MOOCs, Mini-MOOCs, and Beyond

It is easier than ever to offer a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC), with platforms such as Coursera, which are designed to handle hundreds of thousands of users, and to export data in a way that can be easily used within the information systems of colleges and universities.  Coursera currently hosts and delivers content for 63 universities, and they content is in Spanish as well as in English. While it is true that the universities could simply host the courses themselves, Coursera is uniquely positioned at this point to deal with the complexities and expense of massive bandwidth.

For colleges and learning organizations that want to use a cloud-based platforms that automates delivery of content and assessment, and contains an e-commerce solution, there are very easy-to-use solutions from  Profprofs, Mindflash, and others software platform providers.

The persistent anxiety surrounding academic integrity has been alleviated by the widely implemented ProctorU remote monitoring / proctoring system.

If 2012 was the "Year of the MOOC," what is 2013?  So far, MOOCs are continuing to be touted as a solution to community colleges' budget problems as certain MOOCs are evaluated and approved for transfer credit. Coursera now offers almost 400 courses, which makes it a convenient "one stop shopping" experience for online courses.

It is easy to lose sight of the fact that Open Courseware has been around since the mid 1990s, and the course outlines, content, and recommended readings have served as the foundation for thousands of courses across thousands of colleges and universities worldwide.

MOOCs are ideal for colleges and universities seeking to showcase their popular professors, and elevate them to celebrity or guru status. It is a natural "upping the ante" of the "Great Courses" audio and videos of the past.

Mini-MOOCs: Specialties and perspectives change, and there are opportunities for associations and professional societies to develop MOOCs that help their own niche audience, particularly when there are huge paradigm-shifting technological changes that create new subspecialties, or allow innovation in others.

Further, the ever-changing regulatory environment, along with licensing requirements, makes continuing education and recertification a necessity. Enterprising associations that can help their members understand and proactively satisfy new requirements may also profit from offering MOOCs. It is important to make sure that MOOCs do not get stale; update them regularly and offer new ones in response to new business, technological, and regulatory conditions.

In the future, students may simply assemble their own courses based on approved components and submit them for approval and to satisfy prerequisites for taking licensing / certifying exams.

Whether or not MOOCs will put conventional colleges and online course providers out of business is yet to be seen. One rather doubts it; what will most likely happen is a surge in hybrid / blended learning experiences, with a portion of it consisting of standardized content delivery (and assessment), and the part that has to do with human contact obtain from a more specialized "niche" provider. In all of it, there will most likely be opportunities for face-to-face learning, either by small-groups that locally meet with a qualified facilitator, or in conferences and workshops.

Useful Articles on MOOCs: 

MOOCs for Credit

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/29/coursera-strikes-mooc-licensing-deal-antioch-university

Problem in Paradise - Cheating in the MOOCs

ProctorU Attempts to Stop Cheating in Online Courses

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-01-14-proctoru-attempts-to-stop-cheating-in-online-courses

"The Big Three, at a Glance"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/the-big-three-mooc-providers.html?_r=1&

MOOCs Have Been Around for Years

History Lessons

http://us5.campaign-archive2.com/?u=0ab07657df870af8eb101b4e5&id=7aad1ce132

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/A_MOOC_by_Any_Other_Name.html

What Impact have MOOCs Had on Open Courseware?

http://hackeducation.com/2013/03/22/what-impact-have-moocs-had-on-open-courseware/

Example of a c-MOOC (connectivist learning theory) -- starts with "What is connectivism?"

Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Dave Cormier

http://change.mooc.ca/

http://cck11.mooc.ca/week1.htm

http://change.mooc.ca/week25.htm

Facilitating a Massive Open Online Course (a c-MOOC)

Stephen Downes

http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/facilitating-a-massive-open-online-course

George Siemens

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm

An X-MOOC focuses on Mastery

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/A_MOOC_by_Any_Other_Name.html

Massively Open Online Courses Are 'Here to Stay'

x MOOCs emphasize content mastery, centralizes courses on one website and uses automated grading tools to support hundreds of thousands of students.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/policy/MOOCs-Here-to-Stay.html

Review of Programming ArcGIS 10.1 with Python Cookbook

What makes much of Big Data extremely useful is the ability to integrate geospatial information, especially when tracked with time. To that end, ArcGIS is a "must have", and Python is a practical language that allows one to manipulate large data sets such as those found in databases, and that gathered via data acquisition module streams.

While the "cookbook" part of the title is a bit of a misnomer, Programming ArcGIS 10.1 with Python by Eric Pimpler and published by Packt Publishing does include very a total of 75 helpful recipes presented in a logical task-oriented sequence which take advantage of ArcGIS 10 features. It's useful for entrepreneurs who are coming up with innovative data mining solutions to help organizations and individuals in decision-making in many different fields and applications.

What I find most helpful is the fact that the organization of the book takes a building block approach which is helpful for someone who may need to get started, and equally so for someone who would like to simply pinpoint and extract what they want and need.

Here are some of the useful features:

* automated map production and printing: can automate the production of map production and printing (including exporting PDFs), which is helpful when creating a set of maps or map files.

