ECIL ,October 2015

Supporting information literacy in

MOOC learning

Sheila Webber

Information School

University of

Sheffield

MOOC

• Massive i.e many learners (often, thousands)

• Open i.e. (freely) available to anyone (although

many MOOCs only accessible to those who

register): also open-access issue

• Online

• Course i.e. some aim and structure to the learning

Sheila Webber, 2015

Some MOOC characteristics • Strong marketing/ showcase element

• Profile of early adopting educators different from some other types of e-learning early adopters? (e.g. higher profile)

• (Potentially) more diverse learners

• Learners external to the institution

• Not always integrated as normal part of learning & teaching but possibly becoming “tamed*”

• Different platform from institutional VLE

• High attrition rate

• Learners not necessarily aiming to complete but still want to enjoy experience they have

“We want people to think about Web Science and think about doing a degree in Web Science” Professor Dame Wendy Hall, trailer for University of Southampton’s Futurelearn Web Science MOOC

Sheila Webber, 2015 *Tamed = not disruptive, but rather appropriated by mainstream institutions

Me & MOOCs

• An Educator on the Futurelearn Play MOOC

• Dipped into other MOOCs as learner

• I am in the Futurelearn Academic Network (focused on MOOC research)

• Some contact with the Futurelearn librarians group

• Two of my students interviewed the MOOC coordinator & the educator for the Dentistry MOOC about information literacy in the MOOC (2014)

• One of my Masters students did (2014) a study of a Futurelearn MOOC (learning analytics and interviews with the educator & designer)

Sheila Webber, 2015

Futurelearn is a MOOC

platform/consortium,

started in the UK

Librarians’

roles MOOC

educator

Asset

management

Dealing with

intellectual

property

Course design

Content creation

Delivery

Metadata

Storage

Retrieval

Distribution

Copyright

clearance

Advice to educators

Marketing

MOOCs Proactive

learner

Quality

assurance,

evaluation

Educating for

information

literacy

Virtual

reference

e.g. promoting

to new

students

Including

learning

analytics

Advice

Support

Developing

system and

applications

Connecting with learners

Modelling good MOOC

learning

Information

architect

Teaching

assistant

Facilitating,

interacting

See e.g. Bond (2015), Eisengraber-Papst

et al. (2014), Elliott and Fabro (2015),

Gore (2015), O’Brien et al. (2014)

Exercises,

tutorials,

resources etc.

Institutional factors affecting the library's

engagement with MOOCs were: Nature of

MOOCs offered by the institution;

Institutional coordination of MOOCs;

Models of MOOC support; Structure of

existing [library] services; [library] Staff

and budget. (O’Brien et al., 2014)

Sheila Webber, 2015

Your involvement in MOOCs

• What roles have you experienced, if any?

• If you are not a librarian, may be roles not on the

diagram

• Are there roles you plan to have or aspire to?

• Discuss in groups of 2/ 3

• Quick feedback

What is the nature of the teaching-

Learning Environment for the MOOC

learners?

Continuing factors

• Teachers’ varied approaches to teaching

• Learners’ varied approaches to learning

• Variation between disciplines in teaching, learning, use of information & technology

• Issues specific to non f2f learning

• Variation between university culture, norms and practice

a good deal already known about these issues!

Sheila Webber, 2015

The

Teaching-

Learning

Environment

Entwistle et

al. (2004: 3) These elements still apply with MOOCs, with potentially great diversity in student characteristics and expectations

Sheila Webber, 2015

The Teaching-Learning Environment Entwistle et al. (2004: 3)

A further key influence in specifying design & quality is the MOOC platform provider and the MOOC platform itself

Sheila Webber, 2015

These elements may be less important in MOOCs’ learning design

“The most surprising insight that emerged from the

interview accounts was just how significant a role the

FutureLearn platform played in the course

development process. Firstly, the platformʼs available

activity formats largely dictated design..... Secondly,

FutureLearn exercised tight control over course

content and communications ... A rigorous ʻquality

assuranceʼ process described by the technical

developer involved editing of course content and

emails to learners.”

Colhoun (2014: 54, 56)

Who are the learners?

Demographics e.g.

• Nationality

• Gender

• Age

• Occupation

• Educational level

• Whether have previously engaged with MOOCs

Motivation/ Intention

• Active; Passive; Lurking [though may just lurk inside

the MOOC] (Milligan et al., 2013)

• Fulfilling current needs; Preparing for the future;

Satisfying curiosity; Connecting with people (Zheng

et al., 2015)

• Completing; Auditing [don’t do assessments];

Disengaging; Sampling (Kizilcec et al., 2013)

What kind of MOOC is it?

Conole’s (2014) MOOC dimensions (to be rated as low, medium and high)

• How Open?

