Course Builder: Google's Experiment with Online Learning

Notes from session at SXSWedu session - Google Lounge

Google's experiments with MOOC started with a "Power Searching with Google" online course.

Three courses have been launched on how to search google.

The technology behind the courses include:

1. You Tube
2. Google Groups
3. Google Hangout
4. Google Moderator
5. Google Analytics
6. Google Docs
7. Google Apps Engine

Power Searching with Google course:

• Traditional online course that consisted of 3-5 minute videos

Advanced Power Searching with Google course:

• A challenged based, self-grading course
• Presented challenge first
• Then students chose and accessed videos and text to try to solve the challenge
• Students created their own assignment
• They created a checklist - rubric - it was a self reflection assignment

What has been learned:

1. Diverse students require differentiation
2. Students want to interact with peers and teachers
3. Hugh amounts of data enable experimentation - there is a large amount of data that can be obtained from the courses

Course Builder:

• It is an open source platform
• It runs on google apps engine
• Software and instructions for creating and building courses

More information can be found here: https://code.google.com/p/course-builder