UCLA professor uncertain on engineering MOOCs


Behzad Razavi, a veteran professor of comms chip design, has announced that he will offer a massive open online course (MOOC) on basic circuit theory later this year, the first online course from the electrical engineering department at UCLA.

He said he plans to post to YouTube in three to six months his first complete undergrad and grad courses and “gauge how it goes,” EET India reports.

I sat down with Razavi at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference. He’s a regular fixture at the event either presenting papers of his own on high-speed or low-power comms chip designs or attending those of his students.

It’s still early days for the blending of education and the web. Razavi admits he has mixed feelings about massive open online courses (MOOCs).

He told me at ISSCC: “The fact [that] you can reach unbounded numbers of people in any corner of the Earth is wonderful, but to replace a regular rigorous course with a video raises some questions.”

“We have lost real-time feedback between the instructor and the students; a good instructor adjusts his pace, timing, word choice and where he stands based on that feedback.”

Read more

Sign up for our newsletter

Newsletter: Innovations in K12 Education
By submitting your information, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Oops! We could not locate your form.

Sign up for our newsletter

Newsletter: Innovations in K12 Education
By submitting your information, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.