• How Massive?

• How great a diversity of participants?

• Is there use of varied multimedia

• What is the degree of (forms of) communication

• What degree of collaboration is enabled/ required?

• Amount of reflection demanded/ encouraged in the MOOC?

• Nature of Learning pathway: is it linear or more flexible?

• What form of Quality assurance?

• Is there certification of learning?

• Is there a link to Formal Learning?

• What is the degree of learner Autonomy? Sheila Webber, 2015

Sharpe et al’s (2006) Dimensions of

blended learning

• Delivery: different modes (face-to-face and distance education)

• Technology: what mix of technologies or applications is used?

• Chronology: synchronous or asynchronous interventions

• Locus: practice-based or class-room based learning

• Roles: are people with different roles involved in delivery? multi-disciplinary or professional groupings?

• Pedagogy: what kind of pedagogical approach?

• Focus: does it acknowledge the different aims of different learners?

• Direction: is it instructor-directed vs. autonomous or learner-directed learning?

Sheila Webber, 2015

How do people engage with information

in a MOOC?

Literature (not research) on information

literacy and MOOCs • Focus on enabling access to resources (linking, open

access, copyright cleared) and supporting/ developing academic-type information literacy

• Linking to resources & creating search guides (e.g. Wright, 2013)

• Teaching information literacy within a MOOC (e.g. Bayne, 2013; Eisengraber-Pabst, Vogt and Deimann, 2014)

• Mapping connectivist activities of aggregate, remix, repurpose, feed forward onto ACRL (2000) standards (Bond, 2015)

• “Strong critical thinking, evaluation and analysis skills are essential in navigating the plethora of information sources available, and given the wide range of locations that open resources can be found, so are strong searching skills.” (Elliott and Fabbro, 2015:137)

• “Advice can be given to the faculties as to what fundamental information literacy learning materials can be provided to the student upon enrolment on the MOOC to “teach students to become critical thinkers capable of being independent learners” (Franklin and Stephen 2010, 36–37); this can only be achieved if the MOOC can “teach students to become responsible users of information, this requires time spent reviewing how to take information from a source, to select only the most important pieces of information, and to paraphrase, summarise, or quote the source correctly” (Vent 2010, 28–30).” (Gore, 2014: 8)

Thus strong focus on academic IL, and

particularly searching and evaluating

Study in information behaviour in the

Exploring Play MOOC

Exploring Play MOOC, Sep-Nov 14

• Cross faculty team: I led week 6 of 7 on “virtual play”

• Each week has steps; with videos, articles, comment-

based discussion and a quiz

• Each step has a comment thread

• Use of a few tools outside the platform, but mostly

interactions inside

• Learners asked to remember, reflect, carry out

observations and playful activities

Sheila Webber, 2015

17,000 learners registered, 8,954 did at

least one step, 1,391 completed;

70,000 comments

Sheila Webber, 2015

Demographics • No demographics for total populations: profile is

short and no obligation to give age, gender, location

Sheila Webber, 2015

My profile and my avatar tweets a toy selfie

MOOC demographics in 2014

• 5,515 respondents to pre-course questionnaire

• 93% female; 61% aged 26-45; 54% from UK

• 75% working either full or part time

• 78% first degree or above

• 60% wished to add a fresh perspective to current

work

Sheila Webber, 2015

So could say that

• Majority in work; from comments evident many working professionally with children

• Therefore relevance of workplace, rather than academic, information literacy?

• Age profile (and comments) indicate many have families

• Thus likely to have developed work and family networks

• In contrast platform does not enable forming of groups, and is an enormous cohort, so links less likely to develop

Sheila Webber, 2015

Exercise on information behaviour

• Exercise during my week of the Play MOOC, on virtual play

• A short video, presented by my Second Life avatar, described information behaviour, and gave examples of acquiring information inside and outside SL

• 673 comments

• Following are impressions from an initial scan through comments, not a formal analysis

Sheila Webber, 2015

• Now, think about how you discovered any information you needed for this course and post a comment below.

• Did you stay inside the course? For example scanning the videos to find what you wanted, reading the educators’ articles, asking questions in discussion threads.

• Did you search for material outside the course? If so, what did you do - for example did you search Google, ask friends and family, use books, journals or magazines?

• Did you tend to go searching for information, browse round for it (e.g. reading through a lot of discussion posts) or bump into information by chance?