* quickly using geoprocessing tools: this is a quick way to increase functionality and power without having to do everything separately; application-level environment settings are utilized quite helpfully as well.

* creating custom tools: the example shows how to filter the data for North American wildfires -- it's a useful example; I think it might be even more helpful to list some of the common sources of data and practice importing them and working with them by developing additional custom tools.

* working with attribute and spatial queries: I think it would have been good to go into a bit more detail about how / why syntax decisions are made, and to discuss the logic, the flow, and the structure; after all, mind and the mental processes are where clean code begins and ends. That said, the section discusses how Python interprets the queries and how / when it matters where a string is placed. The examples are clear, but I always need lots of examples, so I would have welcomed even more examples, but that would perhaps confuse some users, so I concluded that the book hit the right balance.

* for the more adventurous, the book includes how to use the add-in wizard. I have always been a bit leery of add-ins, believing (perhaps superstitiously) that they will create conflicts, and unleash a small troop of gremlins. This chapter shows how / where to place an add-in in a folder that is easily discoverable by ArcGIS Desktop. This is probably the key to having the thing work, and it solves a small mystery of why add-ins sometimes do not work.

In sum, I'd like to say that I find the book to be very clear, well-organized, and helpful. It's likely to have a nice, long shelf life as well.

I posted a version of this review on Amazon on the product page. Now you know I'm "Happy with Books."

Interview with Paul Forster, Intermission Theatre in Education: Innovators in E-Learning Series

Encouraging students to update Shakespeare for their new, urban contexts has been encouraged in theatre and in film. Baz Luhrman's Romeo+ Juliet, Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho immediately come to mind. It is doubly exciting to see students encouraged to update Shakespeare, make the ideas and concepts their own, and to do so in a hybrid approach that blends immersive and interactive performance with online interactive activities. London's Intermission Theatre in Education is doing just that.  Welcome to an interview with Paul Forster, Director of Education for Intermission Theatre in Education. 

Intermission Theatre in Education, London

Paul Forster:
We deliver Shakespeare plays with a modern twist, using urban language and modern themes to engage with a young, modern audience. 

We realised that there were other ways to engage with a modern audience, via technology. Being a bit of a geek myself I started to research what Shakespeare E-learning resources were available for secondary school age and up. There was simply nothing available of any substance or quality. So we decided to develop our own resource.

We acknowledge that everyone likes to learn in their own way. There are three main types of learning styles; auditory, kinesthetic and visual. At ITiE we recognise that young people like to learn in different ways, our resources reflect this and we have games, exercises and tasks that will suit a variety of students needs. Most people learn best through a combination of the three types of learning styles, but everybody is different. 

Auditory Learners: Hear

Reciting information out loud and having music in the background may be a common study method. Other noises may become a distraction resulting in a need for a relatively quiet place. Auditory learners would rather listen to things being explained than read about them. 

Kinesthetic Learners: Touch

Kinesthetic learners process information best through a “hands-on” experience. Actually doing an activity can be the easiest way for them to learn. Sitting still while studying may be difficult, but writing things down makes it easier to understand. 

Visual Learners: See

Visual learners learn best by looking at graphics, watching a demonstration, or reading. For them, it’s easy to look at charts and graphs, but they may have difficulty focusing while listening to an explanation. 

These three styles of learning are what we have built our E-learning around.

We have a range of activities on our site but the first page you are greeted with is The Gateway Page 

This page represents our first touring production Romeo and Juliet. 

The gateway is the portal and home to all of our games. Each room is interactive and contains searchable objects which once clicked on opens up and explanation page which tells you about the game, information or activity that you are about to play. 

Each activity is different below, we see Juliet's diary, each character had their own diary giving an account of the play from their own perspective. This helps young people understand the story, themes and what the characters go through on a personal level, such as why they make certain decisions and how other people's decisions affect them. We want young people to step into someone else's shoes to see what affects their own decisions have on other people.

This is not just about Shakespeare, this is about life skills, we have cantered our games around the curriculum subjects of PSHE (Personal, social and health education), English lit and language, Drama, Music and Religious Education. PSHE covers those life skills young people need to learn as well as substance abuse, violence, gang culture etc. Our modern adaptations of Shakespeare's plays deal with these issues so our E-learning reflects that.

                                                                                                                                                           

We have many video exercises such as the police interview. This game centres around the death of Mercutio. The main protagonists are interviewed by the police to find out who killed Mercutio. In the game you play the game from the point of view of the interviewee. You are always presented with a question in which there are two answers, one is the truth and one is a lie, each one leads you down a different route, there are various outcomes depending on your answer. The final page will always direct the young person to government websites or information regarding the laws surrounding knife crime  (which is how Mercutio is killed). The games learning objectives are to encourage informed decision making whilst cementing the story of the play in the young person’s mind.

'Police Action II' 

How about a bit of fun? If you have ever had a workshop on Shakespeare then you may have done the exercise where you insult each other using Shakespeare? I have always loved this exercise, it allows you to play with Shakespeare's language and have fun with it, we often find that opening with this game breaks down the barrier that 'Shakespeare is really hard' and promotes playfulness. I wanted young people to enjoy the same experience online so we created a randomiser that puts together Shakespearean insults, we also made a 'Shakespearean Complimentor', which gives you encouraging and humorous compliments.

