OER, MOOCs and the promise of broadening access to education

Professor Gráinne ConoleDr Rebecca Eynon (with Nabeel Gillani and

Isis Hjorth)Sarah Porter

Part of the Breaking Boundaries serieshttp://breakingboundariesoxford.org/

Seminar format

5.00-6.30

3 short presentations (Sarah, Gráinne, Rebecca)

Panel session and discussion

6.30-7.15

Drinks reception

Openness in Open Educational Resources and MOOCs: fact or fiction?

Sarah Porter, Academic Visitor, Oxford Internet Institute

Fact: Openness

• A compelling sociological, psychological, legal and technological movement.

Source: Professor Terry Anderson

Convergence of late 1990s trend in e-learning for re-usable learning objects and the openness movements

First major manifestation through MIT Open Courseware Initiative – which spawned many others

Open Educational Resources

UKOER phase 1

UKOER phase 2

UKOER phase 3, JISC Digitisation & Content…

How can institutions, individuals, consortia best release OER?What do creators want to do with it?Is it sustainable?

How can we best encourage discovery and use of OER?How can we extend and grow existing approaches to OER?What do users want to do with it?Is this sustainable?

How can we use OER and related practices to meet identified strategicand cultural needs? How can technology support these practices and use cases?What does everyone want to do with it?Is this sustainable?

E&S reportOER infokitOER use case studiesOER use reportStudent use of OER lit. review

E&S reportOER infokit

E&S reportOER infokitInto The Wild ebookOER Historical PerspectiveTerminology guideStudent attitudes to OER

Source: David Kernohan, Jisc

2009-2012, £5.7m

Programme outcomes

Over 100 higher education institutions involved

Several thousand resources created and shared openly (through Jorum.ac.uk)

Very wide range of subject areas included

Communities of practice created

Impact?

Broadening access to education?

“while communities may encourage first steps into open practices, they sometimes seem antithetical to the basic philosophy of open release of resources. We found a contradiction between the aim of the UKOER programme to openly release OER and limited practices within some communities, resulting in release of OER within bounded communities. These contradictions present major barriers to successful OER release.”

Falconer, I., Littlejohn, A, and McGill, L. in Reusing Open Resources,  

Edited by Allison Littlejohn and Chris Pegler, Routledge, 2013

MOOC fiction

MOOCs are only being run by elite institutions in order to market themselves

MOOC learners are all western males over the age of 26

MOOCs aren't actually being used – hardly anyone completes a whole MOOC

MOOC factsThere are at least 8 million MOOC users

world-wide

MOOC participants come from a wide range of geographic locations

MOOC participants vary widely in age

Not all MOOCs are the same – demographics can vary widely depending on the subject area, level of study and approach taken

Completion rates vary widely and are up to 50% in some cases

MOOCs broadening access?

ALISON – 'the original MOOC' – 600 courses

Providing 'essential, certified workplace skills' (business, finance, languages, IT, soft skills)

Free content and support

Charged for course management, certification

Over 3 million users world-wide

Biggest growth is in India

MOOC facts

There is no single MOOC model, content and approaches vary and are developing constantly

We are just at the beginning of seeing what MOOCs will offer – the rate of development and growth is very fast e.g. 'blended' MOOCs, accredited MOOCs, varied course length

We don't yet know enough about what participants are 'getting' from MOOCs – but we do know that they have varied motivation and are engaging in a range of ways

Course Auditing Completing Disengaging Sampling

High school 6% 27% 28% 39%

Undergraduate 6% 8% 12% 74%

Graduate 9% 5% 6% 80%

Student demographics

A study from Stanford University's Learning Analytics group in 2013 identified four types of students

Student motivation

MOOC assertions

MOOC participants represent a huge population of online learners – with varied disciplines, demographics, motivations and contexts

Networked technologies, data collection and analysis tools and techniques provide a significant opportunity to understand how the learners are interacting with each other and content

Significant potential to shape more inclusive, flexible and learner-focused education

ReferencesAlison.com (accessed 17/2/14)

Anderson, T. (2013) Openness, Online Universities, Moocs and Beyond at http://www.slideshare.net/terrya/moo-cs-uoc-round-table-june-2013 (accessed 30/1/14)

Falconer, I., Littlejohn, A, and McGill, L. (2013) in Reusing Open Resources, Edited by Allison Littlejohn and Chris Pegler, Routledge.

Harvard and MIT release working papers on open online courses at https://www.edx.org/blog/harvard-mit-release-working-papers-open (accessed 17/2/14)

Huan, Li. MOOCs and higher education: concepts, models and trends (2013) at http://www.slideshare.net/sconul/li-yuan-moo-cs-and-higher-education

Kizilcec, R.F., Piech, C., Schneider, E. (2013) Deconstructing Disengagement: Analyzing Learner Subpopulations in Massive Open Online Courses at http://www.stanford.edu/~cpiech/bio/papers/deconstructingDisengagement.pdf (accessed 30/1/14)

Times Higher Education (2014), MOOC completion rates below 7% at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/mooc-completion-rates-below-7/2003710.article (accessed 30/1/14)

UK OER programme at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/ukoer3.aspx (accessed 17/2/14)

UK OER Synthesis and Evaluation at https://oersynth.pbworks.com/ (accessed 17/2/14)