Davis, who received his lottery results 30 minutes after study cards were due, said that he was frustrated by the course’s enrollment cap for College students.
“If they have [the course] open to undergraduates, they should accommodate that a little better, or at least have more than six spots available,” said Davis.
Gregory C. Dunn ’16, a student also put on the waitlist who said he will apply again next year, said that the online course could stand as a reasonable alternative for some.
“I know that the staff behind it are extraordinarily talented. It will be a great opportunity for many people,” said Dunn.
Other universities in the edX consortium beyond just Harvard have begun experimenting with SPOCs. Armando Fox, an adjunct associate computer science professor at UC Berkeley who named himself as the first person to coin the SPOC term, said that the online version of his class CS169x: “Software as a Service,” arose from enormous interest in the on-campus version of the course.
“We had created the MOOC initially really as an experiment, because in our own campus course, we already had begun thinking about sophisticated online grading because of enrollment pressure,” said Fox.
Fox then created a separate online course open exclusively to UC Berkeley students.
“We realized that in order for this to serve as supplementary material for our on-campus students, those students would have different deadlines and grading policies. We accidentally discovered the situation,” Fox added.
At the end of the course, Fox said, student comments suggested that the MOOC material served as a positive enhancement, giving the course its highest rating in its 20-year history at Berkeley.
Two other courses at Berkeley, CS191x: “Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation” and CS188x: “Artificial Intelligence,” are also offered as SPOCs exclusively for Berkeley students.
As Academic Director of the Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education, Fox said that current efforts to create MOOCs or SPOCs are prioritized for already existing campus courses that either face over-enrollment or would benefit from incorporating the type of material that can be uploaded online.
“This is really about SPOCs. The MOOC is almost a side effect,” Fox said. “Institutionally, we want to make sure we are doing this because we believe it can improve student and faculty engagement on our own campus. That’s our primary goal.”
—Staff writer Amna H. Hashmi can be reached at amnahashmi@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @amna_hashmi.