Hip hop or Shakespeare? This is a fantastic knowledge game. You are presented with a quote and you must decide if it is a popular Hip hop lyric or a quote from Shakespeare. We do this because again it brings the world of Shakespeare into our modern world. If young people can closely relate to a subject such as the language of Shakespeare then it becomes easier to understand and easier to relate to. It also makes the connection between Iambic pentameter and the use of this in rap lyrics. If we can show young people that their rap idols use a form of language that stems from Shakespeare then it becomes easier for them to understand it.

We are currently touring Verona Road, which is inspired by Romeo and Juliet. 

Instead of the Montagues and Capulets we have South and East side, two feuding London gangs. Postcode rivalry is the main theme but also covers knife crime, love and loyalty and forgiveness. The themes are in the original play but we have brought them into the modern world.

We have Wasted (Julius Caesar) which is the ultimate knife crime play, 

Ring of Envy (Othello) Othello is an up and coming boxer. 

The play is about social media  and text messaging being used to manipulate and bully. The playground (A Midsummers night dream) in which we tackle substance abuse, Puck has the lovers smoke weed which confuses them and messes up their relationships.

We cannot say that young people relate to one play more than another. Each stands on its own as an educational and inspirational piece of theatre. What makes the experience more inspiring and different from other theatre in education companies is that we only offer peer to peer learning.

Our company of actors is made up young people at risk from some of London's toughest and most affected boroughs. Some of our young people have lived through the very themes we tackle through our work. Yet our young people have managed to leave their past lives behind and make themselves a better future. Our audience members leave feeling truly inspired by our young actors, we leave them with hope.

This resource will be free to use and will be available in a few months time. We will be having a grand launch event in London and if you are able to attend that would be amazing.
**

E-Learning Queen:  Thank you, Paul, for an inspiring interview. The E-Learning Queen definitely wishes to attend the launch. After all, it is understood that Corgis are quite welcome in England (especially in certain palaces). We will try not to nip a Beefeater. 

Interview with Patrick Horner, Fountain Quail / Aqua-Pure: Innovators in Technology Series

In the quest to put the puzzle pieces together to help convert the saltwater (brine) that is coproduced with gas and oil into a usable product, and help solve the problem of water shortages, polluted surface and ground water, and and a host of other issues, we are featuring interviews and technology profiles that relate to questions raised by our earlier post, Getting Started in Purifying Produced Saltwater, the Overlooked Resource in Resource Plays.

When visualizing how produced water could be purified and used in useful applications, a number of questions come to mind. I've listed a few of the ones that immediately occurred to me, and I asked Patrick Horner of Aqua-Pure (Fountain Quail in the U.S.), to respond to a few questions.  Thank you, Patrick, for responding.

1.  How easy is it to get started distilling water from a well that is making 100 bbls of fluid a day, with 5% oil cut and 50 mcf gas?

Typically, on-site distillation systems for volumes of 100 bb/day are not practical from a cost/logistical perspective.  We would recommend a water management system (either pipeline collection system or truck pick-up) that brings water to a central facility capable of processing 4000 bbl/day.  A separator could be used at the well to separate gas and/or oil.  Oil could be kept with the water and separated at the central facility to minimize equipment at the well (gas/liquid separation equipment would be required at the well prior to transportation of the water).

2.  Do you have to let the water settle longer? Do you recommend using surfactants to separate the water and oil more quickly?

This is very much a function of the nature of the oil (API density etc and degree of emulsification).  The oil water separator can be designed accordingly (surfactants may assist in the separation process, again usually depending on the degree of emulsification).  There are many effective de-oiling technologies available but again these can range from simple tank systems (gun barrel type) to hydro cyclone type separators depending on the amount and type of oil.

3.  Can you use the produced gas as energy for the distillation / condensation process?

Yes, we currently use produced gas in our NOMADS to power the process.  Some level of gas treatment many be required depending on the quality of the gas.  Typically, for raw gas, this involves a coalescing type filter to remove any liquids and/or solids.  If H2S is present, this would need to be scrubbed out.

4.  How pure is the end product?  Is it potable? 

We have designed our systems to meet EPA NPDES discharge permit requirements (not potable water specifications).

5.  Does distillation remove aromatic HC?

Distillation does not remove aromatic HC.  Anything more volatile than water will carryover with the distillate (and MVR Evaporation).  There are ways to ensure aromatic HC is not present in the distillate.  This would include reducing aromatic HC prior to the evaporator (via oxidation and/or stripping) and polishing the distillate if required (oxidation and an adsorption bed such as activated carbon to polish).  Biological methods can be used to remove organics from the distillate as well but this requires the addition of nutrients which may in the end reduce the overall water quality.

6.  Do you get EPA Drinking Water approval at the wellsite, or should we take the water elsewhere for further processing / testing?

