MOOC become very popular. For last year we talked about Coursera, Udacity and edX. But new MOOC provider continue to appear. It is the trend.
On the web appear many blog or forum posts like "Udacity vs Coursera", "Udacity vs edX" etc.
I want to find some standard way to compare MOOC vendors. It would be good to have the list of factors and evaluate a MOOC provider with them.
I researched posts Coursera vs Udacity, Udacity and Coursera Comparison, Coursera vs Udacity, Khan vs Udacity vs Coursera and other.
I selected following factors to compare MOOC providers.
Content.
Interactive videos. Videos mixed with quizzes, following explanation of a quiz in a video.
Video lectures. Video recorded lectures of "traditional style"
Text readings. Lectures or books to read.
Different multimedia. PPT presentations, image galleries etc.
Deadlines. Course lectures and other materials are accessible in limited period of time.
Subjects.
Covered variety of subjects. A vendor offers courses on different subjects or only one subject (for example, computer science)
Interaction. How instructors interact with students and check their progress.
Quizzes.
Home work.
Course project.
Community and student collaboration.
Discussion forums.
Local groups support. MOOC vendor allows to find other students in local area to learn a course together
Group projects.
Instructors monitor community.
Instructors. Who are courses instructors.
Famous professors from top universities.
Famous people in their professions.
Universities and Colleges.
Partnership with Universities and Colleges.
College credits. Some courses can be used to get credit in college
Cost.
Course Cost. Many courses are free. But there are also paid with cost starting from $5.
Certification cost. MOOC students would like to get a certificate of course completion . Some MOOC vendors do final exam and issue a certificate. And sometimes the exam is paid (while a course is free).
Update 1.
I got some comments from community about more factors to add.
Certification.
Course completion certificates.
Certification after course.
Partnership with independed certification companies.
Company.
Commercial or Non Profit company.
Funding sources.
Organization type (organizations/enterprises/corporations).
I think this is not full list of factors. Post your comments if you want to add something to the list.
Friday 14 December 2012
Wednesday 7 November 2012
Free alternative to college education
For last year we are seeing an increase of hight quolity MOOC (massive open online courses).
Coursera, Udacity, edX and so on. More and more people have interest in this.
I tried to do small research on subject "if it is possible to use free online courses as alternative to expencive traditional college education".
I aimed to find some real program of study from traditional college. The first i found with google was Georgia Gwinnett College. I know nothing about this college. I only see that it looks the like "traditional US college".
I choose the program Bachelor of Science in Information Technology - Software Development. I did this choice because computer science courses are most popular now (i think because of most easy to learn online and most current online students are tech persons).
In the table below i listed courses from this program and, as alternatives, free online courses .
I was not able to find only alternative to "Professional Practice & Ethics" college course. There are many information on this. But no some free online course.
Therefore, for college program "Bachelor of Science in Information Technology - Software Development" there is free alternative.
So why students still pay so big many for traditional colleges programs?
Coursera, Udacity, edX and so on. More and more people have interest in this.
I tried to do small research on subject "if it is possible to use free online courses as alternative to expencive traditional college education".
I aimed to find some real program of study from traditional college. The first i found with google was Georgia Gwinnett College. I know nothing about this college. I only see that it looks the like "traditional US college".
I choose the program Bachelor of Science in Information Technology - Software Development. I did this choice because computer science courses are most popular now (i think because of most easy to learn online and most current online students are tech persons).
In the table below i listed courses from this program and, as alternatives, free online courses .
I was not able to find only alternative to "Professional Practice & Ethics" college course. There are many information on this. But no some free online course.
Therefore, for college program "Bachelor of Science in Information Technology - Software Development" there is free alternative.
So why students still pay so big many for traditional colleges programs?
Wednesday 27 June 2012
Skills and competencies tree for e-Learning
I think there is a problem in e-learning. There is no standard of skills and competencies recognition and comparing.
