Zoe Mackay, Chris Dowhan | IBL News
Sheryl Barnes, Director of Digital Learning and Residential Education at MIT, shared with IBL News MIT’s extensive use of the edX platform following her talk at the Open edX conference.
MIT has a local version of the Open edX platform in addition to many MOOCs currently running on edX. Her task is “finding a positive synergy between the work that goes into developing the MOOCs and teaching on campus.” The content that is created for the MOOCs is easily repurposed for blended MIT classroom experiences, where instructors can utilize their video lectures and “repurpose the classroom time to do higher order thinking application, value added-type activities.”
99% of undergraduate MIT students have taken a class that utilizes the Open edX platform. The two major perks, as identified by Barnes, are the ability for instructors to create video lectures that are “the version they would like to give every time,” and using the self-graded problem types that allow instant feedback to students.
Barnes says that she is “excited about the teaching and learning folks in the community coming together.” While the Open edX conference has been steered toward the developer community in the past, the broadening to include these other sections of the online learning community has been beneficial for Barnes and her counterparts in education.
Watch Sheryl Barnes full interview with IBL News in the video below.
