A short presentation given to meeting of British Council MENA regional representatives 23-09-13

1. MOOCs, online
learning and
Coventry Open
Media Classes

2. My name is Shaun Hides – I‘m head of the Dept of Media at Coventry – I’m
going to try to do three things
1) Understand where you are in relation to digital/connected media
2) Briefly explain where MOOCs came from and what they are
3) To explain what we have done with our Open Classes in this context of
change
I will locate this in the context of education for media and creative practice
with reference of UK HE - and in relation to Open Education

3. Changing our mind-sets: the media Landscape
Media – becoming more connected/distributed, mobile, prosumer

4. Firstly we need to note the changed media landscape
Media no longer only consists of boxes (discrete technologies or
platforms – e.g. newspapers television sets ) media platforms have
―converged‖ so smart phones allow us to ,make calls
(communications devices) but also receive media content (news TV
film/video / news papers audio/music) all in one device and to make
content (photo vidoe audio) and to distribute it through web and
social media.
These new connected digital media change our relationship to media
content we become prosumers (producer-consumers)

5. Changing our mind-sets: teaching
Students are connected/distributed, mobile, prosumer; but we are not

6. This change walks into our classrooms with our students – who bring
in the most capable communications device in history: the Smart
phone
Accepting – embracing and taking advantage of massive level of
change in media - from broadcasts and screens / boxes and
receivers to distribution touch/tactile technologies and prosumers
applies in the classroom too
For CU in a Media Dept. Moving to Open Media (OA OE Course
Hybrids) meant :

7. Changing our mind-sets: scholarship
Connected/distributed, mobile, prosumer media are changing content creation
and publishing; but we are not

8. This change is also directly impacting academic scholarship and
publication, where for instance, researchers are increasingly using
Creative Commons as a means of publishing their research in openly
accessible ways.
This is done for positive reasons – to give more people access to
research – especially if its publicly funded, but it is also changing
ideas of who the researcher or author is – since such research often
become collaborative

9. Changing our mind-sets: research and Publication
Publishing
The university
Money
Academic /
researcher
content
An unsustainable business model ?
Public sector / funding
The academic community
content
Money
Money
content
content
Students

10. The current structure of the economy of academic
scholarship/publishing seems wholly untenable – even before taking
the disruptive effects of digital technologies.
The transformation of this landscape via new digital platforms, will
disrupt this iunstable space
Initial suggestions on how to make published academic research
openly accessible in the UK – so-called ―gold‖ open access
publishing - appears to suggest swapping over-priced subscriptions
and book charges for over-priced publishing fees - mooted to be c
£1500-2000 for journal articles and £10-11000 per book – ie
academics and universities pay to ensure the preservation of
publishers role in the system = this seems unlikely to be the outcome

11. • US HE costs - $1500 p.a. textbooks
• US overall student debt -
• Digital–connected media
• Lowered threshold costs for access
• End of scarce content
• New modes of engagement
UK / Europe – necessity to respond despite different
contexts
By some estimates, the cost of obtaining a college degree has grown almost twelvefold over the last few decades, and in
2012, our nation‘s student loan debt hit a record high, surpassing the $1 trillion mark—a figure larger than the country‘s
outstanding credit card debt.
MOOC Mania: Debunking the hype around massive open online courses
By Audrey Watters
CONTEXT

12. MOOCs
So MOOCs - at least xMOOCs are a response to this changed environment – one kind of response, or maybe symptom of it

13. MOOCscMOOCs (C for ―connectivist‖, the educational theory that inspired them1) run on open
source learning platforms and are led by academics as part of their university activity. Their
pedagogical model is peer learning. These are associated particularly with their founding
institutions Abathasca and Manitoba Universities in Canada.
xMOOCs are online versions of traditional learning formats (lecture, instruction, discussion
etc.) on proprietary specialist software platforms owned by private enterprises. They
feature contractual and commercial relationships between Universities who create content,
and technology providers. These are associated mostly with the three largest platform
providers edX, Udacity and Coursera. The UK‘s FutureLearn, scheduled to launch autumn
2013, will be in this group.

14. This change is also directly impacting academic scholarship and
publication, where for instance, researchers are increasingly using
Creative Commons as a means of publishing their research in openly
accessible ways.
This is done for positive reasons – to give more people access to
research – especially if its publicly funded, but it is also changing
ideas of who the researcher or author is – since such research often
become collaborative

15. MOOCs a timeline
With acknowledgement to UUK

16. Here is a timeline which places the recent xMOOCs in historical
context
The Open Educational Resources and Open content movements
predate MOOCs by some way - MIT‘s Opencourse ware is a
precursor
The Close relative cMOOCs work on a very different ethos – they are
about collaboration.
MITx EdX Coursera Udacity and Futurelearn are fairly similar and
come out of need to broadcast their content as mode of promoting
their brand(s)

17. MOOCs
“ (xMOOCs) are mostly quite conservative pedagogically and seem to be mostly about leveraging the brand value of elite institutions –
and the costs of starting up in the US are viable given the cost context of HE in America – as above

