Background
There is currently much interest and excitement at the emergence of an educational approach commonly termed the ‘Massive Open Online Course’ or MOOC. These MOOCs are truly global in their reach, and can be massive with tens of thousands of participants. Whilst the approach is very much in its infancy the concept has gained traction in a short time and is developing and evolving almost on a month/weekly/(or even) daily basis. For many people much of their understanding about MOOCs will have been gained from reading about them in the traditional media.
I have participated in several MOOCs and wanted to present my experiences to the conference, and allow delegates to consider the positives that MOOCs could offer in and of themselves, but also how lessons can be learned to potentially improve on-campus courses.
What are MOOCs
As the name implies, in their original form these ‘courses’ are open in the sense that they are available for anyone to participate, they are at zero cost to the participants and the content is freely available without restriction.
Depending on the type of MOOC there may be no prerequisites to participation. Thus, some would argue, MOOCs have the potential to open up higher education to vast numbers of people who would not otherwise have access possibly due to gender, religion, culture, socio-economic background or a host of life events or supposed disadvantages preventing access. They can also bring greater breadth to the learning experience of traditional ‘campus-based’ participants, drawing upon cultural differences and past life experiences.
History of MOOCs
Dave Cormier is credited as coining the term MOOC in 2008 when he had a discussion on Skype regarding the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course (CCK08) George Siemens was running with Stephen Downes. A year prior to that Alec Couros ran the Social Media and Open Education open online course and David Wiley ran an open course based on a wiki. In turn these initiatives were founded upon a long history and research of open education and online learning and teaching.
These types of MOOCs were the only ones run until in 2011 Stanford made some of their courses openly available, which included the Artificial Intelligence course run by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. That particular course was successful in attracting 160,000 people who enrolled from 190 countries, aged from 13 to 70, including working single mothers, people in active war zones under attack, in short a diverse cohort of ‘non-typical’ Stanford students.
Fig. 1 Screenshot of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence MOOC webpage
Arguably, this initiative by Stanford is what took the MOOC concept out of the educational technologists’ world and propelled it into more general acceptance, fuelled by traditional media hype.
Following the Stanford AI course, Sebastian Thrun decided that he couldn’t go back to teaching in a class of maybe a hundred students at Stanford so he resigned his tenure and jointly set up Udacity.
Fig. 2 Screenshot of Udacity home webpage.
Also out of the work at Stanford came Coursera.
Fig. 3 Screenshot of the Coursera home webpage
And at the same time Harvard and MIT set up edX, with Berkley joining later.
Fig. 4 Screenshot of edX home webpage
Udacity and Coursera are for-profit organizations. Currently, they have a large amount of venture capital provided to them so that they can operate (e.g. $22m for Coursera). Ultimately, they with need to monetize their business concept. edX is different in that it is a not for-profit initiative. My understanding is that edX allows the institutions to enhance and improve their on-campus course provision by experimenting within these open online courses, in a continual feedback mechanism.
So, in their short existence MOOCs have undergone this schism into two distinct forms. The original format, based on a proposed new ‘pedagogical theory’ (or simply a ‘pedagogic view’) called Connectivism, is now commonly termed cMOOC whilst the other strand that has a more ‘traditional’ approach to course content transfer and where enrollment is required and the content isn’t ‘open’ is termed xMOOC. The latter has got most of the publicity and kudos for the concept, as George Siemens writes:
… let’s start by doing away with the “lone genius myth” of MOOCs. Thrun, Udacity, Coursera, and Stanford did not invent MOOCs. They did run them on a much larger scale than we have done with our MOOCs. They had better PR connections and better funding. Our own MOOCs, in turn, borrowed heavily from online learning research, our work with networked learning, and the experiences of conferences and online courses that are at least 20 years old. In academia, there is a desire for attribution, an acknowledgement of the origin of ideas. … Having the idea first is not the same as succeeding in commercializing and moving ideas into the public sphere. In regards to the ladder [sic], Udacity and Coursera have been wonderfully capable.
George Siemens
Adjacent possible: MOOCs, Udacity, edX, Coursera
Accessed 18 December 2012
The timeline of MOOC development is as shown:
Fig. 5 Diagram showing the MOOC development timeline
http://www.deltainitiative.com/bloggers/online-educational-delivery-models-a-descriptive-view
Accessed 7 December 2012
A slight aside to xMOOCs is Semester Online. This isn’t strictly a MOOC but interestingly some universities that have signed up with Coursera are also involved in this venture. Significantly, these are credit-bearing courses.