Again, a NPDES discharge permit is a realistic goal for this type of water treatment.  We haven’t  evaluated EPA Drinking Water approval. Any level of treatment is possible, it’s just a matter of what is feasible from a cost perspective.  By meeting the NPDES requirements, I expect we are close to drinking water standards but the level of oversight/monitoring/testing/QC would likely be a step up for EPA drinking water standards.  This may not be practical at small volume facilities.  I expect that if the treatment facility meets EPA NPDES, the water could be transported to a drinking water treatment facility for further processing to meet EPA Drinking Water Approval.

In North America, there is big perception issue with where the water comes from.  Singapore has a facility that recycles municipal sewage into drinking water (at a quality higher than we typically see in North America), even though they are meeting the requirements, the optics of where the water came from would be an issue in NA.  I expect the same would be the same for turning oilfield produced water into drinking water.  I’m not aware of any scenario where oilfield produced water is being turned into drinking water in North America I am aware of a few projects in Australia that are doing this but again (recharge drinking water aquifers with treated produced water), the culture is different.  I’m curious if you know more about this.

(Susan's response:  No, the only ones I can think of that might be similar are in Wyoming, where "fresh" water coproduced from coalbed methane is used to recharge surface impoundments (which would eventually recharge groundwater, and a few possible areas in Texas where produced water is used in lined stock tanks for personal use on private property.) 

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

We could be on the verge of a new Industrial Revolution -- a Fourth Industrial Revolution -- and it will be one that will use new technologies to restore and revitalize earth resources, and it will start with water.

I believe that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be an outgrowth of planetary exigency rather than human convenience or greed, although we will most certainly witness the earlier Industrial Revolutions’ attributes of curiosity, energy, as we take that enthusiastic plunge “unto the breech” and encounter unanticipated boons and disruptions.

Use new technologies and techniques to:

· Rebuild the earth
· Renew wasted, squandered, or adulterated resources
· Recreate and regenerate resources through new sources (connate water, etc.)
· Regenerate minerals and depleted resources through new processes (chemical / biochemical / biogenic, as well as mechanical means)
· Revitalize habitats, renew distressed flora and fauna

We must become “merchants of light” (Sir Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis) as we transport knowledge from one place to another. We can do it.

Brief and Ideosyncratic View of the Three Industrial Revolutions

Here is how I’m classifying the Industrial Revolutions:

The First Industrial Revolution took place between around 1770 and 1830 had to do with steam engines and the kinds of innovations that made cross-continental transportation and factories possible. It included machines that made factories possible, along with steam power that enabled travel by steamship, railway, and canal (built by machines powered by steam). It fostered innovations in banking and in the U.S., westward expansion.

The Second Industrial Revolution took place from around 1880 – 1910, and had involved the incorporation of electricity, the internal combustion engine, and communication / recording devices.  It also included innovations in infrastructure in cities such as sewers, lighting, and water systems that made cities much more hygienic and less noxious. Factories, automation, and social mobility paved the way for dramatic upheavals in the social order, with both utopian and dystopian outcomes (Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto and early Soviet avant-garde artists could see the promise of liberating, flattening effects of technology, while many dystopian pessimists suggested technology would precipitate apocalypses and despotic surveillance societies in a way that predate Huxley and Orwell).

The Third Industrial Revolution took place from the 1960s through the early 2000s, and involved computer technology, high speed communications infrastructure, and the development of new materials, all of which made it possible to change the nature of work, economic structure, and the way we know ourselves through extreme acceleration to globalization as well as consumerism.

The Cost of a Revolution: Environmental Carnage

All three industrial revolutions were highly disruptive, which was a godsend for the visionary or simply well-positioned winners, while being absolutely disastrous for the members of society who were in the way or who possessed raw materials or assets necessary for the continued flowering of their particular industrial revolution.

All three industrial revolutions resulted in vast expanses of earth being laid waste, and the resources either squandered or subjected to outright plunder. At each step, most of the population was aware of the problems (see Elizabeth Gaskell, Benjamin Disraeli, and others describe the air and water pollution in northern England in industrial centers such as Manchester), and yet all were helplessly in thrall to the jobs, and the social change that seemed to promise more self-determination to those individuals with pluck, intelligence, and the drive to education themselves, all the while tempering the getting of resources with socially-inculcated values and ethics (for good or for ill).

Now, as we careen through the second decade of the 21st century, for every initiative to conserve, recycle, or reuse resources seems to be met with an economic shock that simply reinforces John Maynard Keynes’s observation that policies are shaped to benefit people in the short run, because in the long run we’re all dead.

I’ve observed even the most ardent environmentalist and “small footprinter” turned into a grotesque consumer of resources upon the knowledge that he/she needs certain procedures in order to live.

And, how many of us have moved from a small town to a mega-city for economic opportunity? Is a Mexico City, Houston, or Cairo in any way environmentally sustainable?  Of course not, but the fruits of the Third Industrial Revolution bamboozle us into thinking that it is.

The industrial revolutions’ fruits have also led to a shocking level of psychological hubris.  For example, just to cite one, in the jouissance of the new Baby Boomers came to consider themselves above the eternal verities, whatever those are; most having been lost in the disintegration of family and social bonds, along with the deconstruction of wisdom literature. This is not to say that questioning and deconstructive philosophy are bad things, just that the vacuum left behind was immediately filled with sensation, novelty, consumer goods.  Nationalistic ardor, patriotism, religion and family became just another set of products to be hucksterized and then worn on one’s person or placed in one’s home as a fashion statement or a lucky charm.