I did small research on this problem.
Skills vs Competencies.
I wanted to be sure that i understand "skill" and "competence" terms correctly. This publication helped me to understand the difference.
What is the problem.
Now we have thousands of online courses. Some of them teach the same or similar things. BUt it is difficult to compare 2 courses from different vendors.
For example, one course is named "PHP development" and other is named "PHP development". But PHP development competency has many different levels. Someone can be good in core PHP developement. Someone other can be good in Zend framework developement. And there are different levels of mastery in technology.
How to understand if the online course is good to me? What background skills do i need to start the course?
Of course, every online course has description. But what if i search in database of 1000 courses? I need some standardized criteria.
Possible solution.
It would be good if every online course has some standard tags associated with it. Like: "Core PHP developement level3", background required "Core PHP developement level2". Or "Zend Framework level2", background required "Zend Framework level1" and "Core PHP developement level2".
In this case if i have the database of courses and skills tags associated with it i can easy find what courses are good for me with my existent background.
I think the solution of this problem is developing of some Skills Tree standard document .
I tried to learn if there is such existent document.
Existent standards.
I googled some phrases like "skills tree", "competencies tree", "skills list standard" etc.
I didn't find one widely used standard of skills naming and descriptioning.
The best i found is DISCO http://www.skills-translator.net/?locale=en_GB.
But this is not standard. This can be good base of some international standard.
Scientific research.
I see many scientific articles on this subject about such problem exists and needs to be solved. But no one agreed standard. There are many projects and plans to solve this problem.
Many articles can be found in Google Academy
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=competencies+and+skills+&btnG=&hl=uk&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1
Government standards.
Also i see some standards developed by different govenrments. Especially many references to Australia competencies recognision documents. I think this is because of Australia immigration program that needs recognition of education level.
Video Game industry.
Video game industry has own concept of skills tree. Skills tries are used in strategies to "develop" heroes. Skills networks are good example of how skills and competensies tree should look like.
What i would like to have.
Ideally, i would like to have some document (probably, XML) released on some open licence like GNU and maintained by some independed organization. This document would contain full list of all existent skills and relations between them (parent-child dependencies). This document would need to be updated all the time, because new skills appear.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<skills>
<skill id="programming_php_core_l2">
<author>Roman Doubush</author>
<title>PHP Core Programming Level2</title>
<required>programming_php_core_l1</required>
<required>programming_algorithms</required>
<required>programming_php_basics</required>
<section>IT</section>
<category>Programming</category>
<publish_date>2000-10-01</publish_date>
<description>PHP Core Programming Level2</description>
</skill>
<skills>
Interesting links:
http://www.economist.com/node/12231124
http://www.cs.ny.gov/successionplanning/workgroups/competencies/competencylist.html
I did small research on this problem.
Skills vs Competencies.
I wanted to be sure that i understand "skill" and "competence" terms correctly. This publication helped me to understand the difference.
What is the problem.
Now we have thousands of online courses. Some of them teach the same or similar things. BUt it is difficult to compare 2 courses from different vendors.
For example, one course is named "PHP development" and other is named "PHP development". But PHP development competency has many different levels. Someone can be good in core PHP developement. Someone other can be good in Zend framework developement. And there are different levels of mastery in technology.
How to understand if the online course is good to me? What background skills do i need to start the course?
Of course, every online course has description. But what if i search in database of 1000 courses? I need some standardized criteria.
Possible solution.
It would be good if every online course has some standard tags associated with it. Like: "Core PHP developement level3", background required "Core PHP developement level2". Or "Zend Framework level2", background required "Zend Framework level1" and "Core PHP developement level2".
In this case if i have the database of courses and skills tags associated with it i can easy find what courses are good for me with my existent background.
I think the solution of this problem is developing of some Skills Tree standard document .
I tried to learn if there is such existent document.
Existent standards.
I googled some phrases like "skills tree", "competencies tree", "skills list standard" etc.
