The Mystery of MOOCs

THE MYSTERY

OF MOOCSLAURA CZERNIEWICZ & SUKAINA WALJI

30 September 2014

Introduction: the context of MOOCs

Teaching & learning interactionAssessment & certification

Content

Traditionally: a single package

Time Space

Disaggregation

Content

Teaching & learning interaction

Certification

TimePlatfor

m

Disaggregation

Content

Teaching & learning interaction

Assessment & certification

TimePlatfor

m

Access to content

Legal

Digital

Analogue

Illegal

Textbooks

Some photocopying

E-Textbooks

Open Education Resources

Photocopying

Pirate sitesFile sharing

Disaggregation

Content

Teaching & learning interaction

Certification

Time Place

Disaggregation

Content

Teaching & learning interaction

Certification

TimePlatfor

m

Learning platforms

Hill, P (6 Feb 2014) http://mfeldstein.com/resilient-higher-ed-lms-canvas/

Free content

Pay to access platform

Changes in teaching & learning

Content

Teaching & learning interaction

Certification

Time Place

On campus Remote

Internet supported

Fully online

F2F only

Fo

rms

of p

rovi

sio

n

Location of students

Internet dependent

Online-intensive

Blended(mixed

mode): combines

F2F and online

Disaggregation

Content

Teaching & learning interaction

Certification

TimePlatfor

m

Certification: non university providers

Certification: new forms

Badges- micro, granular certification A form of formal(ised) recognition

for informal learning processes for chunks of

content for competencies

Certification: new forms & providers

“Degreed is a community of college students, professionals, and lifelong learners dedicated to advancing their education. When you join Degreed, you get tools to help you track, organize, share, and validate everything you learn. “

Degreed - launched in 2013

Certification: new forms

Certification: new forms

Certification: new forms

£ 119Pearson Vue Test Centre

£ 24

Changing monetisation models

TraditionalComplete package (fees)

Emergent models Individual elements

Fees Yes No

Content May be free/included in fees/paid for May be paid

Support Free/included in fees May be paid

Assessment Free/included in fees May be paid

Certification Free/included in fees Paid

Platform May be licensed or free (student does not pay)

May be licensed or free

MOOCs

On campus Remote

Internet supported

Fully online

F2F only

Fo

rms

of p

rovi

sio

n

Location of students

Internet dependent

Online-intensive

Blended(mixed

mode): combines

F2F and online

MOOCs

Online course MOOCFees Cost to user No fees

Maybe certificates &/or support

Yes, as per all formal courses

Entrance requirements

None

Limited. Capped by resources available for support & assessment

ScaleThousands Savings due to limited lecturer support

Responsible for curriculum alignment, QA, support

Lecturer role Flexible role re curriculumLimited individual support

Largely proprietary, some open Copyright

Content may be proprietary or open, user generated content often © MOOC provider

Distance education providers Providers

Traditional residential research universities partnered with private companies

No, not usually Analytics Yes, one of the promises

Conventional Certification Non conventional

Aligned with the usual formal courses QA

processes

Quality assurance

As per non formal offerings

MOOCs did not just appear

Open education Distance

education Online education

Long history 2012

April 2012http://edutechnica.com/moocmap

October 2012http://edutechnica.com/moocmap

April 2013http://edutechnica.com/moocmap

October 2013http://edutechnica.com/moocmap

Participants

Mapping the course landscape

Types of MOOCs

Showcase teaching and introduce topics with high-profile ‘rockstar’ presenters

Introduce fields and support students in undergraduate study

Develop skills and introduce topics for postgraduate study.

Showcase research and special interest topics of interest to postgraduate level

Showcase professional careers for continuing education and qualifications

Category 1 Teaching showcase

General interest high profile course

Showcases the institution by means of an engaging subject or personality led.

Global interest and matches a popular understanding of high profile MOOCs

n

High production costs | high enrollment | loose curriculum ties May attract external funding

Category 1 Teaching showcase

General interest high profile course

Showcases the institution by means of an engaging subject or personality led.

Global interest and matches a popular understanding of high profile MOOCs

n

High production costs | high enrollment | loose curriculum ties May attract external funding

Category 2 Gateway skills

Provides foundational, bridging or enhancement skills for pre HE entry or during undergraduate pathways towards specialisation.

Could replace teaching for 'bottleneck courses.’