To add to the confusion, we have also seen a government that ostensibly protects the environment enact policies that encourage people to become passive consumers of junk food, junk images, junk ideas, and junk substances, as they weave between the formal and informal economies to the point that they lose sight that once upon a time, they were born with a brain, wits, communication skills, and at least some modicum of self-determination.

In certain ways, we can’t blame anyone for what seems to be a shocking level of blindness and unwillingness to examine their own lives. After all, extreme social inequality is one of the first fruits of all three industrial revolutions, for all the promises made that technology will result in a level playing field and equal participation.

With accelerated communication technologies, computers, and the Internet, the Third Industrial Revolution has exerted forces that have made it difficult for a person to make an honest self-assessment or to slow down long enough to examine their own life.

And, we all know the value of an unexamined life (Plato’s Apology of Socrates).

Enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Renovation, Renewal, Revitalization

I believe that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will involve the renovation, renewal, and revitalization of squandered, wasted, and adulterated natural resources, and it will start with water.

We will use the new computing techniques and the ability to harness collective minds, ideas, and muscle (concatenated computers) to develop new ways to replenish earth resources.

Again, it will start with water, then move to once depleted resources, and include air and soil.

It will require reversals of thinking and the willingness to identify what we viewed as a waste product, and then how to transform it into something that we will used to replenish despoiled or depleted resources.

The first perhaps most obvious has to do with water. If we can use water that is co-produced with natural gas, oil, and which must be pumped from mines, then we can purify it economically and use it to replenish and recharge surface water, which will then recharge the aquifer.

The second may have to do with ways we currently generate electricity and warm our homes. Improvements in alternative energy (solar, geothermal, wind) will be made.

· Work with mathematics to accommodate calculations that simplify working in complex systems so that modeling and potentially changing /materially altering reality is possible

· Decision-making that thinks of long-term impacts, and shaped by values and ethics that reflect a profound respect for all individuals, and for individual effort.

· Revitalizing refinding lost metals and minerals (zinc, lead, copper).

· Use the co-products of all processes for building materials and design for right-size communities

Future “Science Fiction Today, Reality Tomorrow” Elements:

· Airborne farms and crop sky-canopies can help air quality in cities.

· Require flower gardens on every rooftop and on all balconies

· Smart Life: Easily programmable monitoring and surveillance systems

· Expanded voice, image, shape, face recognition embedded in mirrors

· A handheld device (rather than implantable device) that can log and archive your behaviors

· Hovercraft / tricopters and quad copters for trips across expanses where there are not too many power lines or problems (Nevada desert, Texas Panhandle, lakes)

· 3D printers that are also instantaneous recyclers

· Personal paper product sanitizer and reconstitutor (paper waste automatically biogenically cleansed / sterilized and reconstituted into paper plates, bowls, cups, dog dishes, boxes, gift boxes, mailing and shipping containers, etc.)

· Household 3D printer for plastics (sanitized, reconstitute into frequently used and needed items – plastic wrap? Boxes? Storage? Sandals? Drink bottles?

· Elemental Harvester and Scavenger: Industrial-site specific materials scavenger for collecting metals, etc.

These will all be explored in future installments and meditations.

Getting Started in Purifying Produced Saltwater, the Overlooked Resource in Resource Plays

A solution to drought and water scarcity is sitting before our eyes in much of the U.S., but most people have no idea that it exists. Those who do have no idea that the puzzle pieces necessary to make it happen are right here, right now. They just have not been put together yet.  But, they can be, and the benefits to people, the environment, the economy, and sustainable life in general could be staggering.

The answer is produced saltwater which is coproduced with oil and gas, as well as in mining operations.

Many people outside the oil and gas industry are unaware that great volumes of salty, briny, mineral-rich (although some are undesirable minerals) water are coproduced with gas and oil. In fact, in many old fields, the percentage of water vs. oil and gas is very high, and can be as high as 1000 barrels (40 gallons) of produced water for every 100 mcf (thousand cubic feet) of natural gas and 10 barrels of oil.  The water is sometimes reinjected into the formation to provide pressure to enhance the recovery of hydrocarbons, but most often, the oil and gas are separated, and then the saltwater is trucked or transported via pipeline to injection wells that are licensed as Class II disposal wells. These wells may take as much as 20,000 bbls per day. Not only are they expensive to use and to operate (lots of chemicals are needed and equipment to deal with all the corrosion, scale, and other issues), they have also been blamed for generating earthquakes. Needless to say, safety and public health are the first concerns, so any solution will require a great deal of testing and quality assurance. 

Large sources of coproduced water include traditional mature fields such as the Permian Basin and in the Sooner Trend (Mississippian lime), but also in the new unconventional plays, such as in the Mississippian Lime (and chat) in Kansas and Oklahoma and in the shale plays throughout the world, with extreme development now taking place in the U.S.  For a compilation of articles on the plays, please visit: (http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2013/70135nash/ndx_nash.pdf).

