e/merge discussions 27 June 2014

1. DEVELOPING WORLD
MOOCS
e/merge discussions 27 June 2014
Andrew Deacon, Janet Small, Sukaina Walji

2. 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?

3. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
MOOC REGISTRANTS
http://www.gse.upenn.edu/pdf/ahead/perna_ruby_boruch_moocs_dec2013.pdf

4. WHAT WE GET FROM
MOOCS?
• Valerie: I have participated in many MOOCs
since before the name MOOC existed. Even in
this discussion, people are talking about
“dropping out” – negative, failure to comply
with rules and requirements, .. and yet they
found the learning experience personally
interesting and informative on many levels.
Perhaps this is just part of a natural process of
growth for using MOOCs for teaching and
learning.

5. COMPLETION RATES
http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html

6. • Reasons for doing MOOCs are of interest
• but reasons for not completing tell us about other
forms of learning
http://www.edcentral.org/

7. WHAT MOOCS?
• Guy: I have done 2 MOOCs – “Mobile for
Development” by the Commonwealth of
Learning and Indian Institute of Technology,
Kanpur and currently “ICT in Primary
Education” by the Institute of Education (UK)
and UNESCO.
• In both cases I found the content reasonably
accessible.
• The main weakness, in both cases, has been
the chaotic nature of forums because of the
range of experience and ability.

8. BATES’ OBSERVATIONS
• Social aspect of learning is extremely
important
• MOOCs are primarily instruments for non-
formal learning
• Increasing facilitation makes MOOCs like
conventional lectures
Bates. Tony. (2014) MOOCs: getting to know you better,
Distance Education.

10. WHY? TO CERTIFICATE
• Jolanda’s summary:
• … certification as evidence of learning
achievement is important in all
countries
• … the current MOOC model is not compatible
with many learning settings
From “A Cross-Modal Analysis of Learning Experience from a
Learner’s perspective” by Bernard Nkuyubwatsi

12. https://www.class-central.com

13. 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?

14. THE EDUCATOR’S PERSPECTIVE
Alice Barlow-Zambodla, Tony Carr, Mohamed Ahmed
El-bahay and Gabriel Konayuma

15. WHY USE MOOCS # 1
Extending the contacts, exposure
to different contexts & accessing
experts
• Rachel: It introduced some interesting
perspectives on ethics to the participants
from high resourced countries that they
wouldn’t otherwise consider if they were
attending a course on this topic in their own
country. Interestingly the connections made
on this course also turned into long term
mentorships between people in high and
low resourced settings, with the learning
going both ways.

16. WHY USE MOOCS # 2
Putting Africa into global
network
Rachel: 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.

17. WHY USE MOOCS # 3
Creating more appropriate
content and considerations
about the local context
• Peter: It would seem beneficial…to look for
Afrocentric MOOCs produced by African
providers – or via authentic partnerships
between African and Northern providers to
properly ground content and delivery in
African realities.

18. WHY USE MOOCS # 4
Benefit from other educational
resource inputs
Joel: give students access to high quality materials
Sipho: MOOCs can lower the burden of overflowing
‘face-to-face classes’ for staff and can liberate the
learner to construct his/her own knowledge
Joel: 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)

19. WHY USE MOOCS # 5
Supplement gaps in local provision
• Janet: to supplement classroom teaching; ‘wrapping’
whereby, groups of postgraduate students enrol for a
MOOC together and set up an accompanying study
group, perhaps facilitated by a tutor. Usually these are
for supplementary skills; for example, science writing,
essay writing
• using MOOC technology and practices to fill gaps in
local educational provision (Sukaina, Peter)
• Rita: offer remedial support in the HE learning. I am
particularly thinking about areas such as writing,
numeracy and digital literacy

20. WHY? TO SEE WHAT WORKS
• Jolanda: From the discussion I am picking up
a range of interesting criteria for assessing the
success of MOOCs, some of which are:
• Content: to be clear, well curated (Sukaina), short
video
• Assessments: to be clear: short essays in response to
discussion points (Sukaina), peer assessments (Guy)
• Forums: to be structured (Guy, Janet)
• Duration: Time demands to be realistic and
achievable (Janet)
• Engagement: to be focused, students from too
diverse backgrounds (Guy, Janet), excluding others
by setting up alternative spaces for interaction
(Janet)

21. HOW YOU CAN USE MOOCS?
• Create your own MOOCs – relevant content
(Peter), appropriately delivered (Rachel,
Peter)
• Create collaborative MOOCs - create pan-African or
regional MOOCs that are relevant to all recipients in
all countries involved (Peter, Jerome)
• Creating MOOC-type variants
• Use existing MOOCs

22. CREATING YOUR OWN
• Creating MOOCs need not be resource intensive –
depends on purpose and choices you make
• Some argue “perfect way to provide education to
those that otherwise don’t have access to this
knowledge” (Rachel)

23. 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 (Sukaina)
Key benefit: Bringing a more diverse student body into
existing course – open boundary courses (Sukaina;
Rachel)
• 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

24. 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.

25. USING EXISTING MOOCS
• Flipping courses with MOOCs (Joel)
• Blending MOOCs with face-to-face classroom
(Joel)
• Use MOOCs as Learning Resources (Joel)
• Use for Professional development (Joel)
• Wrapping a MOOC to supplementary skills for
students (Janet)
• Extending the reach of a course by
incorporating other ICTs such as radio, tv,
mobile phones and print media (Alice)

26. 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?

27. 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)
Bates. Tony. (2014) MOOCs: getting to know you better,
Distance Education.

28. WHAT WE’D LIKE MOOCS TO
DO
Sipho: “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”.
http://ideabank.mit.edu/

29. 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)”

30. 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)

31. “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”

32. “Mony, an artist and an animator, has been
working at a prominent animation studio in
Dhaka. There are no animation schools in
Dhaka. She got online and took many tutorials
to learn her craft.
Within a few years she had a portfolio of work
that was so impressive she was hired on the
spot. She is currently taking the Interactive 3D
Graphics course at Udacity”

33. IMPROVING MOOC DESIGN
• Research is indicating how to improve the design
of some MOOCs taking into account the
pedagogic benefits of scale and learning
analytics.
• Researching MOOCs shed light on about
participant behaviour, video styles, lengths and
formats, design of activities & assessments
• How to design for MOOCs in resource-constrained
environments (mobiles, limited bandwidth)
Learning Design for MOOCs - guidelines for course
design: http://goo.gl/19cbTD

34. 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
• 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.

35. IMPROVING ONLINE
LEARNING DESIGN
• MOOCs have made online learning
“respectable”.
• This happened when the elite universities
started to offer MOOCs.
• But we have much to learn about how to
design effective MOOCs and how to design
effective online learning
• Often a conflation of the two, but not the
same.

36. 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

37. ONLINE LEARNING DESIGN
CAN INFORM MOOC DESIGN
• Discussion forums
• Group work
• Peer learning
Much of FutureLearn’s design is based on a
socio-constructivist approach where the
massive is mediated social and peer learning,
with experiments with group work.

38. 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
Stanford University recent report about
distributed flip.

40. FOR RESEARCHERS…
It would be a missed opportunity for African
and 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 ?