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PROFESSOR: Many of you
have heard of MOOCs.

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They're very famous,
Massively Open Online Courses.

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MOOCs are very open and large
classes, often with thousands

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or tens of thousands
of participants.

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And MOOCs are essentially
a big movement

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to really democratize education.

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SPOCs are a little different.

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So 16.842 was run as a SPOC,
which stands for Small Private

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Online Course.

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So like a MOOC, a SPOC
is also offered online.

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You can take it in person
in a classroom at one

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of the hosting
universities or you

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can take it entirely online.

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It's really up to you.

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It's small because we have
a few dozen students instead

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of thousands, and it's
private because in order

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to take the class
it's by invitation.

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In this particular instance,
we had two universities that

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co-sponsored this class.

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One is MIT and the
other one is called

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EPFL, Ecole Polytechnique
Federale de Lausanne

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in Switzerland, which is also
quite active in the world

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of online education.

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The way fundamentally
that a SPOC works,

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is that you have the
course management

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system at each of the hosting
universities and institutions.

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And you essentially post the
same materials, the lectures,

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the readings, the
exercises, you post them

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in parallel at each of
the hosting universities.

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The lecturers
themselves, however,

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are run online using an
open collaboration platform,

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like WebEx for example.

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You can do it with
Google Hangouts.

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There's a lot of
different platforms.

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And this is important
because it is

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important to have live
connections between the faculty

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and the students,
but also the students

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amongst themselves can discuss.

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The trickiest part of
running a SPOC, of course,

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is the time zones and
the time differences.

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In this case, the
two universities

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were six time zones apart.

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And so it was offered in the
morning here at MIT and then

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the afternoon in Europe.

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If you're running this
as a global class,

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it will be more
challenging to find a time

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slot that works for everybody.

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The feedback from the students
has been very positive,

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because you can think of a
SPOC in this particular class

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as a blended form of education.

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Part of the class is live.

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The lectures are given live,
and every lecture is recorded.

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So even if you miss a
lecture as a student,

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you can watch it later.

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And so there's a record of it.

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The assignments
are asynchronous,

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and there are some assignments
that are individual.

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And there are team
assignments as well.

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And so it's a blended
form of education,

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which is an important
trend in education where

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we take the best of
the online experience,

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and we try to combine
it with the best

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of the in-person experience.

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Teaching a SPOC is fun and
challenging at the same time.

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It's fun because you get
to converse and interact

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with students, not just in
a physical classroom at one

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university but across
multiple institutions.

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And that enhances the class,
because students will speak up

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with experiences from
different cultural backgrounds.

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But it's also
challenging, because you

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have to keep track of what's
happening at multiple places.

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And you have a mix of students
from different backgrounds

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and different institutional
constraints as well.

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And so it's both
challenging and fun,

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but it's a very
focused experience.

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And the feedback from the
students has been great.