- Semester Online is a for-credit, online program for undergraduates offering rigorous courses, where students will have access to renowned professors from multiple, highly selective institutions.
- Courses are taught live, in small groups where students are surrounded by outstanding peers and guided by renowned professors – much as they would be if they were on campus.
- Compelling, richly produced, self-paced course materials are designed with university faculty and are accessible 24 hours a day.
- Familiar social networking tools allow students to connect and build relationships with peers from their school and other schools online.
Accessed 18 December 2012
The latest news about MOOCs include major announcements from the UK Higher Education sector. In July 2012 Edinburgh announced that they were joining Corsera in providing online courses. Then in about September time, The University of London also announce a tie-in with Coursera.
On 14 December 2012, The Open University announced that it along with a consortium of 11 other UK universities would be launching their MOOC courses on a dedicated platform provided by FutureLearn Ltd. an independent company but with The Open University as the majority owner.
The 11 other consortium universities are:
- Birmingham
- Bristol
- Cardiff
- East Anglia
- Exeter
- King’s College London
- Lancaster
- Leeds
- Southampton
- St Andrews
- Warwick
News articles relating to this announcement included:
- THES: Open University launches British Mooc platform to rival US providers
- FT: OU leads universities into online venture
- The Telegraph: UK universities to launch free degree-style online courses
- The Independent: Students get free university courses online
- WSJ Tech Europe blog: U.K. Universities Embrace Digital Disruption
- The Chronicle of Higher Education/Wired Campus: Leading British Universities Join New MOOC Venture
- Techrunch: U.K. Universities Forge Open Online Courses Alliance: FutureLearn Consortium Will Offer Uni-Branded MOOCs Starting Next Year
my Experience
Participation in MOOCs
I now want to go on to expand on some of my experiences participating in MOOCs; the courses I studied, my thoughts on the process and learning experience, how positive or negative I felt each course was for me as an individual.
cMOOCs
Change: Education, Learning, and Technology – Change11
My first experiences of participating in MOOCs was with the ‘Change: Education, Learning, and Technology’, Change11, course facilitated by Stephen Downes, George Siemens and Dave Cormier. These three are considered to be the originators of the MOOC concept.
With this incarnation, the format involved a series of respected academics and speakers from the area of education, education technology (edTech) and the open educational movement, participating and interacting directly with the facilitators and course participants for a set week throughout the 35 week programme of the course beginning in September 2011. Guest experts included:
- Martin Weller
- Allison Littlejohn
- Tony Bates
- Rory McGreal
- Nancy White
- Howard Rheingold
- Tony Hirst
- Diana Laurillard
- as well as Stephen, George and Dave hosting a week each themselves.
Each week generally consisted of some text, notes or other readings supplied by that week’s presenter. The topics covered included:
- Digital Scholarship
- History and future directions of open education
- OER for learning
- Slow learning
- Authentic learning
- Social Networks, Learning Communities and Web Science
- Open Scholarship
Sometimes there might be a video session where the presenter might talk with four or five course participants; this tended to be at times which were more convenient to US participants than elsewhere in the globe.
The initial challenge of such a MOOC is orienting yourself, developing an understanding of the format and how to interact and participate in the most appropriate way for you. There was some introductory material from the course facilitators, including some video presentations, to assist participants in their understanding of MOOCs generally and Change11 in particular. Stephen in one of his videos explained about how individuals could follow along and participate throughout the entirety of the course as the facilitators worked with the weekly guest expert. However, Stephen emphasized how it was about you as a learner and that it was acceptable (and indeed encouraged) to dip in and out with your interactions, or ‘lurk’ following the interactions of other participants, or simply access the readings and other materials of direct interest to you.
As an individual it is your own choice how you want to record your own learning and interaction with the course material, the experts, the facilitators, other course participants and any other materials you or they might bring to the learning experience. So the choice of technology was generally up to individuals or groups of participants to decide upon what worked best for their needs. The technologies commonly used included blogs (WordPress and Blogger), Twitter, a Diigo Group (which I set up, owned and moderated), Facebook, Google+ and Google Hangouts (which came along when the course was underway). All content relating to the course simply needed to be marked with #Change11.