18. MOOC Characteristics

19. Measuring some of the current xMOOCs and related innovations
against their tendencies towards innovation and conservatism is quite
instructive - thus the cMOOCs are quite disruptive of HE institutions
because the networks they put together offer a wholly different sense
of participation – but they are technologically fairly conservative since
they require no new technologies – they pick up what is to hand.
So they aren‘t safe or unsafe, progressive or regressive – they are
each all of the above

20. Broadcast vs Trusted-provider
hub for Community – Networked
and bespoke

21. In the context of new connected-mobile media – simply broadcasting
wont be enough - xMOOCs can look a lot like a new form of
broadcasting
As media content proliferates, the question will no longer be ―how
can I get to make or distribute media‖ - as it was in the 20th Cent .
That will be easy.
The questions will become how will my work be found and seen or
heard – this applies to us in the classroom – how will we be heard –
how can we persuade the student that we can be trusted – that we
can be a hub for their developing community - what value do we add
by being here now this minute??

22. Social media revolution
Structured Content Un-bundled

23. This a NEW STORY – can be understood in different ways The Napster moment – the
disruption of the Music industry
In the ‗beginning‘ –
Here is my (the artist) highly crafted; high quality carefully structured and bundled album –
which you must pay quite a lot for
Napster says - you (the audience) bought the CD but probably only like 3 out of the 13
tracks and you want to share them with friends - go ahead re-digitise them online and share
The music industries response was a) copyright violation – you (most of the music
audience) are criminals - not a good business move AND, b) the MP3 format is terrible –
its poor quality people won‘t want it - WRONG ! Most people did want to trade off
portability for HiFi quality
Apple – iTunes and Amazon ‗got it‘ Download - but the music industry had to be levered
into this -
IF this is our Napster Moment - our question is how not to respond like the music industry.

24. OPEN MEDIA
Our response we defined an Open Media strategy - an ethos and approach to organise experiments in new ways of working
Task was - not take a stand in the face of incoming tide of new information-media - to protect the traditional academic model

26. Coventry Open
Media Classes

27. Aim : a (media)
scholarship and
practice sustainable
in the 21st Century

28. Changing our practices: spaces, technologies, visibility

29. This meant that our classes became open and connected – which meant that the
classes didn‘t look like classes but networks -
which has begun to make them disruptive of the rest of the teaching in the Dept.
Our spaces were transformed - but also our connections with the rest of CU was also
transformed
The classes brought in new kinds of collaborators but these were ―with‖ us in new
ways
Lastly the classes disrupted the boundaries of how was and wasn‘t a student - when
they were students and who were the experts /practitioners
.

30. Changing our practices – open Classes

31. We have released a series of Open Media classes which make all forms of the class
content and much of the dialogue and interaction freely accessible on line.
The classes use openly available platforms rather than keeping them behind the usual
barriers of fees (pay-walls) or password/ID protected online learning environments –
although we do operate one of these (Moodle) as well.
Instead the classes use wordpress blogs, and other externally accessible paltforms
twitter, flicker vimeo etc. - the content is all released under CC BY SA licence to
register the need for attribution but easy sharing.
.

32. Means: the
connected,
expanded -
hybrid class

33. Changing our practices: open Classes – effects

34. The classes brought in new kinds of collaborations but these collaborators (external
professionals, academics in other institutions, creative parctitioners) were ―with‖ us in
new ways
The classes disrupted the boundaries of who was and wasn‘t a student - when they
were students and who were the experts /
practitioners
This approach enabled amazing new kinds of direct collaboration and creative practice
- internship with Annie liebowitz L1 student work on the cover of BJP L2 students
establishing a new online magazine
.

35. Open research
We have also explored ―new‖ modes of distributing media scholarship -
For example Liquid Theory TV uses emerging media practices and networks to magnify the scope, scale and impact of all our (staff and student) work.

36. Impact
This new way of doing things has had real impact
One modest symposium event, was later offered as a series of openly accessible pod-casts
These have had a huge number of listeners way beyond the audience for the face to face event

37. 1 day event 35 participants
1,000,000+
listens ,

38. Impact
This approach led to our work being ranked as noteworthy alongside that of Harvard Stanford and Oxford by itunes

39. • 2006 Open talks (300+ talks c. 500,000 listens)
• 2008 Uni. with Youtube (1.5+ million views )
• 2008 Green Open Access Research Mandate ast Uk media dept
• 2009 CU and Medi itunes U (6.8 million Listens )
• 2009 Open classes (500,000+ visits )
• 2011 1st BA Photography Class App (500 downloads first term )
• 2012 1st mobile media courses – every student has tech-pack

40. Some lessons we are trying to learn:
• Open and mobile are just modes of operating not ends in themsleves;
• reducing barriers between your audiences and your content works out economically – the
piracy/obscurity paradox ;
• work out where the real value of what you do lies
– we offer a unique hub that‟s connected and curated
– we offer an intensive collaborative-connected-distributed learning experience
– we offer high level certification
• go where the fish swim ( use what is being used) / don‟t build “it” (e.g. VLEs) hoping „they
will come‟;
• don‟t assume the fish know about the water – students aren‟t digitally „literate‟, they‟re
digital natives;
• disruption doesn‟t just happen where/how you intend;
• new (business) models and re-purposing/re-versionning/ unbundling are our next steps -
we need radically new pedagogies and radically new relationships with/offers to, our
communities
Thank you.