[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSMk8LCKeL4?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
(HKU04x ran between May 19 and June 23, 2015)
I’ve recently finished teaching my first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on news literacy for the public on edX, the non-profit education portal founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The six-week course, titled Making Sense of News, attracted thousands of students from 147 countries. It comprised 63 short lecture video clips (mostly between 2 to 4 minutes), exercises, readings, five graded assignments (two of which were peer-reviewed) and discussion forums (964 comment entries were made by the final week).
The massive collection of students’ behavioral data aggregated at the end of the course made me realize the potential of online-based media education research.
The following blog post sketches out some of the many possibilities this emerging form of teaching and learning can be used.
The big data gathered through MOOCs, in my view, would shed light on certain elements that could have not been examined through the conventional research methods.