In massive open online courses (MOOCs), low barriers to registration attract large numbers of students with diverse interests and backgrounds, and student use of course content is asynchronous and unconstrained. The authors argue that MOOC data are not only plentiful and different in kind but require reconceptualization-new educational variables or different interpretations of existing variables. The authors illustrate this by demonstrating the inadequacy or insufficiency of conventional interpretations of four variables for quantitative analysis and reporting: enrollment, participation, curriculum, and achievement. Drawing from 230 million clicks from 154,763 registrants for a prototypical MOOC offering in 2012, the authors present new approaches to describing and understanding user behavior in this emerging educational context.

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The introductory freshmen electromagnetism course at MIT has been taught since 2000 using a studio physics format entitled TEAL-Technology Enabled Active Learning. TEAL has created a collaborative, hands-on environment where students carry out desktop experiments, submit web-based assignments, and have access to a host of visualizations and simulations. These learning tools help them visualize unseen electromagnetic concepts and develop stronger intuition about related phenomena. A previous study has shown that students who took the course in the TEAL format (the experimental group) gained significantly better conceptual understanding than those who took it in the traditional lecture-recitation format (the control group). The present longitudinal study focuses on the extent to which these two research groups (experimental and control) retain conceptual understanding about a year to 18 months after finishing the course. It also examines students attitudes about whether the teaching format (TEAL or traditional) contributes to their learning in advanced courses. Our research has indicated that the long-term effect of the TEAL course on studentsÕ retention of concepts was significantly stronger than that of the traditional course. This research is significant because it documents the long-term cognitive and affective impact of the TEAL studio physics format on learning outcomes of MIT students.KEY WORDS: conceptual understanding; electromagnetism; longitudinal study; retention; undergraduate physics education; visualization INTRODUCTIONStudies of how much conceptual understanding college students retain from their science courses are quite rare. Related studies include Barufaldi and Spiegel (1994), and Martenson et al. (1985). As Halpern and Hakel (2003) have discussed, educators need to provide students with education that lasts a lifetime. Thus, instructors need to adopt teaching and learning strategies for long-term retention in order for their students to remember what they have learned beyond the end of the semester.Beginning in 2000, the introductory freshmen electromagnetism course (E&M) at MIT has been taught using a new approach-Technology-Enabled Active Learning (TEAL). This study was reported by Dori and Belcher (2005a, b). The objective of the TEAL Project was to reform a mandatory largeenrollment physics class in order to increase studentsÕ conceptual understanding of electromagnetism and decrease failure rates in the course. The problems with passive learning in large classes were identified and researched over a decade ago (Hake, 1998;McDermott, 1991;Redish et al., 1997;Sokoloff and Thornton, 1997 stronger intuition about, and create more robust conceptual models of electromagnetic phenomena.In the previous study (Dori and Belcher, 2005a, b) we used pre-and post-tests which were administered to students taking the class in the TEAL format and to those taking the class in the traditional lecturerecitation format. We showed that students who took the course in the TEAL format gained significantly bett...

IntroductionI attended a conference several years ago on online learning and sat at a table with a faculty member who taught at what is called in the US a school for 'vocational training' (or VET in Europe and the UK). He was a welding instructor, taking young people who often had never held a welding iron and turning them into skilled craftsmen who were capable of entering the trade. I was impressed with his knowledge of pedagogy -although it was instinctual, he told me -as he described how he modelled techniques for students, used online simulations, provided opportunities for practice, and had a feeling for the kind of feedback each student needed. He told me that he and his fellow instructors applied a 'rubric' of sorts for grading, i.e. they had standards they used to assess whether or not the student had mastered both the fundamental and more complex skills of the craft. Because a mistake could be injurious, if not deadly, to the students and the people who drove over the bridges or worked in the buildings they built, instructors carefully developed students' expertise, scaffolding their learning and ensuring that they moved to the next more difficult skill only after simpler ones had been thoroughly mastered.While the welding instructor teaches a 19th-or 20th-century skill 1 , I teach professional communication, a purportedly '21st-century skill'. I write 'purportedly' because it could easily be argued that Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and St. Augustine advocated for the study of communication (Bertelsen & Goodboy, 2009) and rhetoric was one of the three pillars of the trivium. Still, included on the many lists that have attempted to define 'transferable skills', 'key competences', 'next generation learning,' or whatever umbrella term is used, communication inevitability appears often at the top. 2 Yet, with all that has been written about the subject in Europe, the US, the UK, and elsewhere, surprisingly little has been done to deeply examine how these skills can be learned in a university setting. This may stem, in part, from the conviction, deeply held in some quarters of the academy that, while occupations like welding can be taught, a competency like communicate cannot. Some people are born good communicators and some are not, it is argued, and for the unfortunate ones who do not have innate talent, nothing much can be done to improve their lot (a similar belief is held about teaching, by the way). But 30 years in the classroom teaching professional communication, as well as a deep reading of the research into learning and instruction, tell me that this is not the case. This is what I found so remarkable about the educational philosophy and pedagogical approach of the welding instructor: how he teaches strongly parallels my experience in fostering a more abstract, but still definable skill. What makes the two pedagogical approaches similar can be unpacked and viewed closely to reveal best practices about how we can help students to gain the 'skills' we would like them to master-

The chapter provides an introduction to the current challenges facing many research-intensive universities throughout the world. It is argued that issues related to teaching and learning are becoming more important as a way to improve competitiveness and institutional profiling in a more globalized higher education sector. However, fostering change in research-intensive universities is often dependent on careful design addressing the normative, practical and organizational factors that may prevent institutional transformation. In the conclusion, it is underlined that initiatives that aim at cultural transformation may be a fruitful way forward for institutions trying to enhance their teaching and learning in a more systematic way.