For James Pennebaker, PhD, and Sam Gosling, PhD, the introductory psychology class they've taught together for years has always been an opportunity for experimentation.
First, the two University of Texas at Austin professors required students to bring Wi-Fi-enabled devices to class and undergo daily testing — a move that, as a 2013 article in PLOS ONE described, boosted performance half a letter grade, improved performance in other and subsequent classes and halved the socioeconomic achievement gap.
Next, they created a system so students could have group chats within class. For their grand finale, they created what they say is the world's first synchronous massive online course, or SMOC.
Launched in 2013, "Psychology LIVE" differs from a massive open online course, or MOOC, by requiring students to come together online twice a week for lectures. To further build a sense of community, the class offers smaller "pods" facilitated by former students acting as online teaching assistants, plus chat groups with built-in software that alerts students if they're talking too much or too little.
Filming in front of a live audience of randomly selected students also helps increase intimacy, says Gosling, adding that many in the production crew are students earning credit and training in marketable skills. "The question comes up: Surely, people feel more distant watching online?" he says. "But that turns out to be not true: They weren't connected to us in a lecture hall of 500 seats, but with the SMOC, it's like we're in their living rooms."
Another difference between SMOCs and MOOCs is that SMOCs aren't free. Originally, the professors hoped the class would attract 10,000 nonuniversity students willing to pay a few hundred dollars for the for-credit class. Indeed, the headline for a Wall Street Journal article about the pair's innovation trumpeted "Online class aims to earn millions."
That hasn't happened. The class, offered each fall, still mostly consists of regular University of Texas undergrads. And while Gosling believes the model will eventually spread to other universities, as far as he knows it hasn't done so yet, perhaps because of the expertise and hefty investment required. Still, the model has been so successful the university has since developed SMOC versions of American government and U.S. foreign policy classes.
"Creating the SMOC has forced us to really think about how to transfer what we did in class into a TV format, but also to think about what we can do in the TV format we couldn't do before," says Gosling. "It has turned out to be a great adventure."
— Rebecca A. Clay
