“We recently sat down with lead instructors, Dr Juan Klopper (department of surgery) and Dr Henri Laurie (department of mathematics and applied maths), of the Julia Scientific Programming MOOC on the Coursera platform. This 4 week course offers an introduction to the up and and coming programming language.”

“Julia is a language for the future”, words by Dr Juan Klopper, lead educator in the Julia Scientific Programming MOOC. Julia is a modern dynamic programming language designed to address the requirements of high-performance numerical and scientific computing. It is the latest installment in UCT’s suite of online courses and although the topic may seem quite niche, both educators on the MOOC, Dr Klopper and Dr Henri Laurie say their main motivation behind doing this course is to educate those without a scientific background in computing.

“Julia is a language for the future”

“If you want a language to reach everybody you need to teach it from the ground up, it needs to go way beyond [being used by] developers,” explained an impassioned Dr Klopper. “In my mind Julia solves a lot of scientific and computing problems but is being used mainly by people with a background in scientific computing.” It is characterized as a language that is fast, easy to use and easy to learn, making it accessible and suitable to learn as a first programming language.

Dr Laurie plans on teaching Julia to his first year undergraduate students at the University of Cape Town. My hope is “that people do the course and become enthusiastic about Julia as a programming language”. “I have high and low expectations. Low, that UCT students will be able to use the programme and use it well enough for the demands of the undergraduate assignments” and “at the high end of the expectation; that people do the course and become enthusiastic about Julia as a programming language.”

A successful outcome of the MOOC for Dr Klopper would be if one person were to say they understood Julia because of this course.

For Dr Laurie it has been an interesting experience making his first MOOC; creating the online course has been fun and enjoyable, he said. When looking at MOOCs and online courses in general he has been intrigued by how rapidly “self-education” has taken off, although he still believes that a university education with face-to-face education is important.

On the other hand Dr Klopper promotes the future of MOOCs in higher education, although “not as a replacement of it, that was a silly dream,” he said, making reference to the initial overblown hype in the popular press of MOOCs bringing about the end to campus teaching. “There are a lot of courses that lend themselves to this form of education. People are getting the opportunity to educate themselves.” “I believe, not that MOOCs are a disruption of education but the democratisation of it.” Technology today allows for the physical constraint of a university’s capacity to be “null and void”.

Elaborating on why the MOOC format was suitable for the Julia course he explained that as Julia is a new language there are not many open educational resources (OERs) available on it. Although it may be new, Julia has been ranked as one of  the top 50 computer programming languages”.

Other than enjoying the process of making the MOOC Dr Klopper explained how he too learned new things, “it’s a whole other world compared to my day job and I didn’t mind taking after hours to get it done. I especially liked that I had to learn new things during the making of it and that I learnt from the people at CILT (Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching). What did I know about proper teaching, what did I know about assessment, that pushed me a lot. Learning those things from those experts, that was my personal gain”. He added that it may be helpful for academics at the university to engage more with educational experts to design better teaching programmes.

To learn more or to sign up for the course please visit https://www.coursera.org/learn/julia-programming

The Climate Change Mitigation in Developing Countries course was developed by the University of Cape Town (UCT), and is being run on the US MOOC platform Coursera. One year on, this post looks at how the course has been received by participants and what their feedback has been about the central premise of the course, which is how to mitigate climate change while promoting development. The participant comments in this post have been drawn from the public ratings and comments left by learners.

Overall, the course has been well received and rated highly by participants with one remarking that this was a “Super-awesome course that taught me about the super-wicked problem of our time and how to effectively achieve climate change mitigation and development objectives from developing countries context.”

How can we mitigate climate change, while promoting development? These issues are both part of a complex system, and reconciling the two is what’s known as a “super wicked” problem. These are not easy to solve and there is generally is no one “correct” answer. Meeting conflicting demands of development and mitigation requires that stakeholders and decision-makers go through a process of co-producing knowledge about the system. In South Africa the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) initiative was developed to do just this.

As the course explains MAPS processes and uses its case studies from developing countries such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru as examples, with one participant finding that the course “explains the issue of how developing countries are facing climate change and on that aspect it presents the information not only the way they deal with it but the obstacles they encounter in the process. It also introduced very interesting concepts that could be used outside of this course.”

Along the way, participants learn about the importance of procuring a government mandate for the work, gathering credible data, how to select which scenarios to explore, what models are available, and their advantages and disadvantages. According to the case studies there is usually a gap between what the mitigation models indicate is achievable, and what is likely to be required to avoid severe climate change consequences. The course discusses possible solutions to closing this mitigation gap and the MAPS team share some ideas. Near the end the concept of “bridges” – between knowledge and domestic policy, and from domestic policy to international contributions and agreements is discussed. Through this holistic approach to the topic participants are exposed to a multifaceted view of climate change, with one commenting that the course was “outstanding, in terms of interest, inspiration [and] technical content‘ adding that it helped in “stimulating new ideas” and “learning from other course participants”.

