Higher Education in Transformation Conference, Dublin, 31st. May - 1st. April, 2015

1. Making MOOC’s sustainable
through the reduction of production costs
Rita Day, Brian Mulligan, Centre for Online Learning, IT Sligo
HEIT Conference, 2015.

2. What’s a MOOC
• Massive Open Online Course – A model for delivery learning content online to any
person who wants to learn more about a topic
• No limit on attendees
• Geographically diverse
• Free or reduced cost
• Variability in structure, content and instruction
• 1000’s of participants
• Between specified dates
• xMOOC
– Short videos
– Third party materials
– Quizzes
– Peer graded assignments

3. History of the MOOC
• 2008 –
Connectivism and Connectivity Knowledge developed by Stephen Downes
and George Siemens
• 2011 –
3 courses through Stanford
160,000 students in 190 countries
• 2013 –
150+ Universities, 1000+ Instructors and 8million+ students
• 2015 –
Stanford 1.45 million enrolments per month – offers exploration teaching, not
a revenue stream, extension of brand and footprint

4. Current Providers
• Udacity
• Coursera
• EdX
• Canvas
• Stanford
• MITX
• Yale
• Futurelearn
• IT Sligo

5. Emerging Student Patterns

6. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
• Free or reduced costs
• Global access-richer /wider
community
• Global networking
• Self challenging
• Avoids instructor bottle neck
• Non passive unlike video only
courses
Disadvantages
• Lack of quality across courses
• Lack of individual instruction
• Cost to produce (financial
sustainability)
• Course variability
• Motivation and self learning of
individuals
• Accreditation via assessment
often added for a fee
• Verification issues

7. Intel Project
• Higher Education
• Hobbies
• Transition Year
• Minority Subjects
• Augmented classes – home school
• Flipped classroom
• New Junior Leaving certificate
• College readiness
• Careers/Professional development
• Advanced placement /
• Transferable academic credit

8. Opportunities and Threats
• Opportunities • Threats
• Could they make higher
education irrelevant if
people can learn what
they want for free
• Could it undermine the
current cost model in
higher education?
Marketing
Sharing courses between
institutions
blended/flipped learning
Improving learning quality
Research data.

9. Costs to Develop
• Instructors develop their own courses
• Course development 100+hours
• Course management 8-10hours per week
• Provider services
• $250,000+ per course
• $50,000+ every time the course is taught
• Free to participants

10. "Could it be cheaper? - IT Sligo Research"
– Free platforms
– Low cost recording tools
– Open Education Resources
– Instructional branding
– Quality and standardisation
• LoCoMoTion Project moocs4all.eu
– How to build low-cost MOOCs
– MOOC starting June 2015
– IT Sligo, Technical U. of Delft, U. of Girona, Fachhochschule Bielefeld,
Bath Spa University

11. Hobbies (e.g. Nutrition and Fitness for athletes)

12. Minority subjects (e.g. Economics, Applied Maths)

13. Augment classes (revision etc.)
• Workshops
• Seminars
• Reflection
• Reaffirming learning
• Learning gaps

14. “Flipped classroom” (specified by teachers)
The prevalence of coding and programming has been
exemplified through embedding coding in the new junior
leaving certificate.

15. College readiness (e.g. Study skills IT Sligo, Feb 2016)
• CV and job applications
• Career exploration
• Fill in a skills gap
• Employers look to search MOOC database
• Getting working employability course –
Get Working MOOC
• Project at IT Sligo to build a
MOOC for college leavers to
Get them ready for college

16. Careers (choosing a course)
• Life long learning – 40 years plus college
• Information on available courses and applicable to a specific
career
• Value proposition through MOOC completion
• Active learning in the classroom
• Blended learning outperforms face to face
• MOOCs as a mechanism for risk free exploration
• Explore topics and levels of difficulty
• Value recognition through certificate of completion

17. “Advanced Placement” (College courses)
• Leverage contacts
• Students are taking a college course before
they arrive as type of course foundation or
skills gap
• Language development pre-college course

18. Intel Ireland MOOC Project
• Funded by Intel Ireland
• Objective:
– To develop (4) free online courses in coding for young people
– Leverage the amount of data in this field
– Measuring value
– Quality at low cost
• Led by IT Sligo
– Project Manager, Rita Day,
Project Leader, Brian Mulligan
• Partners
– DIFE, DIT, CoderDojo,
FIT, SW College
– September 2015

19. Web Page Development
• Jessica Matthews, DIFE Drogheda Institute of
Further Education
• Currently piloting HTML, CSS
• Available Autumn 2015

20. Roboslam
• Frank Duignan, Dublin Institute of Technology
• https://roboslam.wordpress.com/
• Currently piloting
• Available Autumn 2015
• Electronic fundamentals, C programming
• Requires ordering a kit (€250 / 10 kits)

21. Multiplayer Online Game Development
• Noel King, Coder Dojo
• Javascript, Server programming, Clientside
programming, networking, social
• Currently piloting
• Available Autumn, 2015

22. Mobile Game Development
• Mark Taylor, Fast-track to IT (www.fit.ie)
• MIT AppInventor
• Pilot starts 13th April, 2015
• Available Autumn, 2015

23. Southwest College - Zambia
• Further Education – online meets the needs
• Free education in Africa (MOOC)

24. Any Questions?
www.itsligo.ie/online