The mission of St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, California, is to “educate the hearts and minds of young people for lives of learning, leadership, and service.” This spring, select St. Margaret’s faculty have an opportunity to demonstrate all three qualities for their students as they team up with massive open online course (MOOC) provider edX. Their new online courses will provide students around the world of all ages and backgrounds access to world-class education.
The Initial Proposal
St. Margaret’s Academic Dean, Dr. Jeneen Graham, was kind enough to talk to ISM about the new program and how it all started.
The Head of School relayed a message to Dr. Graham that edX wanted to extend their offerings from the current college-level selection to high school courses. St. Margaret’s had been extended an invitation—a challenge—to develop MOOC proposals for submission and consideration.
Dr. Graham laughed as she relayed her and her colleagues’ initial efforts to craft their proposals. “We modeled them after our brick-and-mortar courses, since those were what we knew best. After two days, I called edX to ask if they had any examples or samples we could look at,” she said. “They told us there were none—that we were the first, so there was nothing they could give us.” (Talk about walking in uncharted territory!)
In the end, three courses were selected to become future edX MOOCs: “Introduction to Psychology,” taught by Dr. Graham with Jeremy Dailey; “Advanced Spanish Language and Culture,” taught by Marta Austin; and “The Road to Selective College Admissions,” taught by Roland Allen and Amy Warren. It was no small feat to get these three courses accepted.
Dr. Graham said that these proposals were accepted over 150 submitted by other educators—and that St. Margaret’s was only one of two high schools participating in the initiative.
Data Insights
Once accepted, edX invited Dr. Graham and the other instructors to their offices in Massachusetts to learn about teaching an MOOC—which, as it turns out, requires a different mindset altogether than leading an in-person class. The teachers were presented with 300-plus pages of insights and information gleaned from the analytics from thousands of previous students taking other edX MOOCs.
Take something as basic as how long a lecture should last. “In my current AP class,” Dr. Graham said, referencing the St. Margaret’s course on which her edX MOOC is based, “I’d lecture for 15 or 20 minutes before assigning the students to independent or group work. [The edX] data says that student [attention doesn’t] persist pass four to seven minutes.”
In response, Dr. Graham has distilled the essence of her lectures into shorter videos rather than just recording a normal classroom lecture. The insights even changed how she approaches her regular courses. “It’s forcing me to think of what’s critical,” she said, adding that she now approaches all of her classes from the perspective of “What do they [the students] really need to hear?”
Leadership and Service
St. Margaret’s MOOCs don’t start until this spring. Already, Dr. Graham’s “Introduction to Psychology” course has over 2,000 students signed up. But more than the satisfaction of hosting a popular course, Dr. Graham says she’s grateful for the opportunity to model St. Margaret’s mission for her students by teaching this MOOC—particularly its components of leadership and service:
“This MOOC gives us a chance to serve other students who don’t have access [to this type of course] in their small schools and towns. We can model service [by showing] students that this is what we do—if there’s an opportunity, we fill it.
“For a lot of adults, it can be scary to try something new. As an adult educator and learner, I’m going to fall, but pick myself up and try again. As private-independent school teachers, we have the agility, the flexibility to be leaders in this [new educational technology] for others.
“According to Rob Evans, this change—any change—is basically like a death. What I’ve been doing all this time won’t work anymore. There’s a grieving process.”
But that grieving process won’t let Dr. Graham or any of her fellow teachers stop leading others into this next generation of instructional innovation. Follow their example, and don’t let fear of the unknown stop your school from trying new things to better teach your students.
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Additional ISM resources:
Research: Can Online Learning Communities Achieve the Goals of Traditional Professional Learning Communities? What the Literature Says
Research: Benchmarking Support Models for Online Learning
Monthly Update for Division Heads Vol. 11 No. 4 Don't Be Afraid to Jump on the Bandwagon
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 35 No. 3 The 21st Century School: Curriculum and Technology
I&P Vol. 39 No. 12 The Rhetoric of Rigor