It did initially take a little time to become familiar with the format. Primarily there was the supplied content to read and digest. However, once content and comments began to be generated by other participants there was a means to develop my own understanding from the interaction with the thoughts of other learners. From that a community of learners began to develop. This is perhaps the fundamental purpose of a cMOOC – it is its essential component – its essence if you will. The learning that happens is constructed from the connections made and the sharing with others.
I interacted extensively with others via the Twitter channel that developed. This was a very active medium with much lively discussion that including the facilitators and some of the guest experts. There were often links out to other interesting content and materials commenting on the week’s subject topic. There were links to blog posts from the contributors. Those that were deemed to be of significance would get retweeted and comments/discussions would develop around the blog post.
This process was personally a very rewarding experience for me. I enjoyed the process of learning with and from other learners; an exchange of views including with the facilitators and guest experts. It was challenging, sometimes uncomfortable but always dynamic, and engaging and very fulfilling.
I also maintained a blog where I recorded my own reflections about the course and my learning. Additionally, I created a group in Diigo the Social Bookmarking and Annotation service. This allowed contributors to share links to interesting material they came across on the web. This process has the advantage of creating an external library of interesting content that can be accessed into the future.
Some of the aspects about what have now been termed cMOOCs is that they are an experiment in learning and teaching in and of themselves, which can be interesting and exciting, and may also be frustrating at times. Because the technology being used might not have been used in this way before there can be problems. For example, the original video conferencing software, chosen because it was open source, was unable technically to deal with the requirements it was set and consequently broke. Testing of alternatives was hastily undertaken by the facilitators and a replacement was implemented. The aggregation software used to pull together all the content created by course participants and present it to everyone else is created by Stephen Downes himself and is available for anyone to use as it is open source. It is called gRSShopper and it can aggregate any content with an RSS feed (marked with #change11) and display it in a list of similar content via an email to a mailing list of participants.
I enjoyed participating in this course immensely. The community was large, vibrant, dynamic, thought provoking and challenging. The guest experts brought interesting materials and insight into their own particular areas of interest, research or work. As an entire package, Change11 work very well for me.
The level of involvement of the facilitators was very high in this course. This is something to consider if you intent to facilitate a similar experience.
Digital Storytelling – ds106
The essence of ‘Digital Storytelling’ ds106 is the creation of a ‘story’ or a ‘meaning’ using digital creation and creativity. It is learning by doing and also interacting with other contributors. It is run as an on-campus course at the University of Mary Washington in Computer Science and was started by Jim Groom, (the poster boy for EduPunk).
There are a number of ways to be involved and contribute to ds106. As an open online course it is possible to follow along with the syllabus as the on-campus course runs, either at Mary Washington or any other institution that has adopted and runs the course. There is an ‘assignment bank’ where you can choose to do any of the creative projects, with categories including:
- Audio
- Video
- Design
- Web
- Visual
- Writing
- Mashup
There is a daily assignment that you can take part in, taking no more than 15-20 minutes each to complete. And there is the conversation on Twitter and constructive commenting on the works of others to become involved with.
… you succeed just by doing, by participating where you can, by sharing your work, and most importantly commenting on the work of others. More than just the cliché sense, ds106 is a community that is made better from the ideas and contributions of the people who come inside that door.
We do not give out badges or certifications, the creations you do, the connections you make with others, and just the experience of challenging yourself to tell stories is its own reward.
How to Succeed as an Open Participant in ds106 (with really trying) http://ds106.us/handbook/success-the-ds106-way/open-participant/
Accessed 13 December 2012
Again I used my blog to host and post the work I created for ds106. I registered my blog with the course and categorized content so that it could be aggregated back to the course website to allow everyone else easy access.
The level of creativity and the sense of community within ds106 is astounding; it has become a phenomenon. Many of those who have participated say that the experience has changed the way they consider things. It has become so popular that the server it was run on couldn’t deal with the volume of traffic and extra funding was required to purchase and run more hardware. Jim went to the ds106 community to make this happen by raising money via a Kickstarter project, with the level of funding required being reached within 24 hours.
I found this ‘course’ or is it a ‘community’ or a ‘culture’, a ’movement’, a ‘way of being’ a true revelation. The participation level of Jim Groom and the other course instructors was fantastic, more so than any other course I’ve participated in. The level of positive feedback is very high which leads to greater levels of engagement by participants. It is challenging. It can be difficult. However, I found that the level of effort and sense of achievement to be extremely fulfilling.
