oliviatamccue

Like anything good, soon some issue may be reported.   Is it human nature?

I am referring to the Massive Open Online Courses where a number of prestigious Universities (Harvard, Berkeley, MIT…) are putting up college courses to the Internet for FREE and for the WORLD audience –  WORLD is the many countries on earth not the WORLD in the world series of North American baseball league.

It paints the vision that when the model matures, the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of education and make it available to many more folks of different backgrounds and cultures.

NOT SO QUICKLY.

Recent reports start to reveal reservations from professors of other universities on the model.  What exactly is the concern?  It mentions the implication to professors, effect on face-to-face education, student honor code, etc… Maybe the real concern is about the CHANGES for those in traditional education.

So for now, the free online courses work well to satisfy those who want to learn; it could be a long road, before it can offer college degree and be considered as a rival to the traditional form of education.  BUT technology tends to have the side effect of causing changes to happen fast, we would see in a few years.

Talking about SIDE EFFECTS…. There are also positive side effects from the online courses.

I completed the “Software-as-a-Service” via EdX.org and am in the last week of “Introduction to Data Science” via coursera.org.   These courses have unofficial enrollment figures in the scale of tens of thousands.

To enable the student to do and submit our finished work, we were given tools like Heroku (for web application deployment); like Tableau (for data analysis), and MapReduce etc…

These tools are free to be used, and honestly, they don’t scale up with a sudden increase of 40,000+ students.

What is the win for the tool providers?

Without any paid professional testers, these companies get many free testers, working hard on the tools, and reporting issues.

Even better – their customer base grows by leaps and bounds through the collaboration with universities and the free online courses; and the students become their advocate if the tool works!

There is something to gain to offer something for FREE!

Evening or Weekend Chinese School in Bay Area faces uphill challenges on enrollment.  That is undeniable.   And school boards need to manage the trend of reduced enrollment year over year.   The reality together with the pessimistic mindset create a very grave situation.

At the macro-level, the post-1997 reduction of immigrants from Hong Kong and the offering of Mandarin in Day School are among the obvious factors of whittling down demands for evening Chinese (Cantonese School).   On the other hand, due to the prosperity of China, ability in Chinese language become a skill in demand; most evening Chinese school does not seem to have benefitted.  The enrollment challenge goes beyond the macro-trends, there are apparent engagement challenges.

Success criteria of a business includes Revenue, Growth, Customer Retention and Customer Satisfaction.  For school, those can be represented as student enrollment, % of students return next year; and satisfaction of existing parents and students.   Existing customers could make one of the best advocates for new customers, reverse is true and they can demotivate potential customers.

What are the signs of students+parents satisfaction to school?

– are students happy to be in school or are they there because their parents insist for them to learn Chinese?

– are the teachers creating interests and motivations for the students?  are the content of education motivational?

– do the students feel that they are learning something and have a sense of achievement?

– do parents participate in helping out school events with enthusiasm?  what are the attendance rate in annual meetings?

High school requires students to have some years of second language to graduate, most students seem to enjoy learning the second language.  What could be the differences?

From my childhood, I was raised to not believe in “there is a free lunch”, and hardwired in  “there is NO free lunch”.

While this has not changed, the recent experience in the “Massive Open Online Courses” (MOOC) is getting pretty close to be a contradiction – I get something really good without spending $.  Since I need to use time (more valuable than $),  “there is no free lunch” can still be upheld.

I am writing about it because this is exciting –  to know that there could be such a low barrier for many to learn something new, interesting and relevant.

What is MOOC?  Service providers offer classes online, often free or at very affordable price for everyone.  It is not a new concept.  There has been different “Open Learning Institutes” in different countries for many years.

Yet this can be a real deal :

• MOOC trend has capital backing.  That means that it has the financial backing to keep doing it and doing it better
• It has the backing of highly regarded universities such as Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley to offer their classes online for free
• It has a reasonable business proposition that the education profile of a person can be matched with the job requirements; and give a different perspective on matching candidates to job positions
• it can turn into a profitable business, by charging for examinations, certification or talent management partnership with commercial corporations.

