Dr. Charles R. Severance
Keynote Address: "Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) - Past, Present, and Future"
This presentation explored what it was like when MOOCs were first emerging in 2012 and talked about what we have learned from the experience so far.
Today, MOOC providers are increasingly focusing on becoming profitable and this trend is changing both the nature of MOOCS and university relationships with MOOC platform providers. Also, we looked at how a university can scale the development of MOOCs and use knowledge gained in MOOCs to improve on-campus teaching. We also looked forward at how the MOOC market may change and how MOOC approaches and technologies may ultimately impact campus courses and programs.
About Dr. Severance
Charles is a Clinical Professor and teaches in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He is also a long-time advocate of open source educational technology and open educational resources to empower teachers. He teaches a number of popular Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) including Python for Everybody—the most popular online programming course in the world on the Coursera and edX platforms.
He is the Chair of the Sakai Project Management Committee (PMC). Previously he was the Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation and the Chief Architect of the Sakai Project and worked with the IMS Global Learning Consortium promoting and developing standards like Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) for teaching and learning technology.
Charles was the editor of the Computing Conversations column in IEEE Computer magazine from 2011-2017 that features a monthly article and video interview of a computing pioneer. Charles is the author of several books including: Python for Everybody, Sakai: Building an Open Source Community", "Using Google App Engine", from O'Reilly and Associates and the O'Reilly book titled, "High Performance Computing". Charles has a background in standards including serving as the vice-chair for the IEEE Posix P1003 standards effort and edited the Standards Column in IEEE Computer Magazine from 1995-1999.
Charles is active in media, he produces a podcast on privacy at LearnerPrivacy.org and has co-hosted several television shows including "Nothin but Net" produced by MediaOne and a nationally televised program about the Internet called "Internet:TCI". Charles appeared for over 10 years as an expert on Internet and Technology as a co-host of a live call-in radio program on the local Public Radio affiliate (www.wkar.org).
Chuck's hobbies include auto racing, off-road motorcycle riding, karaoke and playing hockey.
Charles has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Michigan State University.