Open Online Courses as New Educative Practice

Massive open online courses as new educative practice

George SiemensFebruary 29, 2012

Presented to: Universitat de València

NANEC

A decade of openness

Open education resourcesOpen teachingOpen coursesOpen accreditation (very early stages)Open research (coming soon)

2008, 2009, 2011

Open online courses

OverviewContentTeaching

Learner supportLearner activity & assessment

OverviewContentTeaching

Learner supportLearner activity & assessment

This is an unusual course. It does not consist of a body of content you are supposed to remember. Rather, the learning in the course results from the activities you undertake, and will be different for each person.

In addition, this course is not conducted in a single place or environment. It is distributed across the web. We will provide some facilities. But we expect your activities to take place all over the internet. We will ask you to visit other people's web pages, and even to create some of your own.

The course objectives are rather straightforward:

* Develop skills in using technology as a tool for networking, sharing, narrating, and creative self-expression* Frame a digital identity wherein you become both a practitioner in and interrogator of various new modes of networking* Critically examine the digital landscape of communication technologies as emergent narrative forms and genres

Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It's interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.

Coursera is committed to making the best education in the world freely available to any person who seeks it. We envision people throughout the world, in both developed and developing countries, using our platform to get access to world-leading education that has so far been available only to a tiny few. We see them using this education to improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.

We believe university-level education can be both high quality and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, we've connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students all over the world.

OverviewContentTeaching

Learner supportLearner activity & assessment

Content Progress

Badges

Profile/status

Coursera, Udacity, Codeacademy:Formal (traditional) course structure and flow

DS106/EC&I831/MOOCs: Content as a starting point, learners expected to create/extend

OverviewContentTeaching

Learner supportLearner activity & assessment

Udacity/Coursera/Codeacademy: Traditional relationship between teacher/learner

Formal, structured teaching/content provision.

Learners expected to duplicate/master what they are taught

Ongoing presence

Live Weekly Lectures/Discussion sessions

MOOCs/DS106: Changed relationship between teacher/learner

Distributed, chaotic, emergent.

Learners expected to create, grow, expand domain and share personal sensemaking through artifact-creation

OverviewContentTeaching

Learner supportLearner activity & assessment

Coursera/Udacity/Codeacademy: Centralized discussion forum support

MOOCs/DS106: Distributed, often blog-based, learner-created forums and spaces

Office hours and in-forum support – staffed by grad students

Self-organization and sub-networks

Sensegiving through artefact creation and sharing

Sensemaking/giving through language games

Knowledge domain expansion

Wayfinding cues, symbols

Social organization through creating sharing

OverviewContentTeaching

Learner supportLearner activity & assessment

Learners generally complete some level of activity for formative and summative evaluation (quizzes, assignments, papers, create artifacts) in open online courses.

Evaluation is either automated (Udacity), instructor graded (DS106/CCK), or peer-commented (to some degree, all open courses)

Type of Course Formal Credit?

EC&I831 University

CCK/08/09/11/12 University

LAK11/12 No

Coursera No

Udacity Udacity recognition

DS106 University

Codeacademy Badges

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

COGNITIVE:learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse

TEACHING: design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes

SOCIAL:“the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities.

Coursera/Udacity: Emphasizes teaching, partial cognitive, limited social

MOOCs & DS106 model: Holistic, teaching presence, but emphasizing social/cognitive

7 Primary Tensions in open online courses

Automation vs. Creation

Social vs. Scripted

Structured vs. Self-Organized

University-based vs. Informal learning

Assessment/recognition vs. Personal growth

Functioning in existing system vs. Transforming existing system

Learner owned vs. Organization owned interaction spaces

change.mooc.ca

Twitter: gsiemens

www.elearnspace.org/blog

http://www.solaresearch.org/

Learning Analytics & Knowledge 2012: Vancouver

http://lak12.sites.olt.ubc.ca/