Although ds106 is a course run on-campus, it has become something much bigger due to the open online element. The feedback and experience the on-campus students receive from this supportive exposure to a worldwide community I would think is extraordinary for their learning.
I didn’t have long working on ds106 before I wasn’t able to contribute. However, after a year I am ready to dive back in again. This is one of the advantages of ds106 that it is always open to you to go back and participate.
Introduction to Openness in Education – ioe12
I happened upon a Tweet in January 2012 by David Wiley that the ‘Introduction to Openness in Education’ course he was running on-campus at Bingham Young University was also being run as an Open Online Course. The area of Openness is one of my primary interests. Consequently, I signed up that day and started taking the course.
This is again a slightly different incarnation of the cMOOC approach. There is a set of 12 topics related to Openness. Each topic has a link to materials that David has put together. This includes videos and readings. In the spirit of Openness, David makes all this material publically available via the web. Consequently, as a participant you are able to access the content of the course how and when you want and in any order.
Participation and understanding is developed by interacting with other participants of the course, as this extract from the course description outlines:
You participate in this course by blogging and tweeting (and in any other media you like – like YouTube videos – as long as you help us find them via your blog or tweets). After reading the articles and watching the videos – the passive part of the course – you engage actively by posting your thoughts, challenge responses, and questions in blog posts and tweets. You engage socially by reading, pondering, and responding to others’ posts and tweets. There is no quota for the number of posts or tweets that you respond to per unit time. These interactions should be organic and driven by your own desire and interest.
How It Works, http://openeducation.us/how-it-works
Accessed 13 December 2012
Once again I used my blog and twitter feed as my workspace for reflection and discussion. Posts and tweets were tagged with #ioe12 and I registered my blog with the course so that any content would be aggregated and shared with others.
In addition to the understanding you can develop from your interactions with the course materials and other participants, David has developed a form of recognition to certificate and demonstrate your understanding if you so wish. This is based on an Open Badge approach, similar to that of the Mozilla Open Badges Project. For the course there were four different levels of badges with a number of tasks to complete for each. They were categorised as:
- OpenEd Overview (Novice level, complete for all 12 topics to earn the badge)
- OpenEd Researcher (Apprentice level, complete for 3 topics to earn the badge)
- OpenEd Assessment Designer (Apprentice level, complete for 1 topic to earn the badge)
- OpenEd Evangelist (Journeyman level, complete for 1 topic to earn the badge)
These badges then parallel grades as follows:
- No badges earned = F
- 1 Novice Badge = D
- 1 Novice Badge + 1 Apprentice Badge = C
- 1 Novice Badge + 2 Apprentice Badges = B
- 1 Novice Badge + 2 Apprentice Badges + 1 Journeyman Badge = A
Earning Course Badges, http://openeducation.us/badges
Accessed 13 December 2012
The advantages of this approach are that it is a well thought out and structured course which you can see has its origins firmly embedded in an on-campus course. There is strong and appropriate course material, but the course isn’t limited or confined by that material; indeed this is a springboard to the real learning process. Again there was an active, if much smaller, community of participants that developed around the course.
A particularly interesting element was the possibility of participants devising the criteria for a badge and for other participants to work to meet those objectives and be awarded the badge.
Personally, I found this a very rewarding course to follow. The way that the badge system was organised in the course enhanced the subject understanding process with ‘deep level’ learning happening. The only possible negative I encountered was the lack of direct interaction with David Wiley himself on the course.
xMOOCs
Coursera – The University of Michigan’s Social Network Analysis
I decided to take xMOOC courses to see how they compared with the cMOOC principles. Originally I signed up at the same time for two separate courses where the subject matter was of personal interest; ‘Social Network Analysis’ run by Lada Adamic, Associate Professor in the School of Information and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, and ‘Computing for Data Analysis’ run by Roger D. Peng, Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. From the onset I realised that I’d be unable to dedicate the time required to keep up participation on both courses so I decided to follow the longer, more involved of the two, the eight week course on Social Network Analysis.