Disposing of produced saltwater is expensive and an ongoing cost to producers. There is no escaping it. For that reason, the small extra steps required to purify rather than dispose of the water represent an incremental cost, which could be more than offset by the revenues generated by water sales. There are other benefits, but educating the public will be necessary. For that reason, companies and communities along with entrepreneurs who are a part of the team, should start as quickly as possible to develop MOOCs (massive open online courses) and mini-MOOCs to help people learn about the concept, the elements, the skills needed, and the opportunities.

Further, the need by some communities for water, and the market for water could make producing and purifying co-produced saltwater viable on its own.

Desalination of seawater and brines has long been a necessity in arid parts of the world, where drinking water is scarce or unavailable. It is generally viewed as uneconomic or too capital-intensive for many communities in the U.S.

Purification of produced coproduced water is not completely the same as desalinization of sea water because there are additional minerals in the produced water (the reservoir fluids each reservoir have unique compositions), and it is not cheap. However, companies that are now paying to transport, chemically treat, and inject produced brines would not pay much more to take the extra step and purify to graywater or potable levels. 

With drought, coupled with the depletion of aquifers in the Plains and western U.S., new approaches to water must be sought. The plan to purify produced saltwater to the point of graywater or agricultural use or all the way to potable is economically viable for some communities right now if the pieces are put into place.

Here are the puzzle pieces:

Large-scale produced water purification systems:

Effective and efficient purification process.

Options include

Reverse osmosis / membrane ultrafiltration (primarily with dry gas production)

Distillation (will require using produced gas, solar, and possible geothermal to minimize energy costs -- Fountain Quail has a freshwater system called NOMAD which is currently in the Barnett (in Texas) and also is setting up in West Texas, in the Permian Wolfcamp play.  Their mobile ROVER system creates clean saltwater.)

 Combination process (primarily with reservoirs that produce oil as well as gas - Hydrozonix is currently using its multi-stage process to treat and remove contaminants in order to recycle and reuse the water in drilling, stimulation, or enhanced oil recovery).

Water gathering system (similar to that of gas gathering systems) to cost-effectively bring the produced water from several wells or units to a single, high-volume treatment facility, with capacity of around 100,000 bbls per day. Companies such as Anterra Energy and Apache / Encana (Debolt water treatment plant) are running water treatment operations that are allowing companies to use the water for recycling and for hydraulic fracturing and injection wells in EOR operations. There are initiatives to support this, which include the Texas Water Recycling Association (TWRA).  One of the positive developments is that the TWRA members will be able to share recycling facilities. 

For recharge of the riparian system where the water will go to reservoirs and other holding water impoundments for agricultural purposes, it will be necessary to construct series of viaducts into the stream system so that the produced water will flow to existing reservoirs. Discharge could average 100,00 bbls per day. The viaducts could incorporate small, efficient hydroelectric generators so that power could be generated as the water flows downstream. 

Contracts and agreements with the communities to purchase the water and to also commit to financing the infrastructure (they may wish to finance it via municipal bonds).

Amended and modified oil and gas leases would be developed to pay the mineral owner a royalty on sales of coproduced connate water. Because the costs of purification and transportation are high, and the royalty would of necessity be something in the 2 – 3 percent range.

A plan for disposing of the super-concentrated brines that are left after the process must be in place.

On-site continuous water quality testing, with remote data acquisition and monitoring, with cloud-based data acquisition, archiving, processing, retrieval.

Initial data sources for identifying, leasing, purchasing existing production and adapting into the new produced water / water purification systems.

Byproducts could sold as industrial minerals or created into new products.

 Examples:

Halite building bricks: coat the salt residual with impermeable coating, and create salt bricks for building purposes (could be used to create soundproofing, etc.)

--Industrial minerals: halite, ferric chloride, magnesium oxide, calcium chloride

--Data management system for maintaining production records, along with water quality

--MOOCs (massive open online courses) and mini-MOOCs to help people learn about the concept, the elements, the skills needed, and the opportunities

--Data management system for leases, contracts, permits, filings, reports; much should be automated with calendar events to flag and alert due dates for key filings and permits

--Cloud-based computing for logistics, data management, tracking, quality assurance, supply chain management

For small-scale systems for single wells, that produce less than 1,000 bbls of water per day:

--Mobile purification units, ideally distillation

 

--Permits and permissions for drinking water production and bottling facility

--Licensed and approved continuous testing of water

--On-site or near-site bottling of water

--3D printers for customized bottles / shapes for value-add uses

--Advertising / marketing of new ultra-pure water from distillation

--Contracts for distribution

--MOOCs (massive open online courses) and mini-MOOCs to help people learn about the concept, the elements, the skills needed, and the opportunities

--Cloud-based computing for logistics, data management, tracking, quality assurance, supply chain management

Conclusion and Future Steps

The main impediments to purifying and re-using connate water coproduced with oil and gas involve cost, environmental and drinking water regulations, and public perception.

These can be overcome with education coupled with extreme need due to drought. The benefits are tremendous, and include revitalized communities with sufficient water for sustainable human and animal life, along with the resurgence of industries requiring large volumes of water, which include agriculture, power generation, and manufacturing.

