This paper presents how platforms initially designed to enable the construction of personal learning environments can help teachers and learners to aggregate their own MOOCs from resources freely available in the Cloud under Creative Commons licenses. Compare to the mainstream MOOC platforms like Coursera or EdX which are basically learning management systems open to external students, the proposed solution offers built-in social media features to boost opportunistic interaction and informal exchanges between students.

1. Personal Learning Environments as
Enablers for Connectivist MOOCs
Denis Gillet
InformationTechnology Based Higher Education andTraining, ITHET 2013
14:30-14:50, Friday, October 11,Antalya,Turkey
Paper: http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/188534?ln=en

2. ‣ From Formal to Informal
Formal Teaching
… LMS
Institutional Learning
Management Systems
are becoming social
Informal Learning
… PLE
Personal Learning
Environments
are being recognized
2
Social Learning
ROLE
2009-13

3. ‣ From Formal to Informal
3
Social Learning
PLE in
Liferay

4. ‣ Personal Learning Environments as aggregators
4
Social Learning

5. ‣ Social Media Platform: Enabling the agile creation
of dedicated shared spaces for targeted activities
5
Aggregation of Cloud
resources with GraaspIt!
Audience
• Public
• Closed
• Hidden
Roles
• Owner
• Contributor
• Viewer
Entities
• Resources
• Apps
• Activity
Spaces
• People
Graasp.epfl.ch

6. ‣ From Local to Global
Massive Teaching
… MOOCs
Massive Open
Online Courses
are offering new opportunities
• Rethink content and experience
delivery on campus
• Make room for hands-on activities
and teamwork
• Freeze content and reduce variety
(limit biodiversity)
• Require professional production staff
drawing resources
6
STELLAR
2009-12
Social Learning

7. ‣ From Local to Global
7
coursera
COURSES (444)
4,754,264
Social Learning

8. ‣ From Local to Global
8
ATLAS @ CERN
Go-Lab 2012-16
Massive Teaching
… MOOLs
Massive Open
Online Labs
are bringing back hand-on activities
• Massive access to data sets through
analysis and visualization tools
• Massive experimentation with simulation
• Massive access to remote labs thanks to
role allocation: Leaders do (manipulate)
and followers look (observe)
• or selective accessibility: gamification;
competition; peer election, peer assessment
Social Learning

9. ‣ Go-Lab EU Project • Nov 2012 • 4 years • 10M€
• Global Online Science Labs for Inquiry Learning at School
• Objective: Raise interest for and stimulate carriers in STEM
using online labs (remote labs • virtual labs • scientific data)
• Pedagogical Coordinator:
University ofTwente
• Technical Coordinator:
EPFL
9
STEM Education at School (10-18)
Science,Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Technology
Online Labs
Pedagogy
Inquiry Learning
Community
School Networks
Social Learning

10. ‣ Connectivist MOOCs
• a connectivist course is based on four major types of
activity, i.e., Aggregation, Remixing, Repurposing,
and Sharing (Kop et al) ➤ as offered by PLE platforms
‣ Typology of MOOC platforms • Continuum
• Aggregation & Dissemination: From related actions
driven by providers to contributions shared by participants
• Coaching & Assessment: From related normative
activities supervised by teachers to formative interactions
handled collaboratively with peers
• Timing & Structuring: From related scaffolds enforced
by the platforms to sequences and relations controlled by
the participants
10
Social Learning

11. ‣ Turning a PLE platform into a cMOOCs platform
through Opensocial apps
• Requirements elicited in the framework of RESCIF
Network of Excellence in Engineering Sciences of the French-speaking countries
• Extensions using only Opensocial apps
• Peer evaluation support
• Creation of quizzes, collection of the answers and analysis
• Team building and competence bartering support
• Formalization of time-based and topic-based navigation and
exploration structures through spaces;
• Support of additional metadata through internal tags;
• Management of multilingual resources;
• Recording, tagging and subtitling of video sequences;
• Integration of e-texbook standard documents
11
Social Learning

12. ‣ Personal cMOOC on Social Media
• Setup by two teachers with complementary expertizes
•Populated and evaluated by teachers and students
12
Social Learning

13. ‣ Personal cMOOC on Social Media
• Setup by two teachers with complementary expertizes
•Populated and evaluated by teachers and students
13
Sharing made easy by design thanks to built-in
creative commons licenses in public spaces
Social Learning

14. 14
Social Learning
http://www.emoocs2014.eu

15. • This work was partially funded by the European Union in
the context of the ROLE (Grant Agreement no. 231396)
and Go-Lab projects (Grant Agreement no. 317601) under
the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
theme of the 7th Framework Programme for R&D (FP7)
and by the Personal Learning Environment (Phase 3) project
of the Swiss AAA/SWITCH Program
15
Acknowledgment

16. 16
Contact & Links
• denis.gillet@epfl.ch
• http://react.epfl.ch
• http://graasp.epfl.ch
• Tutorial: http://graasp.epfl.ch/
#item=asset_3627
• http://www.role-project.eu
http://www.role-widgetstore.eu
• FP7 • IST • European Union
http://www.go-lab-project.eu