On the international scene, Future Learn started up in the U.K. with many educational partners, and even more recently Iversity began in Berlin with the goal of becoming the Coursera of Europe.
As I’ve been exploring how our Center could become involved in online learning, I decided, “I need to experience it.” I completed a course at Udemy on how to create an online course for their platform, in which anyone with expertise can set up a course for profit as well as for free.
Then I signed up for a Coursera course, not in the more prevalent high tech area, but in literature: “Fantasy and Science Fiction,” from the University of Michigan.
We have assigned reading each week, complete a short essay of about 300 words and evaluate several peer essays. The professor, aside from creating the course and appearing in course videos, does not evaluate our work. Basically, we’re on our own as self-directed learners.
This is challenging for some students, as peer evaluations can be harsh, and there is a low completion rate. This course reportedly has 15,000 students. Those who finish have to be dedicated, because there is a time commitment to do the work.
Our first assignment was “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” which are available from the Gutenberg Project...or your public library. Next up was “Alice in Wonderland,” to be followed by Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and other works.
After submitting our essays, we receive five peer essays to evaluate. This is challenging, as writing ability varies.
Evaluations of my work are generally positive and suggest I pull more symbolism from the story and follow more traditional route of thesis, body, conclusion. On a scale of 1 to 3, my grades have been a 2. One commented that my tone was refreshing and a bit “snarky,” which could mean that I was being irascible--really? Am I irascible?
There’s also a forum, and I was surprised how uptight students were about the evaluations. One student decided to quit because of poor evaluations. My response is that I’m taking the class for fun and experience, enjoy the feedback-- whether positive or negative-- and see this as a fabulous opportunity to learn something new.
Peer reviews can be useful, but as a Religious Scientist, I know that I’m 100 percent responsible for my own experience here and elsewhere.
I did learn something new. When I purchased the Rapunzel costume and doll for my granddaughter last holiday season, I wasn’t aware of the tower as a phallic symbol and that the fairy tales are all about sex. Live and learn!
There’s a tsusami, a huge experiment going on right now in education. It shows that higher education is open at the top, is responding to changing conditions in the world, and presents great opportunities for those willing to jump in.
One reason Silicon Valley is backing these courses is the huge need for software engineers and coders now and in the coming years. Software is an invisible thread through many disciplines, and embedded in almost all devices, many of which talk to each other. So even musicians and artists may need this coding skill to develop apps or tell computers what to do.
It’s like learning a new language, a language that is becoming all pervasive in the global society. Even children can learn coding. Search on the web for “coding for children” and links come up for Code.org or Khan Academy, or one that says “How to Raise the Next Zuckerberg: 6 Coding Apps for Kids."
That’s not to say online education is replacing traditional education. Only time will tell where all this is going.
When Ernest Holmes says, “There is an inner urge in our own minds to grow, to expand, to break down the barriers of previous limitations and to ever widen our experience,” he didn’t know about computers, online learning or any of the 21st century innovations. But as he continues: “This persistent urge (to grow) is a driving influence, an irresistible force, and constitutes the greatest impulse in human experience....It is the urge back of all fulfillment.”
As we create our own experience here on this plane of existence, it’s good to know what opportunities are evolving in the material world, opportunities of which we or our children can take advantage. We know that life externalizes at the level of our thought, and we can use the one Power for Good in the Universe to guide us through the ever-evolving conditions of the 21st Century.
And so it is.
My Mom wrote this!
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