The key now is to start to put the puzzle pieces together and to start to create viable projects and plans.

We need to conduct clear-eyed, open, and honest gap analyses to see just how close we really are, and where and when we can most feasibly close the gaps.

The efforts can start on a well-by-well micro scale, thanks to 3D printing, cloud-based computing (for logistics, data management, supply chain, project management, etc.), so is ideal for entrepreneurs. 

For more information and initial plans, please contact Susan Nash as susan@beyondutopia.com 

-- Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.

Norman, Oklahoma

susan@beyondutopia.com 

@beyondutopia

skype: beyondutopia 

Interview with Sameer Bhatia, ProProfs.com: Innovators in E-Learning Series

Thanks to improvements in access and bandwidth management, massive open online courses (MOOCs) are rapidly gaining in popularity. Two different types of MOOCs have emerged: the first, the x-MOOC, emphasizes content mastery and incorporates self-grading activities; the second, the c-MOOC, emphasizes learning through collaboration and incorporates connectivist learning theory. The x-MOOCs are making learning and assessment an automated, 24-7 endeavor. The big challenge for organizations that wish to get involved, however is finding a platform that is robust and flexible enough to handle huge volumes and highly variable content. One company that has dedicated itself to overcoming that problem is ProProfs, a popular, easy-to-use provider of tools that allow the easy construction and deployment of quizzes, courses, tests, and surveys, all of which are ideal for creating MOOCs. Welcome to an interview with Sameer Bhatia, visionary and founder of ProProfs.com.

1.  What is your name and your relationship to e-learning?

I am Sameer Bhatia, founder of ProProfs.com, an online learning community which provides comprehensive tools for building, testing and applying knowledge.

Over the years, I have worked with many trainers and educators, which has helped us in developing market leading elearning tools such as our popular quiz software and an all-in-one online learning management system (LMS) that are geared towards solving the core issues that teachers and trainers face while creating online courses and assessments.

I feel the biggest contribution to elearning that ProProfs has made so far is in making online education accessible and affordable to people from all walks of life. We have not only made an enterprise level LMS, which would traditionally cost tens of thousands of dollars, available at a fraction of the price but also taken this a step further with our free offering of public courses. Our products are free when you share content such as courses or quizzes with the world. This has made us one of the largest MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platforms with hundreds of thousands of free quizzes, tests and courses. I have received many emails from educators and trainers about how the free courses and quizzes have saved them hours of time and effort.

2.  What are some of the future directions and potentials of MOOCs, in your opinion?

Where a university class could only accommodate a maximum of few hundred students, MOOCs can help educators and trainers reach out to millions of learners. The potential of MOOCs as a platform through which education and training can be created and disseminated instantly to a vast population is one worth investing in and exploiting.

In the coming years, we could see more universities using MOOCs as the primary mode of creating and disseminating learning. However, currently there are a limited number of courses on a few topics that MOOC platforms are offering. The potential of MOOCs will be fully realized when open online courses are available on multiple disciplines and topics. I feel the ability of anyone to freely build and share knowledge will be a motivational factor for people to use MOOCs as the primary platform for creating and disseminating learning.

Such a cohesive system would mean the crumbling of economic and geographic barriers, since anybody from any part of the world would be able to freely access education and learning.

3.  Why might an organization want to host a MOOC, and how can they benefit?

Firstly, irrespective of the industry an organization belongs to, MOOCs can help it establish itself as a thought leader in its field. A company can achieve this by creating a knowledge resource consisting of open online courses which answer the questions of their audience. For example, a company manufacturing fire fighting equipments can create open courses on fire safety; an automobile company can create a certification course on driving motor vehicles, so on and so forth. The possibilities are limitless. By providing solutions to the questions of potential customers, a company can establish itself as a brand and thought leader.

Secondly, as it is said that the best way to learn is to teach, organizations can quickly collect aggregate learner statistics from their courses and learn about what exactly are the knowledge gaps. For instance, when you create a course using ProProfs, you get advanced reports and aggregate statistics based on data across all attempts to a particular course. These reports help instructors learn and understand what questions are commonly wrong, difficulty level of each question, what information the course is not addressed well and so on. All of this can be used to make improvements to the course and to identify and bridge knowledge gaps.

4.  What are some of the "must have" elements in a MOOC?  Why are some organizations nervous about offering a MOOC?  What are some of the barriers that must be overcome, and why might it be difficult for an organization to do it on their own? 

Creating an online course is not enough. For MOCCs to be really successful as an alternative learning model there must be comprehensive course statistics such as detailed course and assessment reports as well as learner feedback reports accompanying an online course.

Course and assessment reports are essentials parts of an online course as they help instructors judge whether learners have actually understood the course. For instance, ProProfs test making software, provides users with detailed assessment reports such as the total attempts made on the quiz, the average time taken to complete the quiz, the average percentage score and the difficulty level of each question in the quiz. The statistics are presented in a clear and concise manner, which help instructors understand how each learner performed in a given test as well as identify the areas where knowledge gaps may exist so that they can revise their teaching and training materials to improve learners’ performance.