The delivery of the course took place in the Coursera standardized course delivery environment, perhaps in that respect it can be likened to a Learning Management System (LMS). However, this environment could be said to be less than intuitive. Initially I was a little lost and it did take some time to orientate within the course. If this is typical of Coursera, then generally the environment allows the course tutors to deliver content via videos as well as accompanying text. For the course I took, this format actually seemed to work as a reasonable delivery mechanism. There was some ‘talking head’ element, but as the course was also heavily involved with data analysis using software packages, including Gephi the open source data visualization package, there were lots of screencast demonstrations and discussions relating to those demos within the videos. As I often view videos (on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) to gain an understanding of any software I might want to use, this format within the course worked well for my approach. As a participant it was easy to stop the videos and flip to the software to try things out. The creation or generation of datasets wasn’t covered in the course, so datasets were provided and it was these that I used to work with within the analysis software. The videos had quizzes embedded within them, this was a useful means of immediate feedback on understanding. It was a process of taking the quiz and if you got it wrong then you could access the explanation. It also meant that you could go back over that portion of the video to reaffirm your understanding. However, here is where a very positive element of the course structure also was significant, a learner community developed very rapidly in the discussions section of the course environment. There other ‘students’ would help and advise on any problems others might be having. General discussions about the topics also ensued to allow greater understanding of the topics to develop.
It’s been a terrific experience for me to be able to teach and interact with students from so many different places, professional stages, and interests. I was impressed by the variety of insight you brought to the forum discussions, from sharing practical tips on software tools to discussing wide-ranging applications, to questioning fundamental assumptions. I hope you’ll all go forth and apply your newfound knowledge in interesting and meaningful ways.
Social Network Analysis Course Staff email to participants
Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 6:33 PM
Assignments (or graded tests) were set at the end of each week. This was all integrated and facilitated within the environment. However, again it was difficult to locate where the assignments were within the environment without searching around or finding out from the forum. Also, there was no introduction to what to expect within the assignment part of the environment; it wasn’t stated that multiple attempts were allowed, that it only registered when you clicked the submit button, that you could save your answers part way through.
There are no qualifications granted by either Coursera or the host university for taking or completing the course. However, there is the potential of a certificate as a reward for ‘successful’ completion of the course sent out as a pdf from the instructor. These effectively simply state that you have done the course to a standard.
This element of the course was detrimental to the level of my own learning during the course. Initially on starting I was much more interested in the learning element of the course; developing an understanding of Social Network Analysis. I did find it difficult to get through the additional reading material associated with each week of the course, but I could manage the videos including the in-video quizzes. I also managed to complete the regular assignments. However, with taking a weeks holiday during the course, which meant that one assignment was then late and incurred a penalty, it became more difficult to keep pace. At that stage I started to pay less attention to my own level of learning and more to my grades with a view to the certificate at the end. My learning strategy moved from ‘deep level’ approach to a ‘strategic level’ working at applying the system to achieve the grades I required for the ‘pass’ standard (Marton and Säljö, 1976). This was no longer a personally rewarding learning experience, but a strategic exercise at course completion with surface level learning at best. There is the possibility for me to re-access the course materials to concentrate again on the learning, but I feel I have missed an opportunity to achieve this during the course.
One major element of the software architecture used to run Coursera courses allows the gathering of large amounts of data about participation, as evidenced by this email extract:
Some participation stats: 61,285 students registered, 25,151 watched at least one video, 15,391 tried at least one in-video quiz, 6,919 submitted at least one assignment, 2,417 took the final exam. 1303 earned the regular certificate. Of the 145 students submitting a final project, 107 earned the programming (i.e. ‘with distinction’) version of the certificate.
Social Network Analysis Course Staff email to participants
Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 6:33 PM
There was also a questionnaire sent out to gather more data about participants and their motivations for taking the course, including a question asking if you would be willing to pay for a certificate of successful completion and if so how much.
An interesting development in the last month is that a careers services has been started by Coursera which any registered user can sign up for and have their details and course achievements paired with companies seeking those skills. It is being suggested that companies such as Google and Facebook might use such a service. This is also one of the options for Coursera to monetize the business, another being pay-for completion certificates by students.
Comments
I think for me that throughout each of the MOOC experiences, the communities that developed centred on the learning were a significant element of the process regardless of the format of the ‘delivery mechanism’ of the course. Sure, the xMOOCs can be considered to have a much more ‘traditional’, transmissive teaching approach, and people can and obviously do choose to vote with their feet if that approach isn’t suitable for their needs.
