Open Online Classes

This post contains a list of online (mainly through audio or video) classes that readers of this blog may be interested in. The list certainly isn’t exhaustive, so suggestions are welcome.

Coursera
Those who follow these courses as they progress online will have the chance to participate in class quizzes, exams and a Q&A forum with teaching staff. Available courses commencing this month include:

- Scott E. Page (University of Michigan) - Model Thinking
- Matthew O. Jackson and Yoav Shoham (both Stanford) - Game Theory
- Daphne Koller (Stanford) - Probabilistic Graphical Models

MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT were one of the early movers in terms of putting content online, with content available for a wide range of subjects. The economics department has lecture notes, assignments and exams at last partially available for almost every module, however there is no multimedia content as of yet. The mathematics department does have multimedia content for some modules.

Open Michigan
Most of the content here is in pdf and PowerPoint format. Courses of interest in the School of Information may include game theory and information economics. The School of Public Policy also has a small number of courses available.

UC Berkeley
Berkeley’s school of economics has a wide range of course available, mostly through iTunes U but with some on YouTube. There are also resources in psychology and statistics.

Carnegie Mellon University has two basic statistics classes with materials including instructions for following the course with Excel, Minitab, R or a TI calculator.

John Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health provides access to content for some courses.

There is also much more content available from iTunes U.

Updates:

Yale has a small number of economics and psychology courses online. Harvard Justice classes apply political philosophy to current issues such as bank bailouts and inequality. The Charlie Rose Brain Series interviews scientists and researchers to examine different subjects of the brain. (h/t to Graeme Walsh for those)

Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning

4.6 million students in the United States (1 out of every 4) took a college-level online course at the start of the 2008/9 academic year. That figure rose to 5.6 million students in 2009/10, according to the eighth annual Sloan Survey of Online Learning, a report which uses data from more than 2,500 colleges and universities in the United States.

The importance of face-to-face lectures for students’ academic achievement has been demonstrated in previous economics studies such as Schmidt (1983); Romer (1993); Durden and Ellis (1995); Dolton, Marcenaro and Navarro (2003); Martins and Walker (2006) and Cohn and Johnson (2006). Therefore, it should be a priority to establish how online lectures compare; as many students are already learning online to some extent (as indicated by the Sloan Survey). A recent NBER paper by Figlio, Rush and Lin (2010) investigates the issue; details below.

Is it Live or is it Internet? Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning
David Figlio (figlio@northwestern.edu), Mark Rush and Lu Yin
No 16089, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper presents the first experimental evidence on the effects of live versus internet media of instruction. Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting, where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. Counter to the conclusions drawn by a recent U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis of non-experimental analyses of internet instruction in higher education, we find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students. We also provide suggestions for future experimentation in other settings.

JEL-codes: I20 I23
Date: 2010-06

Student Demand for Streaming Lecture Video: Empirical Evidence from Undergraduate Economics Classes

This is the title of a recent paper by Nicholas Flores and Scott J. Savage in the International Review of Economics Education. The abstract is below. For context, one should note that 4.6 million students in the United States (1 out of every 4) took a college-level online course at the start of the 2008/9 academic year. That figure has risen to 5.6 million students in 2009/10, according to the (recent) eighth annual Sloan Survey of Online Learning, a report which uses data from more than 2,500 colleges and universities in the United States.

The importance of face-to-face lectures for students’ academic achievement has been demonstrated in previous economics studies such as Schmidt (1983); Romer (1993); Durden and Ellis (1995); Dolton, Marcenaro and Navarro (2003); Martins and Walker (2006) and Cohn and Johnson (2006). It should be an immediate priority to establish how online lectures compare; as some amount of online learning may be inevitable in the future. Finally, another possibility is that the availability of online materials may discourage attendance. According to the results of a MIT survey, the penalty to not going to a lecture is reduced by the presence of online learning materials (Clay and Breslow, 2006).

Abstract from Flores and Savage Paper: Real-time lectures recorded on video and streamed over the Internet are a useful supplement to non-classroom learning. However, because recording confines the instructor to the podium, the classroom experience is diminished when there is less social interaction. This study uses choice experiment data to estimate economics students’ willingness to pay for streaming lecture video and instructor movement away from the podium. Results show a divide between students who like the flexibility of catching up on missed classes with video and students who do not. For this former group, video enhances the learning experience and students are willing to pay an additional $90 per course for video. An important source of streaming lecture video’s value to students is its impact on performance. Knowledge equation estimates show a positive correlation between students’ use of video and their cumulative final grade.

Screencasts with Bamboo Pens

Stephen Kinsella in UL has started providing screencasts for his students made using a bamboo pen or something similar. This is a really nice approach though the screen looks a little tricky to scroll through. Stephen has been talking to me a bit about the Khan Academy model, which really does look excellent. One of our commentors recommends the echo360 system which does look extremely good for lecture capture and distribution. I am veering toward Camtasia for Mac as a "satisficing" solution for this year.