Climate Change Mitigation consists of a series of online video lectures, peer-reviewed assignments and graded quizzes, and interactive discussion forums. Lead educator on the course is climate change expert Professor Harald Winkler, head of the UCT Energy Research Centre, and a long-time member of the South African delegation at the United Nations climate change negotiations. This course explores the challenges faced by developing country governments wanting to grow their economies in a climate friendly way, and addresses the complexity inherent in lifting societies out of poverty while also mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. It achieves this without being too technical making it “An excellent course to understand the mitigation process”, according to a recent participant.

The course is suited to climate change practitioners, development workers, students, lecturers and teachers, or simply those who are curious about how climate mitigation is understood.

As Professor Winkler explains: “This course is for those who want to tackle the tough challenges of development and climate change … I really hope that this course will inspire you to take action and to make a difference in your context. It’s only by everyone acting together that we can hope to solve the development and climate challenge.”

See the course overview on the  sign-up page

In this post Aamirah Sonday talks to Aimee Dollman, Lead Mentor of the What is a Mind? MOOC on supporting learners in massive open online spaces. Enrollment information for What is a Mind? can be found here https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/what-is-a-mind 

The lead educator is always the face of the MOOC but behind the scenes there are a myriad of individuals working tirelessly to ensure participants get the most out of the course, not least of these are the mentors.

Mentors are the helpful souls who guide and facilitate discussions on MOOC platforms, they also answer technical questions or flag any problems  that may be encountered. In the case of Aimee Dollman, lead mentor on our MOOC What is a Mind?, being a mentor can sometimes be difficult given the number of participants (sometimes up to a couple of thousand) but it is rewarding when learners grasp a concept that they had been struggling with.

She believes that MOOCs are unique in that “you can learn about any topic you want in your own time. You can participate as much as you want or as little as you want but you can actually learn something whether it be for credit or not.” “You are in charge of what you do which I think is pretty brilliant.”

As this MOOC presents material from the relatively new field of neuropsychoanalysis, it is sometimes difficult for participants to grasp the complex terms and this is why having a mentor is very important to What is a Mind?. Furthermore, Aimee and fellow mentors understand that participants come from different time zones and therefore make an effort to be online at different times “to accommodate for people from across the world.”

As a mentor, “it has been really interesting to see the huge variety of people from around the world. There is this common thread whether you live in a remote location in Asia or a major city in Britain – people have the same or similar questions, suffer from the same problems and are wanting to learn more. It’s really nice to see so many learners taking the course. Old and young, sometimes with no background in psychology. It is also great to read about people’s different perspectives and realise that at the same time there’s this collectiveness between people whether a professional or not.”

Aimee believes that participants of What is a Mind? are given the tools to critically think and engage with the material. “It also allows  them to see an interdisciplinary perspective. Our question and answer sessions allow participants to ask questions about the topic of the week – even something somewhat off topic – it makes learners really think and also facilitates further discussion.”

For example one question was “what is the difference between thinking and feeling? It is not something we think of everyday but once you delve deeper into these concepts it is really interesting. We also look at what makes us; the brain and the mind together”.

Having mentored four iterations of the course Aimee has realised that “you can’t please everyone.” However, participants find it helpful when provided with extra reading materials and the team have developed “a more dedicated reading list” although this is not without its challenges. “Another difficulty we run into is open access. The MOOC itself is open access but we’ve struggled to find other open access material. So for example, journal articles or books that Professor Solms may suggest are not freely available all the time. That’s what irritates people at times because they want more but we can’t give them access.”

That’s why MOOCs are great, they are “really about bringing open access knowledge to people”.

In Aimee’s experience the best tip she could give anyone participating in a MOOC is, “Don’t worry if you can’t work through the material and keep up with other actively participating learners because we understand that everyone has different schedules – a lot of people apologise for not getting to things or their poor English or poor grammar, many also don’t want to share ideas because they aren’t professionals. Don’t worry about that. If you want to discuss something go for it. It does not matter if you are not a professional. It is important to get everyone’s perspective.”

Commenting on working with Professor Solms Aimee says, “It has been great to work with him as his level of knowledge and enthusiasm for this field, as well as willingness to share this knowledge, is inspiring. And even though he has a rather busy schedule, he makes time to address the weekly questions no matter where he is, and enjoys answering them.”