I didn't find one widely used standard of skills naming and descriptioning.
The best i found is DISCO http://www.skills-translator.net/?locale=en_GB.
But this is not standard. This can be good base of some international standard.
Scientific research.
I see many scientific articles on this subject about such problem exists and needs to be solved. But no one agreed standard. There are many projects and plans to solve this problem.
Many articles can be found in Google Academy
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=competencies+and+skills+&btnG=&hl=uk&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1
Government standards.
Also i see some standards developed by different govenrments. Especially many references to Australia competencies recognision documents. I think this is because of Australia immigration program that needs recognition of education level.
Video Game industry.
Video game industry has own concept of skills tree. Skills tries are used in strategies to "develop" heroes. Skills networks are good example of how skills and competensies tree should look like.
What i would like to have.
Ideally, i would like to have some document (probably, XML) released on some open licence like GNU and maintained by some independed organization. This document would contain full list of all existent skills and relations between them (parent-child dependencies). This document would need to be updated all the time, because new skills appear.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<skills>
<skill id="programming_php_core_l2">
<author>Roman Doubush</author>
<title>PHP Core Programming Level2</title>
<required>programming_php_core_l1</required>
<required>programming_algorithms</required>
<required>programming_php_basics</required>
<section>IT</section>
<category>Programming</category>
<publish_date>2000-10-01</publish_date>
<description>PHP Core Programming Level2</description>
</skill>
<skills>
Interesting links:
http://www.economist.com/node/12231124
http://www.cs.ny.gov/successionplanning/workgroups/competencies/competencylist.html
Monday 11 June 2012
Installing eFront LMS
I continue my experiments with installing and testing different Open Source LSM.
Today i tried to install eFront LMS (http://www.efrontlearning.net/).
I installed it on my hosting account. And installation was not success.
I get the error
Fatal error: Class 'ZipArchive' not found in /home/...../public_html/efront/libraries/filesystem.class.php on line 745
Looks like this LMS has special requirements for non standard PHP modules.
I can not affect on PHP configuration on my hosting account server. So i can not install eFront there.
Of course, i can install eFront on my local test machine, because there i can install ZipArchive extension for PHP.
Today i tried to install eFront LMS (http://www.efrontlearning.net/).
I installed it on my hosting account. And installation was not success.
I get the error
Fatal error: Class 'ZipArchive' not found in /home/...../public_html/efront/libraries/filesystem.class.php on line 745
Looks like this LMS has special requirements for non standard PHP modules.
I can not affect on PHP configuration on my hosting account server. So i can not install eFront there.
Of course, i can install eFront on my local test machine, because there i can install ZipArchive extension for PHP.
Thursday 7 June 2012
Printable certificate of course completion
I worked on the Moodle plugin CertificatesWall to add feature to make printable certificate of course completion.
To make the printable certificate it was needed to convert the image to PDF.
As the plugin is written with PHP it was needed to get PHP library that allows to generate PDF from an image.
And i have found very good library FPDF
The code is simple.
$imgfile='...'; //source image file
$destfile='...'; //final destination file
require(SITE_DIR.'include/fpdf/fpdf.php');
$pdf = new FPDF('L','mm','A4'); //set output format size
$pdf->SetTitle($title); //set title of the page
$pdf->SetTopMargin(0); //disable white spaces
$pdf->SetLeftMargin(0);
$pdf->AddPage();
$dpi=getImageOptimalDPIForWidth($imgfile,297,210); //this is my function to get optimal dpi
//to get image fill all page
$pdf->Image($imgfile,0,0,-$dpi); //add image to the page
$pdf->Output($destfile,'F'); //output PDF file
To make the printable certificate it was needed to convert the image to PDF.
As the plugin is written with PHP it was needed to get PHP library that allows to generate PDF from an image.
And i have found very good library FPDF
The code is simple.
