1. ASCILITE
Fellow 2012
National Teaching
Fellow 2012
Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs)
Gráinne Conole, University of Leicester
DL Forum
26th March 2013

2. Outline
• What are they?
• Evolving MOOC landscape
• Design principles
• Pros and Cons
• The OLDS MOOC
• Disaggregation of Education

3. 100 million adults can’t afford
university (UNESCO)
Image by James Cridland

4. What are they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc

5. Evolving MOOC landscape
• Online course with
large-scale participation
adopting open practices
• 2008 Connectivism and
Connective Knowledge
• cMOOCs and xMOOCs
• Key players: Coursera,
edX, Udacity
• Now: FutureLearn and a
new Oz platform
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a2cEzsMEMY

6. Design principles
• Aggregation
• Remixing
• Re-purposing
• Feeding forward
• Personalised
• Multiple channels
• No ‘right’ pathway
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14852568@N04/3363891963/

7. Pros and cons
Free
Distributed global community
Social inclusion
http://alternative-educate.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/audio-ascilite-2012-great-debate-moocs.html
High dropout rates
Learning income not learning outcome
Marketing exercise

8. http://www.olds.ac.uk/

9. Disaggregation of education
Resources Learning
pathways
Support Accreditation
http://openclipart.org/

10. The OER movement
• Over ten years of the Open
Educational Resource (OER)
movement
• Hundreds of OER
repositories worldwide
• Presence on iTunesU

11. The OPAL metromap
Evaluation shows lack of uptake
by teachers and learners
Shift from development to
community building and
articulation of OER practice
http://www.oer-quality.org/

12. POERUP outputs
• An inventory of more than 100 OER initiatives
http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Countries_with_OER_initiatives
• 11 country reports and 13 mini-reports
http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Countries
• 7 in-depth case studies
• 3 EU-wide policy papers

13. State of the art in OER
• Builds on a UNESCO
conference on HE (09)
• Discourse on policy and
practice
• How do institutions
reposition themselves
in an information rich
world where tools and
resources are freely
available?
http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412

14. Combating social exclusion
• Completely open
• Free
• Education for all
• Easy to access and use
• Crosses boundaries
• Access to new knowledge
and expertise
• Aggregation of resources
• Sharing ideas and practice
• Facilitates the
development of networks

15. Learning pathways
• Guided pathways
through materials
• Can promote different
pedagogical
approaches
– Didactic
– Constructivist
– Situative
– Connectivist
Collaborative Pedagogical Patterns

16. Support
• Computer assisted
• Peer support
• Tutor support
• Community support
• Mentoring
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24289877@N02/5851058394/

17. Accreditation
Peer to Peer University
www.p2pu.org/en/
OER University
wikieducator.org/OER_university/
Mozilla badges
http://openbadges.org/

18. Changing practices
• Nature of
learning, teaching and
research is changing
• It’s about
– Harnessing new media
– Adopting open practices
• New business models
are emerging

19. http://www.slideshare.net/GrainneConole
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance
grainne.conole@le.ac.uk
http://e4innovation.com