• Do you think you’ve learnt things through play that you’ve used in other parts of your life? Sheila mentioned things such as learning leadership or teamwork skills, through using games like World of Warcraft, but you needn’t restrict the discussion to computer games

My introductory questions for the discussion in comments

Reported Information behaviour

• Information in course: videos; core articles, links; comments from learners; additional reading & links

• Information outside the course:

– Non-human: Internet (Google, websites, Youtube) mentioned most; also learner’s own books, TV, radio, educational magazines, museum

– Human: family, friends, work colleagues, gamers; including some examples of friends taking MOOC at same time; some mention getting contrasting perspectives

• Information from self: Memories (prompted by discussion or MOOC); Observation; Experience; Info/understanding from current or previous courses/education /training

Sheila Webber, 2015

• Saving and managing information for later use

• A lot of sharing information – mostly face to face but

also digitally e.g. via Facebook as well as in the

MOOC

• Creating information, inside and outside MOOC

• Applying information and understanding in work, at

home; to educate others, in own practice, as self-

development

Sheila Webber, 2015

Exercise

• Work in groups of 2 or 3

• Pick a MOOC to examine: one that one of you is/ will be engaged with

• If don’t have a MOOC in mind: use the “Exploring Play” MOOC

• Map the teaching-learning environment as far as you can (some aspects may be unknown)

• Look at the MOOC – the platform and the specific MOOC – see if you can categorise it using Conole’s and/ or Sharpe’s dimensions

• Think about the learners and their characteristics and intentions

What are the implications for the IL support

and education that learners will need?

• You might want to think about the whole MOOC or

one part of the MOOC

• Focus more on what learners’ needs and your aims

might be, rather than how you might meet/achieve

them

• Record your ideas however you want (document,

powerpoint, on paper)

• Prepare to share them

Sheila Webber

s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk

http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber

Twitter: @sheilayoshikawa

SL: Sheila Yoshikawa

Orcid ID 0000-0002-2280-9519

Pictures by Sheila Webber, taken in Second Life

References • Bayne, G. (2013, September 16) CNI 2013 Podcast: Information Literacy MOOCs

at Wake Forest University. Coalition for Networked Information. http://www.educause.edu/blogs/gbayne/cni-2013-podcast-information-literacy-moocs-wake-forest-university

• Bond, P. (2015). Information Literacy in MOOCs. Current Issues in Emerging eLearning, 2(1), Article 6. http://scholarworks.umb.edu/ciee/vol2/iss1/6

• Colhoun, N. (2014). Learning from learning analytics: can data analysis of a futurelearn mooc usefully inform design for learning? MSc Dissertation. Sheffield: University of Sheffield.

• Conole, G. (2014). A 12-Dimensional classification schema for MOOCs. http://e4innovation.com/?p=799

• Eisengraber-Pabst, D., Vogt, S. and Deimann, M. (2014). The academic library: a hidden stakeholder: in the age of MOOCs. Paper presented at World Library and Information Conference (IFLA) 2014 Lyon. http://library.ifla.org/

• Entwistle, N., Nisbet, J. and Bromage, A. (2004). Teaching-learning environments and student learning in electronic engineering: paper presented at Third Workshop of the European Network on Powerful Learning Environments, in Brugge, September 30 – October 2, 2004. http://www.ed.ac.uk/etl/docs/Brugge2004.pdf

Sheila Webber, 2015

• Elliott, C. and Fabbro, E. (2015) The Open Library at AU (Athabasca University): supporting open access and open educational resources. Open Praxis, 7(2), 133–140

• Gore, H. (2014). Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their impact on academic library services: exploring the issues and challenges. New review of academic librarianship, 20 (1), 4-28.

• Kizilcec, R. F., Piech, C., & Schneider, E. (2013). Deconstructing disengagement: analyzing learner subpopulations in massive open online courses. In Proceedings of the third international conference on learning analytics and knowledge (pp. 170-179). ACM.

• Milligan, C., Littlejohn, A. and Margaryan, A. (2013) Patterns of engagement in Connectivist MOOCs. MERLOT journal of online learning and teaching, 9(2), 149-159.

• O'Brien, L. et al (2014) Working Group on Models for Course Support and Library Engagement Report. edX Libraries Collaboration. http://tinyurl.com/q5u9kq2Webber, S. (2013) "Blended information behaviour in Second Life." Journal of information science, 39(1), 85–100

• Sharpe, R. et al. (2006). The undergraduate experience of blended e-learning: a review of UK literature and practice. York: HEA.

• Wright, F. (2013) What do librarians need to know about MOOCs? D-Lib magazine, 19 (3/4) http://dlib.org/dlib/march13/wright/03wright.html

• Zheng, S., Rosson, M., Shih, P. and Carroll, J. (2015). Understanding student motivation, behaviors, and perceptions in MOOCs. Motivation and Dynamics of the Open Classroom CSCW 2015, March 14-18, 2015. (pp.1882-1895). ACM.

Sheila Webber, 2015