Leveraging AI teaching in the cloud for AI teaching on campus

Abstract

In this column I describe my experience adapting the content and infrastructure from massive, open, online courses (MOOCs) to enhance my courses in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. I begin with my informal, early use of MOOC content and then move to two deliberatively designed strategies for adapting MOOCs to campus (that is, wrappers and small private online classes [SPOCs]). I describe student reactions and touch on selected policy and institutional considerations. In the never-ending search for increasing student bang-for-the-buck, I was motivated to increase the bang, rather than reduce the buck, the latter being well above my pay grade. I close with some vision for teaching on campus with resources from the cloud, notably on how it may strengthen community and collaboration in teaching.