Dive Summary:
- Senior lecturer Matt McGarrity’s free online class on public speaking, offered through the University of Washington and Coursera, has him already thinking about what he'd do differently next time and how the MOOC will change his traditional classroom course.
- McGarrity worried that peer evaluation might turn nasty or that students would consider the free class a waste of time, but in fact neither happened.
- With so many lectures recorded, McGarrity can now "flip" his classroom and make better use of in-class practice and review.
From the article:
... But as far as he knows, everyone remained civil, and students tried to be helpful and constructive. “No one was mean,” he said. “Out of thousands of people around the globe, no one was mean. That’s a major global breakthrough right there.” He doesn’t know why people were on such good behavior, but perhaps it’s because everyone was in the same situation: You couldn’t peer-review somebody else’s speech unless you had submitted one of your own. ...
