Discussion MOOC Certificates & Credentials

[Carolyn]

Taking a MOOC signals to employers that you’re a proactive learner.

Find out how http://www.ezanga.com/articles/how-moocs-can-help-you-move-up-the-ladder

 

[Duke]

Did you know that you can advertise your MOOC certificates on your LinkedIn Profile?
Recruiters use LinkedIn as their primary tool to vet and headhunt potential candidates.
Adding your verified certificate to your page is a great way to share new skills with your professional contacts and potential employers.
This is how you do it:

1. Log into your LinkedIn profile, and go to edit profile
2. On the right hand side, beneath “You can also add…” press “Certifications”
3. Enter the Certification Name – this is the name of the course
4. Enter the Certification Authority (the MOOC platform you used: Coursera, edX etc) and the URL at the bottom of your certificate as the “Certification URL”
5. Leave ‘license number’ blank and press save Have any troubles or questions?

 

[Susan]

Has anyone on here actually done this?

 

[MDH]

This is a very encouraging article: "Employers see strong potential in MOOCs - new research" by DONALD CLARK
"Excellent study on ‘The Employer Potential of MOOCs’ with 103 employers surveyed, followed up with deep-dive interviews of 20, on the use of MOOCs for:
1. Recruitment
2. Hiring
3. Personal development"

To read the full article, follow the link: http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/employers-see-strong-potential-in-moocs.html

MOOCs are clearly gaining ground in the professional market. They are still relatively unknown by employers, but those who have heard of them, think of them in a very positive light.

 

[Sky]

MOOCs are clearly gaining ground in the professional market. They are still relatively unknown by employers, but those who have heard of them, think of them in a very positive light.

MOOCs in academia will gradually die out unless they sort out the problems with accreditation. The corporate market is where the money is, so it is almost inevitable that MOOC developers and providers will increasingly focus on this.

 

[Susan]

"Employers see strong potential in MOOCs - new research" by DONALD CLARK

Donald Clark writes: "Another big plus for employers was that they could be seen as an ‘employer of choice’ attracting and retaining the best candidates by offering an approach that is contemporary and fits the expectations of younger employees."

It's not just the employers who are starting to see MOOCs as a good recruitment credential. Job seekers are now looking for employers who engage with MOOCs.

 

[BMint]

MOOCs are clearly gaining ground in the professional market.

This is true, but it is clear from the article that MOOC awareness is still pretty low in the professional market and that it is limited to certain sectors. It'll be some time yet before MOOCs are widely recognised.

 

[Elizabeth]

Hello!

Those of us at Accredible are really excited to announce the release of our Accredible Certificate plugin for the Open EdX platform. (This was announced on 11/19/14 at the Open EdX conference!)

Accredible is working to make online learning visible and credible - we have built a next-generation digital certificate designed to replace PDF and paper certificates. We believe that traditional certificates do not match the level of innovation that online learning platforms provide, so we created a certificate standard fit for the information age (here’s an interactive demo). More details are available in our Integration Guide.

We're happy to answer any questions or to accept feedback at support@accredible.com

 

[Carolyn]

This looks like a great initiative and something that is much needed in online accreditation.

 

[Carolyn]

In a recent interview conducted by Knowledge@Wharton, Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller states:

"The majority of employers said they would value a credential from a MOOC during the hiring process. I think we’re starting to see significant uptake on the employer side." (Source: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/moocs-making-progress-hype-died/)

This statement is based on a study conducted by Duke University in collaboration with the research institute RTI International, which looked into employers' views on MOOCs. This study looked at employers across multiple sectors in North Carolina.

Is this YOUR experience?

 

[Simon Morice]

We take very little notice of badges, and 'official' credentials as we've been caught too many times by people who appear to be qualified but who actually turn out to be unfit for work. Craft oriented higher education has not improved on the concept of apprenticeships, so we'll always ask who folk have worked under in the past.

The so called Creative Industries suffer a skill shortage so individual testing is vital to see if potential employees actually bring any useful skills and capabilities with them. MOOCs are a great source for good learners. However, there is very little checking of what went in to the learners' brains compared with what came out; our approach is to question them closely to see if they can synthesise. If they are good learners then they have a value to us - otherwise they are just a cost.

 

[Carolyn]

Adding your edX verified certificate to your LinkedIn page is a great way to share new skills with your professional contacts and potential employers.

This is how to do it:

1. Log into your LinkedIn profile, and go to edit profile
2. On the right hand side, beneath “You can also add…” press “Certifications”
3. Enter the Certification Name – this is the name of the course
4. Enter ‘edX’ as the Certification Authority and the URL at the bottom of your certificate as the “Certification URL”
5. Leave ‘license number’ blank and press save

Have any troubles or questions?

Send a note over to technical@edx.org.

 

[BMint]

Out of these 2 platforms, is there one that is better than the other? What's the difference between the 2 if you take one of their courses?

 

[Nedzad]

Really it's just subjective nature. You may like one or the other. It's up to you. Coursera is still the best, because it's pioneer on the filed of MOOC.
You can have your certificate on both platforms. For me so far it's best Open2Study, Coursera, Udacity.

 

[Claude Almansi]

Really it's just subjective nature. You may like one or the other. It's up to you. Coursera is still the best, because it's pioneer on the filed of MOOC.
You can have your certificate on both platforms. For me so far it's best Open2Study, Coursera, Udacity.

Coursera is not a pioneer in the field of MOOC, because it does not offer MOOCs, i.e. Massive Open Online Courses. Coursera's courses are tightly locked. That's the reason why they banned via IP people in countries submitted to US trade sanctions last year, while EdX did not have to do that: see Phill Hill's Coursera and Udacity, but not edX, blocked in Syria and Iran, Jan. 27, 2014.