Likewise, gathering learners’ feedback at the start, middle or end of a course helps in judging the relevance and efficaciousness of a course. Regular learner feedback surveys drive up instructor-learner engagement, which is crucial for the success of online courses.

One of the reasons why business organizations are wary of online courses is regarding cost and infrastructure requirement to support large batches of learners. Expenses related to maintenance, data back-up, software hosting and administration are some of the difficulties that organizations looking to create online courses on their own face. They can avoid these issues and simply put their focus on course creation by adopting SAAS and other third party solutions that effectively solve this problem. We get a lot of questions and concerns about this as well. So we created a Trust page that gives people an insight into our infrastructure that scales to serve million of users each month.

As for educational institutions, the question seems to be whether open online courses can compensate for actual classroom experience. However, there are many tools such as feedback surveys, discussion forums, crowd-sourcing etc which help in bridging the virtual divide and driving up instructor and learner engagement.

5.  What are some of ProProfs products, and how are they used within a MOOC?

One of our popular products is our online training software, which allows users to create a course and deliver it to their learners. It is an all-in-one software, which comes bundles with our other products and provides a complete e-learning solution to companies who want to create online training program or educational institutions looking to create academic coursework.

We also offer a powerful online testing tool called ProProfs Quiz Maker. Our testing tool provides comprehensive features such as the ability to create different types of tests such as matching, checkboxes, true or false, multiple choice and even a timed test - which helps in preventing cheating in online tests. The results of the assessments are fully downloadable and instructors can share them with their learners as well as other stakeholders.

Another import elearning tool would be our learner feedback tool. Our survey software allows users to create course evaluation surveys and learner feedback surveys, making their online courses much more effective in enhancing the learning process.

Besides these online tools, we also offer poll maker and learning aids such as flashcards which make the online courses more engaging and effective.

ProProfs offers hundreds of public online courses. The course categories cover a range of topics such as business, computer science, education and many more. Since our training software is an integrated product, which includes all our other products it is the most ideal for being used within a MOOC. Our Quiz software, is one of the largest online quiz libraries and there are millions of free quizzes on various topics. Another software very popular with learners is our Flashcards Maker, which also consists of millions of flashcards, free and accessible for all. Our Survey Software is a relatively new product but we already have a large bank of surveys which are free for our users to share and reuse.

6.  How is ProProfs helping organizations develop and host MOOCs?

ProProfs Training Software is used by many organizations to create open online courses. One of the primary reasons why organizations prefer using our software is because we allow them to completely focus on course creation, while we handle the course hosting, delivery, data-backup, administration and maintenance. The fact that organizations do not have to download or learn any software coupled with the benefit of not having to hire an IT team to maintain and administer the software, encourages organizations as well as individuals to create and share online courses through our platform.

Since open online courses are taken by thousands of learners at a time, the load spikes are massive and we conduct regular system maintenance so that we maintain a robust system uptime and learners don’t have to face any disruptions. We keep our system maintenance records completely transparent and that is why many organizations believe and trust in us.
 
We are different from other MOOC platforms because we also provide our customers the option to go fully private and even create paid courses - a great revenue model for teachers who wish to create and sell online courses. This makes us the most flexible platform. So you can start off by making an open course, create a private and secure course/training for the company you work at, and another one where you charge users across the web to take the course ....the flexibility is amazing.

Organizations also do not feel locked in, as we give them complete and absolute ownership of the courses they create with us. They can fully brand, customize and embed their courses onto their website or blog as well as integrate the payment gateway with their site and use ProProfs only for the delivery of the courses.

7.  Do you see any new directions arising for MOOCs and their potential to help organizations achieve their missions? 


The current trend is in making the online courses more efficacious by providing accreditation, where learners at the end of an online course get a degree or a completion certificate, which they can use to further their education or career. Once this is fully realized, MOOCs will become all pervasive. In this respect, we have a certification program already set up, where organizations can create custom course completion certificates using their logos, colors and signatures and award it to deserving candidates.

I believe the new directions will be in the adoption of MOOCs by companies and people from different walks of life as opposed to just academic education - wherein universities have so far been the early adopters.

8. Any final thoughts?

We have already witnessed the potential of MOOCs in making quality education accessible to the public. Premier educational institutions such as Harvard, Stanford and many others have effectively used MOOC to reach out to a global learner base.

However, we believe that not just premier institutions but anybody who is willing to share his/her knowledge should be able to have access to the technological resources to do so. The driving force behind ProProfs being free for open courses has been our strong belief that anybody can and should teach. Everyday people from all walks of life create hundreds of courses, on all kinds of subjects, using our learning management system. Our public courses range from simple fire safety courses to complex Java programming language courses. Also, people learn in different ways, not only through courses but tests and quizzes as well. We’ve realised this because we get many emails from our users telling us about how the quizzes in our site helped them do well in their tests.  A case in point are the DMV quizzes, which are taken by thousands of our users everyday and have helped many pass their driving tests with flying colors.

This I feel should be the future of MOOCs where education and learning is not limited to predefined notions of traditional academic courses but is a healthy mix of different types of knowledge resources on a vast array of subjects and interests.