Local interest, either within the institution or at a country-wide setting. Moderate production costs | low enrollment | close

curriculum ties May attract external funding |

Category 3 Graduate literacies

Post-graduate level courses to support application or programmes of study

Focussed on building postgraduate literacies.

Likely to be of local or national interest. Moderate production costs | low enrollment | close

curriculum ties May attract external funding

Category 4 Professional showcase

Geared towards vocational skills development, re-tooling and professional development.

Could be offered in conjunction with professional bodies.

Likely to be of local interest, although some specialised topics may be globally relevant. .

Moderate to high production costs |medium to high enrollment Close curriculum ties |May attract organisational fundingHigh potential for pathway to credit or revenue generation

Category 5 Research showcase

Showcase research or more specialised topics of interest

Offered at postgraduate level and assume some background in the topicstill geared towards general or leisure learning.

Likely to have global appeal.

Moderate/high production costs | medium/high enrollment Loose curriculum ties

Category 5 Research showcase

Showcase research or more specialised topics of interest

Offered at postgraduate level and assume some background in the topicstill geared towards general or leisure learning.

Likely to have global appeal.

Moderate/high production costs | medium/high enrollment Loose curriculum ties

Course offered simultaneously as a formal and as a open course.

Small private open course nested inside a MOOC

Massive Online Course: formal course inspired by MOOC pedagogy

Students in a course taking a MOOC with added local support and additional material

Massive Open Online Course

Formal course with lectures and support.

Perspectives on MOOCs

Participants

Institutional

researchers

Educators

What MOOCs exist and why might I want to do a MOOC?

What is there is learn from

MOOCs?

How can I use and develop MOOCs? Why are MOOCs useful?

Why take a MOOC

Learn a new skill for use in your work/life (eg stats for research)

Learn for fun/self enrichment (eg. about climate change)

Gives yourself a ‘taste’/trial of a new field or subject

Experience online learning Earn a certificate

What kind of learning

Participant can choose: ‘Drop-in’ and have a look (like a magazine) Start out and decide how much (like taking

a book out of the library) Pick and choose what you want to

explore(like a reference book) Go along for the ride (like auditing a class) Engage fully with the intention of learning

(like taking a class)

University of Pennsylvania MOOC Registrants

http://www.gse.upenn.edu/pdf/ahead/perna_ruby_boruch_moocs_dec2013.pdf

Completion Rates

http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html

The reasons for doing a MOOC are interesting but the reasons for not completing tell us more

http://www.edcentral.org/

Perspectives on MOOCs

Participants

Institutional

researchers

Educators

What MOOCs exist and why might I want to do a MOOC?

What is there is learn from

MOOCs?

How can I use and develop MOOCs? Why are MOOCs useful?

Why use MOOCs?

extending the classroom building networks exposure to different contexts accessing experts bringing in diversity and depth of experience putting African participants into a global

network benefit from other (high quality) educational

resource inputs supplement gaps in current provision

Why use MOOCs

Putting Africa into global network “Clinicians from Africa (and other low resourced settings) were given direct access to experts and people fortunate enough to have more access to education and educational resources, in other words it provided access to education to those that really needed it who could then directly impact peoples lives” (Workshop participant).

Why use MOOCs

Benefit from other educational resource inputs “give students access to high quality materials” “MOOCs can lower the burden of overflowing

‘face-to-face classes’ for staff and can liberate the learner to construct his/her own knowledge”

“academic staff development through accessing latest courses that are available in the MOOC platforms. Offers less experienced academic staff access to leading academics knowledge (a teaching development resource)”

How you can use MOOCs

Create your own MOOCs including variants

Creating MOOCs can be very resource intensive but need not be – depends on purpose and choices you make.

Use existing MOOCs

Course offered simultaneously as a formal and as a open course.

Small private open course nested inside a MOOC

Massive Online Course: formal course inspired by MOOC pedagogy

Students in a course taking a MOOC with added local support and additional material

Massive Open Online Course

Formal course with lectures and support.

Creating variants

An example: ‘open boundary course’ can be a lower cost approach to offering a MOOC and is where an existing course is simultaneously opened out to others who are not formally enrolled

Key benefit: Bringing a more diverse student body into existing course – open boundary courses

Distance education in developing world & Africa has been offering massive enrollments but only now tentatively venturing into online and blended forms e.g. Unisa offering MOCs

Using existing MOOCs

Flipping courses with MOOCs Blending MOOCs with face-to-face

classroom sessions Use MOOCs as Learning Resources Use for Professional Development Wrapping a MOOC to supplementary

skills for students

http://ctl.utexas.edu/teaching

Perspectives on MOOCs

Participants

Institutional

researchers

Lecturers

What MOOCs exist and why might I want to do a MOOC?

