Translator: Stivens Arango Reviewer: Denise RQ
Hello.
Well, hello.
Today, I'm going to talk to you about online education,
and about a phenomena that you may have heard of,
which is becoming a hot topic: MOOC or Massive Open Online Courses.
So, for me, it all started in India.
During an internship four years ago, I was in charge of a small research project.
I had to develop an experiment:
going out into the forest to collect data, and then analyzing it in a laboratory.
Just that I didn't possess the necessary skills.
After having cut down half the forest, I decided to educate myself online.
So, bibliography, course videos, forums, to learn how to put together experiments,
but, really, I just became overloaded with information.
Because information isn't education.
And so, I told myself, there's something missing.
How to learn online effectively.
That's when I came up with the platform that has become an obsession.
I took two years off to put it together,
but the time to find a developer, design the layout, and create the coding
the Americans had put 100 million dollars on the table,
started two startups and a public consortium.
For them, that started back in November of 2011.
Two Stanford professors began offering experimental online courses
with artificial intelligence, 150,000 participants at each course.
They realized something was happening.
So, they each founded a startup.
Coursera grew the quickest,
because instead of producing the courses themselves,
they organized partnerships with prestigious establishments.
In less than six months,
they had 30 universities and 2 million Internet users.
Today, they have 70 universities, almost 4 million users.
One of which, Polytechnique, our dear school.
Lots of universities and establishments, in China, and elsewhere.
So, what's happening?
At first, it was very centered on programming;
I said to myself, it was for geeks.
Within a few months, they opened up entire fields of study.
Humanities, science, math, sociology, history of poetry, nuclear physics.
They called all of this, "MOOCs".
Massive: on average 50,000 participants for classes taught in English,
5,000 taught in French.
Open: anyone can go, it's free.
Whether that be high schoolers, college students,
professionals, the unemployed, or retirees.
Online: everything is online. Not just course videos.
It's also the exercises, tests, interactions and the class:
it's a true class, with an objective pedagogy.
a teacher, and if you pass, a certificate.
So, as you might suspect I dropped the first project,
and in October I decided to start a thesis on the subject
at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, in education.
And, very quickly, I wanted to develop an experimental MOOC.
It needed a professor.
Then, I started to ask around, and I got the response, "The MO what?"
So, I almost set the idea aside, when on Christmas Day
I was in the middle of working on a Wikipedia article on MOOCS,
- no, yes, that's it -
and I began speaking with one of the contributors,
Rémi Bachelet, Professor of Business training at Central Lille.
He had wanted to launch a MOOC for months, but he lacked a team.
Things moved quickly.
After three days, we decided to launch the project,
After two weeks,
we recruited five friends and volunteers on Facebook,
and, on March 18, we launched the 1st MOOC certified in French with a $400 budget.
It was free.
So, 3,600 people signed up.
It's not Coursera, but it's just that, given it's a small, marginal platform.
Essentially, Africa, and France, Madagascar, Haiti,
and other French expatriates from here and there,
in Brazil, the U.S., Russia, India, and Australia.
Essentially, people who had already finished their studies.
Just 15% of students.
A lot of categories, but, also the unemployed and the employed.
So we noticed a particular interest,
but we also noticed a lot problems.
Because people weren't accustomed to taking these kinds of courses.
And, when someone had a problem, even before the course started
instead of looking at the FAQ page, they sent you an email.
Or, when 10 people have a problem, they sent 10 emails.
When 1,000 people have a problem, you have a problem.
So, what we did, was create a forum.
with the intention of telling our participants, to encourage them
when they know the answer to the question to answer to it.
That unloaded a great deal of the work.
Next, there were social networks:
Facebook, Google+, the idea is to network.
And so, on the way with our small courses,
we started with video, PowerPoint, all the classics,
and the face of Rémi inserted on the left.
Four weeks, with videos, and in the end, the good, old multiple choice questions.
But, returning to our main question:
what can we really create with just videos and multiple choice questions?
We, thought no, we needed to do more.
So each week, we asked, Saturday before midnight,
to send homework.
For those who wanted to take the difficult courses.
The toughest courses.
That could be a meeting report, a flow chart, a planning project.
For 10 hours of work per week.
The problem is Sunday morning.
We realized that if we spent a half an hour on each assignment,
we'd still be there for a year and a half.
So, we did what's called "pair evaluations".
A pair evaluation is when you submit an assignment,
you receive four others to grade.
And, you have copies, which go around the world,
which are shared from Paris, and went to Madagascar,
to Libreville, to Australia.
Then, of course, at first, the participants were a little shocked,
"But I'm just a student, and I've got to grade assignments?"
But, actually we put a grading scale on the copies.
They understood, and it wasn't just to unload the work burden for us.
It was also a reinforcement exercise
because when you have to grade an assignment,
you have to take a broader perspective.
And, that's what we wanted.
80% of people who took the toughest courses finished them.
But afterwards, we asked ourselves--
after the course, after 4 weeks,
can you truly learn how to manage a project having completed 4 assignments?
Non, we learn by doing. So, we began group projects.
Group projects means
that participants submit their ideas on the forums,
recruit team members from other participants
and develop a business plan in less than six weeks.
The first dozen projects, on wind turbines and 3D printers,
we had everything, but only 1/3 finished, because it was hundreds of hours of work.
Here, I'm showing you an example of my MOOC language project,
or a MOOC problem solving project.
The MOOCs have procreated.
And, you've got a education on,
"How to find one's bearings in social security."
Undoubtedly, all of those who have done it, have learned.
But, were those the only ones?
I'm going to tell you an anecdote:
At the end of the conference, I had two days--
At the end of the MOOC, I had two days to prepare a speech for a conference,
needing at least two weeks, minimum.
So, I did some preliminary analysis, I put them on Google Doc,
I put some ideas out there,
and I asked interested participants to come and help me.
Right away, I got 30.
They offered some analysis.
They rephrased some-- corrected grammar mistakes,
and since there were some bilinguals, who didn't know what else to do,
they translated my work in to English.
And, why not, doing research is at the center of MOOC.
It's a concept called Massive Open Online Research.
MOUR, or MOOR, according to pronunciation.
(Laughter)
There are some educators who said we were looking to dehumanize teaching,
and to close down universities.
Well, actually, what we want is to open a university.
For dehumanizing, it must be known
that when there are enough participants in a city,
they voluntarily meet up.
Without even conferring with a professor. They even invited me.
Even though things are a bit more reserved in France,
but I'm sure the movement will continue to grow.
Concerning the university, our goal is not to replace the university.
MOOC's vision, i.e. there will be
no more going to the university to passively take a course,
sitting in an amphitheater.
Instead, going to the university will mean to create,
to have an exchange between teachers and students.
The courses will be followed at home, with a number code,
and school attendance will be just for that interaction.
It's called "inverse pedagogy".
So, is this type of idea really going to change things?
Will we actually increase access to education,
and not just simply to information?
In the West, just like in the rest of the world.
Is it really going to widen the scoop of possibilities?
Is it really going to offer opportunities?
and possibly return sense to the word "meritocracy"?
Many say no,
and that the numbers
have failed a thousands times at democratizing education.
We're number 1001.
Thank you.
(Applause)