MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have become incredibly popular in just the past 12 months.  Many MOOCs have had more that 100K students register for their courses.  Is this the future of online education?  Or is it yet-another passing fancy in the educational technology parade?  In the past 12 months, Google has run three MOOCs with more than 280K registrants. Dan Russell, of Google, will talk about what MOOCs are, how they're actually run, the social community of learners that are essential for making MOOCs succeed, and what seems to work (and not work) in MOOCs. Along the way, he will also discuss how people actually learn how to search... and do sensemaking as a task. He will also show evidence that behaviors learned in the MOOC persist after the end of class.

Lunch will be served at 11:45 a.m. in 337 West Hall. The presentation will start at 12:10 p.m. in 340 West Hall (no food is allowed in 340 W. Hall).

Dan Russell will be giving an additional talk on October 4 from 10-11 a.m. on "Mindtools: What does it mean to be literate in the age of Google?" This talk will be held in the Koessler Room, Michigan League.

The Student Learning and Analytics at Michigan (SLAM) Seminar series features both U-M faculty and visitors from other campuses, focusing on the use of data about students, courses and academic programs -- for the purposes of improving teaching and learning. For more information about learning analytics at U-M and to view videos and slides from past SLAM presentations, click here.