Coursera

Researcher at U of T Scarborough creates free online course to manage stress during COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 19:47:42 +0000

Researcher at U of T Scarborough creates free online course to manage stress during COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 04/02/2020 - 15:47

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Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology at U of T Scarborough, says the free course teaches skills to cope with anxiety surrounding COVID-19 and allows participants to join an online community at a time when many feel isolated (photo by Ken Jones)

Don Campbell

Topic

Our Community

Coronavirus

Student Experience

Coursera

Mental Health

Psychology

U of T Scarborough

A new online course launched by a psychology professor at the ��Ƶ Scarborough aims to help people manage their mental health during COVID-19.

The course, Mind Control: Managing Your Mental Health During Covid-19, is available free through Coursera.

“I’m constantly being asked for strategies on how to manage mental health given the current circumstances,” says Steve Joordens, who is also the director of the Advanced Learning Technologies lab, where various educational technologies are designed and created.

“This course is designed to help people to learn some skills in order to avoid a lot of the anxiety they’re facing, and how they can find ways to better control it.”

The course is split into three main sections. The first deals with understanding the mechanisms behind anxiety – what it is and some strategies on how to manage it. The second looks at ways of crowding out stressors and sources of anxiety by offering tips and advice on how to mentally distract yourself. The third section focuses on the effects of isolation, with strategies on how to make it more tolerable and advice on how to stay socially connected during physical distancing.

Joordens says important mental health tips covered in the course include limiting the amount of news we consume. While it’s important to stay informed, constantly watching the news can feed anxiety.

He says finding positive ways of filling the day can offer a good mental distraction, whether it’s laughing or singing, exercising, learning or practicing a skill or socially connecting with others through technology. Keeping to a regular schedule through a healthy diet, exercise and sleep are also key to helping us manage our mental health and shouldn’t be ignored, he adds.

In the course, Joordens also goes over something called “guided relaxation,” which are techniques that can help people relax their body so they can better manage anxiety.

“Research has shown that constant stress and anxiety can wear down our immune systems, and the last thing we probably need at the moment is a weakened immune system,” Joordens notes.

There’s also a section at the end of the course on the importance of being aware about depression.

“What’s really dangerous is when anxiety morphs into depression. Throughout the course there are reminders to be aware about feeling a sense of helplessness, and to make sure you are finding ways of having control in your life because control is key,” he says.

Joordens, who is an expert on educational technologies, notes the course has flexible deadlines so anyone can pick it up at their convenience, and it can be completed in about 10 hours.

He says one big takeaway when it comes to managing your mental health during the pandemic is for people to try to achieve a sense of accomplishment. Whether it’s learning a new skill, honing an existing one or by upgrading credentials, he says there are countless online platforms people can use.

“Filling your day with a positive routine or ritual is a really great mental distraction,” he says.

“You also get to join an online community of learners that share a common interest. It can be a kind of replacement for some of the social interactions we're losing at the moment.”

Understanding MOOCs: online learners around the world head to U of T

sgupta — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 10:47:17 +0000

Understanding MOOCs: online learners around the world head to U of T sgupta Mon, 04/07/2014 - 06:47

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(photo by Ken Jones courtesy ��Ƶ Scarborough)

Brendan Glauser

Author legacy

Brendan Glauser

Topic

Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) are becoming increasingly prevalent on campuses across the country and throughout the world.

Issues around online learning are receiving unprecedented media attention, and universities of all sizes are beginning to explore the potential of MOOCs, raising questions around the future of online learning as we know it.

At the ��Ƶ, more than 740,000 users worldwide have registered for a MOOC. When surveyed, about 80 per cent of respondents indicated that they took the course simply for enjoyment, while 30 per cent were seeking credentials for their CV.

Laurie Harrison, U of T’s director of online learning strategies, shares insights into how this major Canadian university is integrating MOOCs into its academic offering.

Let’s begin by defining our subject. What do MOOCs mean to the ��Ƶ?

When we began developing our first MOOCs, in addition to wanting to explore, evaluate and conduct research, we also wanted to open up and contribute to the online education community – sharing offerings from some of our great faculty members as part of our Open UToronto initiative. We never intended that our MOOCs would replace our degree offering, and we have not pursued the monetization of our MOOCs. That said, some materials developed for online learning are repurposed on campus.

We work with two different online learning partners – we began working with Coursera in July 2012 and edX in February 2013. We are one of just a few institutions who have partnered with both platforms. We did this intentionally because we wanted to explore them both and the pedagogies they enable. We have 13 MOOCs in various stages – some in development, some currently being offered and others that have already been offered.

What are the benefits you hope to gain through MOOCs?

For one, MOOCs provide a means of engaging our faculty, creating a community of practice focused on online course design, and the kinds of dialogues we are able to have with faculty and other leaders within the institution around the intersection of learning and technology. This isn’t to say online course design is new, but online learning at this scale is. Secondly, faculty members are often used to working independently, but the scope of these projects tends to involve educational, technical, resource and library staff – which creates an interesting team model. Third, developing the research and analytics component of MOOCs has also allowed us to ramp up our ability to work with big data.

