An In-Depth Interview on Harvard's MOOC Initiative, HarvardX, with Vice Provost Peter Bol

Ren Youqun interviewed Vice Provost Peter Bol in Open Education Research, October 2014.

Abstract: Harvard University launched HarvardX in 2012 and started actively participating in the creation of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course). Since then, many world-renowned universities have also joined the MOOC movement and opened up their online courses to the world, trying to enhance their own brands and influence by sharing some of their best courses. The quantity and quality of MOOCs have been greatly improved in the past two years and a wide spectrum of innovations has been implemented in the MOOC world, among which HarvardX is a very active participant. There are many questions from academia and the general public about MOOCs: What is the status quo of MOOCs? What is the future trend? What experiments and researches have been conducted? What can we learn from those findings? During the Harvard China Education Symposium conference, one author of this paper has conducted an in-depth interview with Professor Peter K. Bolof Harvard University to attempt to answer some of these questions. Bol is the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the founding director of the Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis. He holds degrees from the University of Leiden and Princeton University. On behalf of Harvard University, he has closely collaborated with China, in Chinese Historical GIS, Chinese Biographical Database, etc. Bol is also one of the lead professors of ChinaX, a MOOC about China's history on edX (https: / / www. edX. org / course / harvard-university / sw12x / china / 920).

In this interview, we first tried to understand the shift of Harvard University爷s move in joining edX, followed by the rationale of Harvard University爷s decision in creating a Vice Provost position for Advances in Learning and why Bol accepted this position which is not directly related to his field of study. Further, he introduced the status quo of HarvardX, including the operation, cost and future development plan, etc. , as well as the innovative experiments of Flipped Classroom in Harvard爷s residential courses and SPOC (Small Private Online Course). Lastly, he used ChinaX as a case to elaborate the multiple approaches to conduct experiments and researches with MOOCs, including Flipped Classroom, Structure Topic Modeling analysis, etc. Based on these analyses, Bol further shared his thoughts on MOOCs: the subsequent iterations of MOOC courses should allocate the funds reasonably and revise the course structure to iteratively improve the course quality; compared to MOOC, SPOC has a much higher completion rate and can provide a more effective teaching and learning experience, more similar to the residential course; more modules should be provided for students to choose from; relevant modules should be integrated into a course to enhance students learning experience.