<IMG src="C:\Users\rpaladin\Desktop\Autoblogger\todotecno\data\tecnologia\tecno

o\4365558047_567880b864_b-1.jpg"> <P>Facebook is on a mission to prove that soci

al media-empowered education can help some of the poorest nations on Earth. It r
ecently announced a big industry and Ivy League alliance to bring experimental e
ducational software to Rwanda, providing Internet access and world-class instruc
tional resources to their countrys eager students.</P><P>However, Massive Open On
line Courses (MOOCs) arent yet proven to work at scale even in the most well-reso
urced nations, let alone in a country with uneven access to technology and argua
bly limited educational opportunities.</P><P>We took a look at what experts and
evidence had to say about the prospects of Facebooks education project. The most
realistic outcome for such an unpredictable endeavor is that Facebook will unear
th naturally talented students whose contributions never could have been realize
d without the opportunity. But educating the masses will be an uphill climb.</P>
<P><STRONG>Diamond Catchers And Super-Charged Classes</STRONG></P><P>MOOCs burst
onto the educational scene in the last five years; they quickly ramped up from
a small buffet of passive streaming video lectures from top universities to beco
ming a central part of actual classes at the largest education systems in the U.
S. MOOCs come in two broad categories: blended and purely online.</P><P>In the b
lended models, students watch video lectures from renowned professors at home, w
hich gives teachers the ability to free up class time for hands-on learning and
direct student engagement (the so-called flipped classroom model).</P><P>The pure
online versions can amass hundreds of thousands of students who complete all ass
ignments at their own pace, aided by their peers and voluntary TAs that monitor
message boards for questions.</P><P>Neither Facebook nor its partner, the Harvar
d-MIT MOOC consortiumedX, have decided how their project will exactly play out in
Rwanda.</P><P>At the very minimum, there will be a robust mobile experience with
social tools available that could be used for either online or blended models, s
aid edXresearcherRebecca Petersen.</P><P>The blended model hada lot more success in
American schools. San Jose State University, part of the massive California Sta
te University system, began partnerships with MOOC providers by piloting both ed
Xs blended model and a series of purely online courses.</P><P>However, SJSUs purel
y online pilot, conducted by for-profit MOOC provider Udacity, saw mixed results
. The Udacity version allowed non-matriculated users, meaning that students with
out as much educational experience pulled down its overall success rate.</P><P>I
t is no surprise then thatMOOCs have been criticized for working mostly for highl
y educated populations (by some estimates, 80 percent of users at another popula
r MOOC provider, Coursera, already have a degree).</P><P>Thus, MOOCs have shown
the most promise for highly motivated, naturally talented students; theyre what M
IT researcher Andrew McAfee described as diamond catchers, at a talk on inequality
put on by technology political lobby, FWD.us.</P><P>Udacity likes to boast abou
t self-taught users who have jumped careers, thanks to their own initiative and
genius. One user, Neil, was a former big-box retail shelf-stacker. A month ago, I g
ot my first computer/web programming job without a bachelors degree, he wrote to U
dacity. I took Udacitys Intro to Computer Science course early last year. Ive alway
s been interested in programming, but never found a course that taught you by do
ing, and never found that next step.</P><P>There are certainly splendid examples
of breakout students coming from the region. The self-taught 16-year-old Kelvin
Doe from Sierra Leone dazzledMIT researchers with his design for a urine-powered
generator.</P><P>However, outside of those who already have access to good class
rooms, it is unclear whether Facebooks MOOC will deliver on its hopes for mass le
arning.</P><P><STRONG>Developing Problems Complicate The Equation</STRONG></P><P
>It looks like the initiative has taken into consideration a lot of important iss
ues in developing countries with respect to participation in MOOCs, wrote Univers
ity of Readings Tharindu Liyanagunawardena and Shirley Willis to me in an email. F
ree data access, affordable smart phones, are the first step in solving Rwandas on
line education problems.</P><P>However, there are important cultural hurdles.</P
><P>They may or may not be used to the style of learning, the pair explained to me
, noting that in one early developing-world course African learners had difficult
ies with peer assessment activities in MOOCs. Peer assessment and collaboration a
re essential to helping MOOCs scale; its the only way hundreds of thousands of st
udents can get their assignments graded and get answers to questions without emp
loying thousands of more teachers.</P><P>Facebooks product places a heavy emphasi
s on the mobile and social connectivity aspect of learning, but its unknown wheth
er it will actually work.</P><P>On the brighter side, the self-motivation conund
rum that haunts American students doesnt seem to be as much of an issue for those
in developing nations. The researchers note that French-language MOOCs saw a ve
ry impressive 95 percent completion rate for users in Africa (average completion
rates for MOOCs are around 7 percent). Its early days for MOOCs in Africa, and t
hese particular courses may have attracted an unusually eager population, but th
e same could be said for U.S. students taking engineering classes in their free
time so its a promising sign.</P><P>As another proof-point, before the rise of MO
OCs, TED-prize winner Sugata Mitra found that when he placed a stand-alone compu
ter in a developing area, groups of children could teach themselves science at a
rate of learning that was comparable to their publicly educated peers (watch Mi
tras inspiring TED talk below).</P><P>At this point, the Facebook/edX experiment
is a big unknown and, in fairness to the team, they seem to be taking their time
to listen.</P><P>We are working with our partners to submit courses for our cons
ideration now. We want to make sure the courses are relevant to the needs of the
Rwandan community, edXs Petersen said. Ten percent of edXs learners are from Afric
a already, so theyre not going into it completely blind.</P><P>At the very least,
SocialEDU will bring vital tools to the countrys latent geniuses and that porten
ds a very promising future.</P><P>[Image Credit: Flickr user Johan Larsson]</P>
<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/05/can-facebooks-massive-courses-impro
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