 

[Nedzad]

Coursera is not a pioneer in the field of MOOC, because it does not offer MOOCs, i.e. Massive Open Online Courses. Coursera's courses are tightly locked. That's the reason why they banned via IP people in countries submitted to US trade sanctions last year, while EdX did not have to do that: see Phill Hill's Coursera and Udacity, but not edX, blocked in Syria and Iran, Jan. 27, 2014.

Coursera is one of the first MOOC platform, back in 12'. You must understand that Coursers is American based company, so it must obey American laws about international trade. EdX is doing the same just in other manner. It's all about law legislation.

The main problem out there is that global expansion of MOOC is going to be problem. They're all competing to provide us with free content and that is great.

But really, I'm now seeing that, massive hyper production of content is making content less interesting, and some of educators aren't comfortable in front of camera.

Also look at Alison :S, they're just providing s*** content, just for money.

 

[Claude Almansi]

Coursera is one of the first MOOC platform, back in 12'.

Coursera's is not a MOOC platform because the courses on it are not open. It is a traditional learning management system, as those that have been around since the last millennium, but strongly locked, with a few gadgets thrown in, like the quizzes added on the videos. but that's not overly innovative either: Mojiti already offered the possibility to add comments on videos back in 2006 (see Adam Pash's Annotate online with Mojiti, 11/08/06). So

Harvard's 2003 Development and the Internet open course, which used their free H2O platform, was much closer to what was to be jokingly called MOOC by Dave Cormier in 2008 (see his The CCK08 MOOC – Connectivism course, 1/4 way). With 255 participants, it was not quite massive by today's figures, but with internet connections as they were back in 2003, that was a goodly number, and it was a really exciting experience.

You must understand that Coursers is American based company, so it must obey American laws about international trade. EdX is doing the same just in other manner. It's all about law legislation.

The reason why Coursera is submitted to US trade sanctions while EdX and MIT's OpenCoureWare are not is that Coursera is for-profit, while EdX and MIT's OCW are non-profit.

The main problem out there is that global expansion of MOOC is going to be problem. They're all competing to provide us with free content and that is great.

Coursera's content is for free (i.e. you don't have to pay money for it), but it is not free in the sense of freely usable: read Coursera's terms of use.

But really, I'm now seeing that, massive hyper production of content is making content less interesting, and some of educators aren't comfortable in front of camera.

You're probably right, but this is not my experience so far. The Coursera courses I've signed up for were all extremely interesting and well presented. I just can't understand why the universities are using Coursera for them. Oh, the hope for a buzz factor, I suppose, as with Second Life 10 years ago

Also look at Alison :S, they're just providing s*** content, just for money.

I haven't tried an Alison course yet.

 

[Nedzad]

Coursera's is not a MOOC platform because the courses on it are not open. It is a traditional learning management system, as those that have been around since the last millennium, but strongly locked, with a few gadgets thrown in, like the quizzes added on the videos. but that's not overly innovative either: Mojiti already offered the possibility to add comments on videos back in 2006 (see Adam Pash's Annotate online with Mojiti, 11/08/06). So

Harvard's 2003 Development and the Internet open course, which used their free H2O platform, was much closer to what was to be jokingly called MOOC by Dave Cormier in 2008 (see his The CCK08 MOOC – Connectivism course, 1/4 way). With 255 participants, it was not quite massive by today's figures, but with internet connections as they were back in 2003, that was a goodly number, and it was a really exciting experience.

Coursera is MOOC, you can't say that it isn't because it's unavailable in few country's.

MOOC expanded massively back in 2012, for world wide masses. After 2012, they have started to popularize this way of informal education.

The reason why Coursera is submitted to US trade sanctions while EdX and MIT's OpenCoureWare are not is that Coursera is for-profit, while EdX and MIT's OCW are non-profit.

Really in the start every provider is user friendly, and it's free. But while time is passing by, they must get some money back. edX, Udacity are providing paid certificates. It's just the business model

Coursera's content is for free (i.e. you don't have to pay money for it), but it is not free in the sense of freely usable: read Coursera's terms of use.

As I said, there isn't anything for free nowadays. It's all ok for them to stop distributing their knowledge, it's intellectual property.

I haven't tried an Alison course yet.

It's just waste of time

 

[wilko dijkhuis]

According to Wikipedia MOOC means massive open online course. . . . The term MOOC was coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier.

Neither Edx nor Coursera is Open in the sense Dave Cormier meant it (open is "knowledge" constructed in open and free discussion between equal participants -see Habermas: Hershaftfreie Dialog - ), so when you want to get fussy about what Open really means, the correct answer is that neither Edx or Coursera did implement Cormiers idea of what a mOoc should be. Both got the concept completely wrong, they turned the concept on its head. Coursera and Edx are not implementing MOOCs, they are implementing anti-MOOCs (for more see my: what is an anti-MOOC)

 

[Claude Almansi]

(...)Neither Edx nor Coursera is Open in the sense Dave Cormier meant it (open is "knowledge" constructed in open and free discussion between equal participants -see Habermas: Hershaftfreie Dialog - ), so when you want to get fussy about what Open really means, the correct answer is that neither Edx or Coursera did implement Cormiers idea of what a mOoc should be. Both got the concept completely wrong, they turned the concept on its head. Coursera and are not implementing MOOCs, they are implementing anti-MOOCs (for more see my: what is an anti-MOOC)

Oh granted: but Coursera is more locked, hence more anti-MOOC than EdX. And also their totally static implementation of self-paced courses, which saves them money because they don't have to re-caption the videos, is not only anti-MOOC, it's anti-learning.