Displaying items by tag: harvard

Through the final weeks of my Harvard MOOC experience, I learned a few things about setting rigorous expectation in a course, the value of competency-based grading (or “badges,” to fit the trending lingo), and how to plan for a final project that is valuable to students. 

This latest installment of my quest to find online best practice from inside Harvard’s CS50x MOOC took a slightly different direction than previous weeks. Now that I’m in the groove of the course, I have been able to reflect less on working with the content and more on working with my peers in the class. And I’ve realized that I’m not a very strong asset to them.

Continuing my elaborate plan to take CS50x, the introductory computer programming MOOC from Harvard, and to share what I’m learning about quality online course design from the student perspective, this week began some real programming, complete with cryptic coding commands, and lots of time spent staring and/or cursing at the computer screen while trying to figure out exactly why the program wasn't working.  (As such, you may notice a more negative batch of comments this time around).  Let’s see what this week had to offer…

Taking a bit of my own advice, I recently started working through a computer programming MOOC from Harvard, with the goal of distilling out teaching tips and online course ideas from a student’s perspective.  While learning some useful job skills, I will share my experience to help designers of MOOCs and traditional online classes think about best practices in their course design.