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered so far?

The most important challenge for us is around course design. We have developed a workshop model where we guide instructors through the process of determining their goals, as well as the skills, knowledge and attitudes they want their learners to develop. Then, based on what they identify, they are able to map out activities that will help them achieve their goals. We have found that, often, there is a limited awareness of the variety of activities you might undertake in a MOOC. Often, instructors consider just video quizzes or online multiple-choice tests. But our instructors identified a variety of goals, involving social interaction, engaging students, creating discussions, peer assessments and personalized assignments. As a result, we’ve become very creative with the types of activities we offer.

One major concern around MOOCs is that the quality and legitimacy of university degrees may be jeopardized, if universities begin giving degrees based on MOOC credits. How do you respond to that?

Our goals do not include granting credits or degrees to those who have completed our MOOCs. We want to provide high-quality MOOCs that support learning, and we do that by focusing on the design phase.

Much of the common perception of MOOCs is that people want to take them as an alternative to a degree course to get credit. But, from what we’ve observed, a lot of them just want to learn or connect with others in a particular community. So, not all of our MOOCs are based on existing courses, and you have to look at the goals of your instructors and learners to gauge success.

How do you think the future of MOOCs will look?

MOOCs have put the intersection of technology and learning at centre stage. The attention it garnered through the media put it at the foreground, but lots of institutions were already having meaningful conversations around understanding the role and potential of online learning.

If you consider a typical hype cycle, I think we’re past the peak of the hype cycle now, and maybe even passed through the low point – the criticism. If you look at the phase of integration, what aspects are scalable and useful, and can fit into the needs of institutions, research programs, outreach programs, reaching people who might otherwise not have access to learning – the potential is huge. The media often focuses on the negative, but that’s not the conversation happening with folks working in the world of online learning. We see this as one dimension of long path of exploring and developing strategies for online learning.

We’ll be hosting a MOOC research symposium on April 28, with five presentations from various researchers from within the “MOOCosphere” as we call it. This aligns with our research mandate and various aspects of our mission.

MOOCs are excellent enablers of collaboration. No one stakeholder who can carry a MOOC. You need to think about your goals, and that includes the goals of your instructors, program, institution and learners. And as we know, this isn’t unique to MOOCs. What you learn through MOOCs is certainly transferable.

Read a full report on the first year of MOOC activity at U of T.

To see U of T’s full MOOCs offering, visit Coursera or visit edX.

Brendan Glauser is a writer with CUCCIO Quarterly e-Newsletter where this article originally appeared.

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Google acquires U of T neural networks company

sgupta — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:10:42 +0000

Google acquires U of T neural networks company sgupta Tue, 03/12/2013 - 15:10

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Ilya Sutskever, Alex Krizhevsky and University Professor ��Ƶ of the ��Ƶ's Department of Computer Science (photo by John Guatto)

Sara Franca

Author legacy

Sara Franca

Topic

Breaking Research

Online courses for anyone, anywhere

sgupta — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 08:26:12 +0000

Online courses for anyone, anywhere sgupta Tue, 07/17/2012 - 04:26

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U of T's online offerings through Coursera will include courses on computer programming, neural networks for machine learning and Aboriginal world views in education (photo by Caz Zyvatkauskas)

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U of T joins Coursera

The ��Ƶ is joining Coursera – a platform for offering massive open online courses through partnerships with leading international universities – to launch a new suite of online courses that will be accessible to anyone.

The initiative will enable hundreds of thousands of people world-wide to learn the latest in such areas as neural networks, mental health and Aboriginal education from U of T faculty who are leaders in their fields.

These pilot courses build on Open.UToronto, where members and friends of U of T find, use, create and share openly licensed content, resources and courses. Open.UToronto enriches the global knowledge community with a growing catalogue of lectures and open access sites that includes thousands of pages of digital collections, journals, a research repository, learning objects and courses.

“The ��Ƶ is extremely pleased to be a part of this exciting project to unlock the possibilities of open access education,” said Cheryl Misak, Vice-President and Provost of the ��Ƶ. “We are particularly pleased by Coursera’s focus on the quality of course offerings. They choose excellent universities as partners so this is a terrific opportunity to collaborate with our peers.”

Massive open online courses are an emerging trend in post-secondary education because they provide tremendous potential to bring education to people who do not have access to quality courses. Coursera (www.coursera.org) was developed by professors at Stanford University and earlier this year Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania joined the consortium. In only six months, the Coursera platform has enabled 680,000 students from 190 countries gain access to 43 different university courses.

The ��Ƶ is the first Canadian university to join Coursera.

Initially, U of T will deliver five open access, not-for-credit courses through Coursera. The Faculty of Arts & Science will feature two computer science courses on programming as well as one on neural networks for machine learning. A course on the social context of mental health and illness will be offered by the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and U of T’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education will present a course on Aboriginal world views in education.

In addition to U of T, other universities joining Coursera today are the California Institute of Technology, Duke University, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the University of Edinburgh, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, the University of California San Francisco, the University of Virginia and the University of Washington.

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