What is there is learn from

MOOCs?

How can I use and develop MOOCs? Why are MOOCs useful?

A research opportunity

The massiveness of MOOCs, their accessibility, and the wide range of questions they raise make the topic a very fertile area for research, and this is likely to generate new methods of research and analysis in the educational field (Bates, 2014)

What we’d like MOOCs to do“I believe that MOOCs can lower the burden of overflowing ‘face-to-face classes’ for staff and can liberate the learner to construct his/her own knowledge. Also, this can raise professional education as access to tertiary education can be increased and extended to the working class”. (Participant in a recent workshop on Developing World MOOCs)

What the research indicates…“But the people most likely to stay the course and gain a free qualification are well-educated men in their 30s working in professional jobs. Research by MOOC provider Coursera shows that 85% of MOOC participants already have university degrees.So the problem MOOCs succeed in solving is: to provide free university teaching for highly qualified professionals. (Diana Laurrilard)”

What research says about succeeding in a MOOC

Require digital literacies and know-how to navigate the online space, make sense of resources and (esp. Connectivist MOOCs)

Connectivity & bandwidth constraints for signed up participants in developing countries (heavy video-based courses)

Cultural and language factors Highly motivated learners (hence plenty of

e.g. of plucky individuals from developing countries succeeding in MOOCs)

“Alin used MOOCs to get a better job. He took Introduction to Computer Science at Udacity and at Codecademy, Introduction to R, a programming language used mainly for statistical analysis. Neither of these courses were part of his curriculum at Dhaka University.

Noting it on his CV, he was not only hired by his employer but was made supervisor of a team of three holding similar finance degrees to himself. He admits not having noteworthy grades at DU, but given his MOOC knowledge, he was able to convince his employer he was qualified for the job”

MOOC design evolving

Many models of MOOC designs emerging E.g. George Siemens piloting a dual pathway MOOC where

learners either work though a linear pathway or through project-based groups (Siemens 2014).

SPOCs and other variants result of understanding student interactions.

Platform design to scale – FutureLearn based on ‘conversational framework at scale’.

MOOCs are NOT suitable in many contexts e.g. San Jose experiment and Sebastian Thrun’s ‘pivot’ (Chafkin). Supported learning better here.

Researching MOOCs can shed light on about participant behaviour, video styles, lengths and formats, design of activities & assessment

MOOCs can inform online learning design

Huge amount of data and research that can be mined (Harvard & MIT released anonymised data)

Pedagogy enacted in public (pre MOOCs most courses hidden from all but registered students – even from other lecturers)

MOOCs in semi-formal and non-formal spaces so experiments tolerated

MOOCs inform classroom/on-campus learning design

MOOC materials used in blended and hybrid models

MOOC materials used in flipped classroom models

MOOCs used in wrapped modes

For researchers in Africa…

It would be a missed opportunity not to build knowledge around African contexts for MOOCs, online learning and classroom-based learning.Opportunity is now to define forms of MOOCs, designs for MOOCs or how MOOCs inform the provision of more diverse and flexible forms of learning Many models of MOOCs, not just one.

If not us, then who ?

Practicalities

Planning MOOCs

The six ‘P’s approach: purpose possibilities pedagogy platforms & partners provisioning process to roll out

Reading list

Czerniewicz, L; Deacon, A; Small, J and Walji, S (2014) Developing world MOOCs: A curriculum view of the MOOC landscape, in Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies (JOGLTEP) Vol. 2, Issue 3, July 2014, Michigan State, available at http://joglep.com/files/7614/0622/4917/2._Developing_world_MOOCs.pdf

CILT MOOC Reading List on MOOCs in Africa http://goo.gl/Sfb2fH

Curation of MOOC resources: http://www.scoop.it/t/moocswatch

Contact

Laura.Czerniewicz@uct.ac.za Andrew.Deacon@uct.ac.za Janet.Small@uct.ac.za Sukaina.Walji@uct.ac.za

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Twitter: @cilt_uct@czernie@sukainaw