On paper, it looks promising.  On the other hand, it is likely that there would be a lot of drop-outs during this trial phase.   To complete an online classes that one has not paid, it requires extra interest level, motivation to learn and discipline to do the homework.

What is better to learn something by doing it –  I signed up for a class related to my field of IT management.   The course is the same content as offered at the UC Berkeley campus to junior/senior college students.    Even mid-way in the course and after many years doing sophiscated IT stuff in corporations, it would be a big lie to not admit that I learn a lot!

If this interests you, check it out …

Try “Massive Open Online Course” in Google Search and spend some time …

Or this recent article sums it up well

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34940845/WSJ%20course%20online%20article0001.pdf

Further to the blog on “what is ccue?“, I have taken some rough angle in guessing the potential students for Cantonese education (aka. TAM Total Addressable Market of a school).

Obviously, there is limitation with the approach below and can be refined with more accuracy.

• Start with the total Chinese Population based on the US Census Bureau.
• Check out the population speaking Chinese at home (to double check).   It includes people speaking Mandarin, Cantonese and other dialects.
• Check out the population by age.   Student age for Chinese school would be around 5 to 14.
• It is not so easy to differentiate Mandarin Speaking and Cantonese Speaking population in various statistics.  The school district is likely the source of more reliable information.

Taking this approach, the number for Santa Clara County, California reflects the followings

• According to US Census Bureau for 2011, Chinese is 8.2% of the total population, total to 148,995 +/- 10,801.   As a reference, the US  Census Bureau reports the following (compatible) statistics on population of 125,813 speaking Chinese at home.   That is in the ballpark enough for me to keep using 148,995 as the baseline for Chinese population.

• Around 13.9% of total population (all races) is of age 5 to 14. Using the same ratio, the Chinese with age 5 to 14 is estimated to b e 148,995 * 13.9% = 20710.

• How to figure out the allocation of Chinese speaking Cantonese vs Mandarin? The school district would have more accurate statistics.   For estimate purpose, I didn’t check out each of the school districts and just use the allocation of home language for foreign speakers in two Cupertino Schools.   It came up to a real rough ratio of 16 (Mandarin) to 1 (Cantonese).   Using the 16:1 ratio on the Chinese at age 5 to 14, the Cantonese students would become 20710*1/(16+1) = 1218.

It seemed low in number, relatively high compared to enrollment in a typical Cantonese Chinese school.

A few areas to make the assessment of “potential customers” more accurate:

• There could be interest from non-Chinese students to learn a foreign language – it can be considered,  unlikely it would affect big picture.
• It is possible the population by age for Chinese is significantly different from the overall population.  How likely?
• Adults could be interested too.  Most non-profit Chinese school focuses on school-aged students.
• Is the ratio between Mandarin and Cantonese accurate – if it becomes more like 1:8, then the total “poential Cantonese” students would become 20710*1/(1+8) = 2301.  This is something to be validated based on the statistics of the school districts in the neighborhood.

A rough approach to get to TAM assessment for a school.   Love to hear better approaches.

這個週末去了一個中文教學論壇。這論壇今年是第三屆，在美國加洲灣區一間酒店舉行， 有來自各地三百多位參加者，主辦單位邀請著名的學者演講， 也有不同的分組討論； 提供一個交流的平台。參加者絕大多數是中國人，講普通話，少數外國人看來也是中國通， 我覺得像是在中國內地過了一天。

內容頗豐富，這裡就寫一點點印象吧。

主題演講是「漢語教學發展中的科研引航問題」， 由北京大學的陸劍明教授主講。講到中文教法中教甚麽（字、 語法、詞語）， 怎樣教，如何學得好；沒公認的標準；學科教材的中文詞彙也少；字典的解釋有著誤導外語學生的情況。就字和詞為例，常用詞的「把」、「著」、「有」、「也」、「就」；在不少教科書中是比較晚一點出現的。

對於要把中文作為一個學科來教， 要有標準， 這點是很有意義的。其他語文大概也有類似問題。如果要把中文像英文一樣推向國際化， 真要把「中文太難學的思維」轉化到「中文有好和標準的方法學」。

