Oregon State U Offers MOOC for K-12 Educators
Oregon State University (OSU) will
offer its first massive open online course (MOOC) this fall in partnership with
Stanford University and the
Oregon Department of Education.
The course,
Supporting English Language Learners under New Standards, will begin on
October 1 and run for eight weeks. According to the university, it's intended to
help K-12 teachers support English language learners, and it will focus on how
English language learners construct claims supported by evidence, which is a key
practice in both the Common Core State
Standards (CCSS) and
English
Language Proficiency (ELP) Standards.
The course is open to teachers from around the world but may be of particular
interest to those from the 11-state ELPA21
consortium, which is developing an assessment system based on the ELP
Standards. Educators participating in the course will work in teams to gather
and analyze language samples from their students to discover how students
construct claims supported by evidence. The course aims to help participants
design standards-aligned curriculum that they can apply in their own classrooms.
The course will be taught by instructors from OSU and Stanford. Stanford
University was one of the first universities to offer MOOCs. While OSU has
offered online education for some time, this course will be its first venture
into the world of MOOCs. "This will help us learn first-hand about this type of
a teaching platform and identify how and where MOOCs fit in our learning
ecosystem,” said Sabah Randhawa, provost and executive vice president of OSU, in
a prepared statement.
The Supporting English Language Learners under New Standards MOOC will be
offered free of charge and will open for registration later this summer. Further
information about the course is available on
OSU's site.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].