K2I Member Luncheon - MOOCs: Stories from the Front Lines
Lecture/Lecture Series
Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology
| By: | Scott Rixner
Associate Professor of Computer Science |
| From: | Rice University |
| When: | Friday, December 7, 2012
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
|
| Where: | Duncan Hall
3092 |
| Abstract: | This past summer, Rice joined Coursera, one of the leading massive, open, online course (MOOC) providers, with almost 2 million users. We are the first to teach a MOOC at Coursera, "An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python". The class began on October 15 and at the time we closed registration (around Thanksgiving), there were
80,000 students registered for our course. At the time of this talk, the course will have one week left.
This talk will discuss our experiences in developing and teaching this course, some of the things we learned to do and not to do, and our overall impression of MOOCs. Here's a teaser: it's a lot of work, a lot of fun, and nothing like anything we've ever done before. |
Scott Rixner
Bio: | Scott Rixner is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Rice University. His research focuses on systems software and computer architecture. He is well versed in the internals of the Python programming language, as he is currently developing a light-weight Python interpreter for embedded systems in his research. He has also taught many of the introductory computer science courses at Rice, including Computational Thinking, Algorithmic Thinking, Introduction to Program Design, and Introduction to Computer Systems. He is the chairman of the curriculum committees for both the Department of Computer Science and the School of Engineering at Rice. Prior to joining Rice, he received his Ph.D. from MIT. |