$imgfile='...'; //source image file
$destfile='...'; //final destination file
require(SITE_DIR.'include/fpdf/fpdf.php');
$pdf = new FPDF('L','mm','A4'); //set output format size
$pdf->SetTitle($title); //set title of the page
$pdf->SetTopMargin(0); //disable white spaces
$pdf->SetLeftMargin(0);
$pdf->AddPage();
$dpi=getImageOptimalDPIForWidth($imgfile,297,210); //this is my function to get optimal dpi
//to get image fill all page
$pdf->Image($imgfile,0,0,-$dpi); //add image to the page
$pdf->Output($destfile,'F'); //output PDF file
Monday 4 June 2012
Installing Moodle 2.2
I continue my experiments with Open Source LMS
Today i installed Moodle 2.2
The installation was easy . I get the only problem
Today i installed Moodle 2.2
The installation was easy . I get the only problem
| unicode | must be installed and enabled |
It is required that you store all your data in Unicode format (UTF-8).
New installations must be performed into databases that have their
default character set as Unicode. If you are upgrading, you should
perform the UTF-8 migration process (see the Admin page).
To solve this problem i had to change encoding of the database.
My database name is moodle_2.2.
I have executed SQL command
ALTER DATABASE `moodle_2.2` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci
And now Moodle installation can be completed
.Sunday 3 June 2012
Installing ILIAS 4.2.4
I have decided to test different open source LMS (learning management systems).
The first i tried is ILIAS .
I downloaded the file 'ilias-4.2.4.tar.gz' , uncompressed it and uploaded to my web server (folowing installation instructions).
When i opened with the browser http://myhost.com/setup/setup.php i get following errors:
Warning: file(/lang/setup_lang_sel_multi.lang) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 107
Warning: file(/lang/setup_en.lang) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 123
Warning: parse_ini_file(/setup/ilias.master.ini.php) [function.parse-ini-file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilSetup.php on line 149
Warning: parse_ini_file(/setup/client.master.ini.php) [function.parse-ini-file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilClient.php on line 56
Warning: dir(/lang) [function.dir]: failed to open dir: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 191
Warning: chdir() [function.chdir]: No such file or directory (errno 2) in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 193
Fatal error: Call to a member function read() on a non-object in /home/skills...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 196
After a quick look with google about the problem i didn't find a solution. I have decided to solve the problem myself.
And it was easy. I have changed the file setup/setup.php
After :
I have inserted new line:
And now installation works fine!
The first i tried is ILIAS .
I downloaded the file 'ilias-4.2.4.tar.gz' , uncompressed it and uploaded to my web server (folowing installation instructions).
When i opened with the browser http://myhost.com/setup/setup.php i get following errors:
Warning: file(/lang/setup_lang_sel_multi.lang) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 107
Warning: file(/lang/setup_en.lang) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 123
Warning: parse_ini_file(/setup/ilias.master.ini.php) [function.parse-ini-file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilSetup.php on line 149
Warning: parse_ini_file(/setup/client.master.ini.php) [function.parse-ini-file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilClient.php on line 56
Warning: dir(/lang) [function.dir]: failed to open dir: No such file or directory in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 191
Warning: chdir() [function.chdir]: No such file or directory (errno 2) in ...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 193
Fatal error: Call to a member function read() on a non-object in /home/skills...ilias/setup/classes/class.ilLanguage.php on line 196
After a quick look with google about the problem i didn't find a solution. I have decided to solve the problem myself.
And it was easy. I have changed the file setup/setup.php
After :
if (is_dir("./pear"))
{
ini_set("include_path", "./pear:".ini_get("include_path"));
}
{
ini_set("include_path", "./pear:".ini_get("include_path"));
}
I have inserted new line:
if(!defined("ILIAS_ABSOLUTE_PATH")) define ('ILIAS_ABSOLUTE_PATH',dirname(__FILE__).'/../');
And now installation works fine!
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