![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/thecourse1.png?resize=470%2C213&ssl=1\" "\\"thecourse\\"")
<\/p>\nExcept when it’s a class.<\/p>\n
At my college, and in many colleges and universities, a worthwhile distinction is made between a “course” and a “class”.<\/p>\n
A “course” is created with a title, rough outline of topics, and various legal requirements. It’s an offering of the institution.<\/p>\n
An individual instance of a course is called a “class” or “class section”. It’s offered by a specific instructor in a department.<\/p>\n
A “course” is what articulates (transfers) to other colleges. It’s what’s in the catalog. A “class” is in the schedule of classes each semester, taught by different instructors. Within a class, the instructor makes the syllabus and determines which instructional methods will be used in order to fulfill the goals of the course. A course is just the framework on which the instructor builds the class.<\/p>\n
In online venues, these terms have gotten confused. People talk about offering open online courses, when they mean classes.<\/p>\n
Except that they don’t, necessarily.<\/p>\n
Classes differ each time they’re offered. The MOOC called CCK08 is a different class from CCK11. But the model has shifted now to MOOCs offered by for-profit (or for-profit-to-be) institutions, and the shift is away from the class model.<\/p>\n
So there is a reason Coursera is not called Classera. A number of the MOOCs invoke their massiveness by acting as large course<\/em> frameworks, standardized, depersonalized, and marketed. An open online class<\/em>, by contrast, features the elements that an instructor would include in any class, including presentation and interaction. Presentation can be created by the instructor, the students, or through materials and artifacts that are made available. Interaction is between the students and the material, the students and other students, and the students and the instructor. Even with a constructivist pedagogy, these elements are designed into any class – only the balance differs. But the last two elements of interaction (student-student and student-instructor) are being left out in large offerings. This problem is not unique to online classes. Large on-site classes may have little interaction among students or between students and the instructor. Interaction may exist when Teaching Assistants provide it, which is the norm at most universities, so the TA may take the place of the instructor and also facilitate interaction among students. But if they didn’t, the class wouldn’t feature student-student or student-instructor interaction. It would just be a course, a framework without a heart.<\/p>\n This is why correspondence courses were called “courses” – a student participated in a course of study, got feedback from an instructor independently, and didn’t interact with other students. Online, these might best be called “tutorials” – you interact with the material yourself, take auto-graded tests, and get a grade. You have taken a course. A class implies colleagues.<\/p>\n If the prof-free, automated, massive model isn’t really a class, one shouldn’t expect class elements from it, nor the satisfaction one might get from talking a class. Many students report that what they like most about classes is not the subject, but the instructor’s approach and their working relationships with their colleagues. This affective evaluation cannot be applied to courses, only to classes.<\/p>\n I realize the distinction is not black and white, but there is a conceptual difference that should be explored by both those offering courses\/classes and those taking them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Except when it’s a class. At my college, and in many colleges and universities, a worthwhile distinction is made between a “course” and a “class”. A “course” is created with a title, rough outline of topics, and various legal requirements. It’s an offering of the institution. An individual instance of a course is called a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moocs","category-musings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/theclass.png?resize=492%2C174&ssl=1\" "\\"theclass\\"")
<\/p>\n