Part of a debate on MOOCs in higher education at University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Open UBC Week, Oct. 29, 2014.

1. THE “OPEN” IN MOOCS
Christina Hendricks, Sr. Instructor
Philosophy & Arts One, UBC
Open UBC Week, Oct. 29, 2014
Slides available here: http://is.gd/HendricksMOOC2014
Slides licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

2. •Massive
•Open
•Online
•Course
• MOOC enrollment/completion
http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html;
Article about these results: http://is.gd/ENg6bd
• Some more than others; depends
on meaning of “open”
• Depends on meaning of “course”

3. What is the “open” in MOOCs?
• Coursera terms of use:
https://www.coursera.org/abou
t/terms
• Ed X terms of service:
https://www.edx.org/edx-terms-
service
• Open2Study (Australia)
terms of service:
https://www.open2study.com/l
egal/terms-and-conditions
A Day at the Museum 2, Flickr
photo shared by Robert Couse-
Baker, licensed CC-BY 2.0

4. What else does “open” mean?
“The Open Definition”: “Open means anyone can
freely access, use, modify, and share for any
purpose …” http://opendefinition.org/
David Wiley, 5 “R’s”: http://www.opencontent.org/definition/
• Retain
• Reuse
• Revise
• Remix
• Redistribute

5. What else does “open” mean?
• Open Educational Resources (OER):
“Open Educational Resources (OERs) are
any type of educational materials that are in
the public domain or introduced with an
open license. The nature of these open
materials means that anyone can legally
and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share
them. (UNESCO, http://is.gd/UNESCO_OerDefin)
• Open textbooks: BCcampus open
textbook project: http://open.bccampus.ca

6. What else might “open” mean?
• Opening up the curriculum and content to
co-creation by learners/participants
• Acknowledging & facilitating participants’
own learning goals & choice of pathways
through material (works better for some
courses than others, admittedly!)

7. Another kind of MOOC

8. xMOOCs
• Often focused on an expert delivering content
• Instructors at centre, providing, organizing
content & assessments
• Course content is usually determined in
advance
• Students often encouraged to go through
course uniformly & linearly; there is a hope for
“completion’
• Course is housed in one “place” on the web
See, e.g., http://is.gd/xcmoocchart

9. cMOOCs
• Major focus is on developing connections between
participants to promote learning from each other,
including after the course is finished
• Instructors are facilitators and co-learners
• The content of the course is often partly co-created
by participants
• Participants set own learning goals and own
pathways through the course; completion not
(always) an aspiration
• Course is often distributed in several places on the
web
See, e.g. http://is.gd/K5JfXK http://is.gd/hZfG4d http://is.gd/DEqD1U

10. From Dave Cormier, What is a MOOC?, licensed CC-BY:
http://is.gd/cQwOSP

11. Value of cMOOCs
• Like xMOOCs:
• Professional development
• Lifelong learning
• More specific to cMOOCs: the connections!
• Creation of an extensive PLN (Personal
Learning Network) beyond one’s local
community

12. Drawbacks of cMOOCs
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13. Thank you! And contact info
Christina Hendricks
Sr. Instructor, Philosophy & Arts One, UBC
Website: http://blogs.ubc.ca/christinahendricks
Blog: http://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks
Twitter: @clhendricksbc
Slides available here:
http://is.gd/HendricksMOOC2014
Slides licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0