technology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology for seven years where I managed the design of online courses for the University as well as for corporate clients. From 2008-2012, I directed the Federal writing grant at Passaic County Community College. I continue to teach at PCCC and also online for the graduate program in Professional Technical Communication at NJIT.  I have taught and learned in a MOOC environment forp2pu.org since 2011 and this year I taught the “Academia and the MOOC” course offered by the Canvas Network in 2013. I started my career in education in 1975 as a secondary school teacher of English.

Also on the panel is Mary Zedeck, an Instructional Designer with Seton Hall University’s Teaching, Learning and Technology Center where she is responsible for supporting faculty in the design, integration and assessment of technology resources for courses and programs on campus, as well as hybrid and online. Mary was a designer and facilitator with me on the "Academia and the MOOC" course this past spring. She also manages the Freshman Studies ePortfolio program and is leading the campus Early Alert Retention Initiative.

Dr. Sandra. L. Miller provides leadership and vision for the departments of Academic Technology, Media Services, and Broadcast, Production and Support for Cable, Satellite, and Videoconferencing. Miller was the PI for NJVID, an IMLS National Leadership Grant in 2007-2011. Miller’s recent conference presentations have included: Lilly Conference on “Creating a Video Dialogue Using Video Clips” in 2013, EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in 2012 on “Planning for Informal Learning Spaces”, EDUCAUSE National Conference in 2010 on “NJVid: A Collaborative Portal for Statewide Video Access” and “Focus Groups as Formative Assessment” at CCUMC in 2008. Miller (2013) currently has a chapter on “Creating a Video Dialogue” in the Plugged-In Professor, Eds., Ferris, S. and Wilder, P., has published with Felson, J. “Student response systems: Are they for large classes only?” in the College and University Media Review 2009, “Faculty Focus Groups” in the College and University Media Review 2007-2008, “Video as process and product” in EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 2005 and numerous other technology articles. Miller was awarded the Innovation Technology Award by NJLA-CUS in 2011 and along with NJEDge, the 2012 WOW award from WCET. Miller has served as an NGLC Grant Reviewer, EDUCAUSE Review article reviewer, and is President-Elect for CCUMC. Miller received her doctorate in Educational Technology from Pepperdine University.

Mung Chiang is the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. His research on networking received the Alan T. Waterman Award (2013) and the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2012). A Technology Review TR35 Award recipient (2007) and founder of the Princeton EDGE Lab, his technologies have resulted in several commercial adoptions. His education activities received the Frederick Emmons Terman Award (2013) from ASEE. He started the “3 Nights and Done” learning platform, and his MOOC reached 90,000 students in 2012-2013. The corresponding textbooks, “Networked Life: 20 Questions and Answers,” which received the PROSE Award in Engineering and Technology (2012) from AAP, and “Networks Illustrated: 8 Principles without Calculus”, adapted to individual readers via a mobile app. He chairs Princeton University’s Committee on Classroom Design, the founding steering committee of the IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, and co-chaired the U.S. NITRD Workshop on Complex Engineered Networks.

Dr. Bela Florenthal graduated from the Smeal College of Business Administration, Pennsylvania State University with a Ph.D. in Marketing. Her professional areas of interest include social media, e-learning, e-tailing/retailing, and culture-based behavior. Her teaching experience is in Marketing Management, Consumer Behavior, Introduction to Marketing, and Marketing Research.

Loretta C. Mc Laughlin Vignier is an Assistant Professor of Media Production and Broadcast Journalism at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey specializing in television production. She has served as the chairperson of the Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC) Committee since 2011. In 2012, she moderated a campus-wide forum on E-books. In spring 2013, Loretta co-presented at an iPad teaching circle. She is currently doing research on the use of cell phones to alleviate test-taking anxiety.

Christopher Brinton is a third year PhD Candidate at Princeton University in the Department of Electrical Engineering. His primary research focus is on developing machine learning and social networking techniques to enhance the efficacy of massively scalable digital and online education. He is a MOOC co-instructor, reaching out to over 90,000 students from 2012-2013, and co-author of the textbook Networks Illustrated: 8 Principles Without Calculus, which became a best-seller on Amazon, and also adapted to individual readers in a mobile app format. Chris received his Master’s Degree in EE from Princeton University in May 2013, and his BSEE from The College of New Jersey (valedictorian and summa cum laude) in May 2011.