第二個主題演講”Expanding Our Understanding of the Psychology of Learning Chinese; Emotions, Hot Cognition, Peak Experience, Flow and Inspired Consciousness”。長長的講題， 帶著簡單的信息： 如何明白學生學習過程中的感覺情感而達到有效的學習方法。這是個很個人化的方法。雖然有很大的潛力， 究竟如何用在班房共同學習和緊迫的課程中應用， 很值得深思。

對於在美國出生的華人學生， 大多是父母把他們推向中文學校， 不少視學中文是一種負擔甚至感到反感。家長和教師如能多留意學生學中文的情感而加以誘導， 令學生在中文學習中找到正面的認知及熱情，這可能是推進雙語文化的一大步。

到分組討論的環節，先去了”Introduction to an Innovative E-Learning Model”。Defense Language Institute 的講者分享如何用網路web 2.0 E-learning教美國軍人學中文，網址是http://www.dliflc.edu/blts.html。講者也介紹了不少其他的web 2.0 tools 包括www.lingtlanguage.com , www.quizlet.com , www.voki.com , www.voicethread.com  等等。雖然是公開的網址，但可能不太容易直接用到其他的中文學校。

下午去了“Mobile and Web-based Technology in a College-Level Chinese Language Class”，講者分享有趣的學生研究 – 究竟電腦科技對學語言有否幫助。結論是對於一個非常積極的學生，他的學習是不論科技與否， 進步也大；但對於不少的學生，電腦科技就很能提高他們的趣味和成績。我寫下有關的網址： www.quizlet.com （這網址可把認字和詞變成比賽與遊戲如flashcard, scatter game， 可用性很高，潛力很大）, www.voicethread.com, www.lingt.com (這網址暫時不接受新會員）, www.sexybeijing.tv （對引發學生的興趣可能有用吧）。

另外又去了「中文教學主旋- 學生參與」。任教於加大的講者分享了老師「該講解」不講解；「該做的」不做；「該改正的」不改；「該點破的」不點破；讓學生多參與，自我修正，從參與中領悟；教法能大大的提高學生的自發性。我覺得這方法對於高年級是有推動作用的，但對於低年級學生的使用可能要在教材中花多一點深思，不然，是可能引起課室混亂的。

要推動中文教育， 包括廣東話的傳承，是要集思廣益的。現在中文論壇，教材和知識資料多是用簡體，普通話與電腦來傳達的。因此能說普通話，讀簡體字與基本的電腦知識對於中文教育也是重要和需要的。

從這個論壇中，對於中文教學多了一點點的認知，更同意的是這課題有很大的發展空間，仍需很大的努力。

看到參加者，教師的熱情和各種科技的進步，還是對中文（包括廣東話）的前途和國際化充滿希望的。

The English pronunciation of these 4 letters c-c-u-e is the closest thing to mean “Everything is as you wish” in Cantonese.

Cantonese learning in Bay Area has gone from a cool language to having a hard time to keep the heritage.  Why?  In the 80s, or 90s, there were waves of Hong Kong Immigration, popular Cantonese TV series, Cantonese songs, movies and singers.  Folks in mainland China and Asia picked up Cantonese from the media, from friends and from the celebrities.  Into the late 90s, Hong Kong changed from a British colony to a special administrative region of China.  The policy is “no change in 50 years”, it is a politically-smart reality distortion, how could one expect nothing changed in 50 years?  With the economic boom in China, the upgrade of China’s international status, and hosting of highly visible international events like Olympics Games, Expos, more and more people prefer Mandarin over Cantonese; and prefer interacting with Mainland China directly for opportunities.

Increase in immigrantsm, from Mainland China to Bay Area, has led to Chinese being offered as a elective language course in High Schools, Middle Schools;  Cupertino school district may be the first one; followed by a few other school districts including Los Altos-Mountain View High.

What does this mean to Cantonese Chinese School operated as non-profit organizations, and have school hours typically in evening or weekends? Enrollment has dropped year-over-year and the fear of extinction is felt though not mentioned.

Putting in an analogy between “running a school for a minority foreign language” and “running a business with challenging product trends”, I ponder on TAM and the possible (product) differentiation for the Cantonese Chinese School; and how to attract customers.  (TAM = Total Addressable Market).

How would you identify the TAM and what could be the differentiation for Cantonese Chinese School?