I personally always feel uncomfortable saying that one learning or teaching approach is ‘better’ than another for whatever reason. I feel that possibly each has its own merits in certain contexts for different individuals. Possibly what the technology has allowed to happen is that there is greater choice for individuals, allowing them to participate more fully and take more control of their own learning experience. This might be a mixture of different processes for different topics or even within the same topic.
The attrition rate on xMOOCs is very high. There could be a number of factors influencing this. Certaining I could see how the environment itself could deter engagement due to the user interface not being intuitive enough. Also the sheer number of courses to enrol on does allow (if not encourage) sign-up to multiple courses, which could lead to dropout from at least some of the courses (if not all) from a feeling of being overwhelmed. However, an argument often put forward is that in actual terms the numbers completing courses is still very much higher than you would see attending an on-campus course at any university.
I believe that whenever an element of accreditation is introduced, and the level of accreditation is certainly a hot topic for discussion within the context of xMOOCs more broadly, then the learning experience is fundamentally altered. For me in the xMOOC this was altered for the worse.
Whilst the xMOOCs continue to remain free (and no one can predict how long this situation will persist) I intend to access them and use them to learn, but on my own terms as much as I can within the course framework. The challenge for me is the timeframe that courses run in and the need to concentrate on deep level learning without having my attention pulled away to the certificate ‘prize’ and surface/strategic learning approaches.
For the quality of the learning experience, I therefore believe that the deeper interactions and greater level of understanding that I have experienced from the cMOOC approach has been much more beneficial to my lifelong learning experience, though it might have much less impact in the area of career advancement.
So what can be drawn from my experiences of different MOOCs?
I feel there is much we can learn from the delivery of MOOCs that can be used to enhance the on-campus experience supplemented by online course material and delivery. This format offers us the opportunity to investigate learning and improve teaching processes, perhaps more similar to the edX approach. It would seem appropriate to collect and use data to inform this process; treating learning and teaching as a field ripe for research, tying in to a research-led approach.
Are there threats or challenges?
The Open University has a project to research different aspects of online learning to provide academic rigour to what works, how it works and what the benefits are.
The areas, I believe, which are most under threat from the xMOOCs are courses run by The Open University that people might take out of interest or for professional development. Recent increases in costs of these make the choice of ‘free’ (as in cost) online courses more appealing, particularly out of interest. Other areas that could be hit include taught postgraduate courses at conventional universities. As they exist at the moment they don’t really replace the on-campus undergraduate experience at these universities, though they could supplement them. However, with recent announcements, The Open University has shown how it is agile enough to swiftly react to any changes in the educational landscape. They are informed about future possibilities by performing the necessary preparatory research in advance. They have the infrastructure, resources and technical ability to produce a MOOC platform, and the knowledge to run high quality courses.
Patrick McAndrew, professor of open education at The Open University, noted that free course materials attract two kinds of users: the “students for free” and the “social learners”, who use the material as a jumping-off point for meeting other students.
“Some of the more recent free large-scale offerings are attracting ‘students for free’ – however, there are also interesting approaches around more radical course design that leaves more of the structure to the participants.”
Teaching intelligence – This game is wide open,
Times Higher Education, 1 November 2012
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=421645&c=1
Accessed 14 December 2012
From the xMOOC perspective there are several challenges that need to be considered. Perhaps the primary one is that of monetizing and subsequent sustainability. There are considered to be eight possible monetization strategies:
- Certification (students pay for a badge or certificate)
- Secure assessment (students pay to have their examinations invigilated)
- Employment recruitment (companies pay for access to student performance records)
- Applicant screening (employers/universities pay for access to records to screen applicants)
- Human tutoring or assignment marking (for which students pay)
- Selling the MOOC platform to enterprisers to use in their own training courses
- Sponsorships (third party sponsors of courses)
- Tuition fees
Certainly the first three in the list are already being seriously considered or have been implemented.
Analysis
So there are a number of viewpoint regarding MOOCs and their impact on the educational landscape. There are stark polar views that the traditional media and others are trying to portray about MOOCs replacing existing higher education systems. I’m not sure that is the case, but then perhaps anything else doesn’t sell copy. And even though there are parallels with the music industry, etc. currently the end product of higher education is controlled differently. However, that could quickly change. But also, unlike the music industry, to some extent it is market leaders in higher education who are attempting to control any changes that happen.
What these current events can facilitate is that questions about education are asked and that serious discussion can occur.
- Do online courses have to be structured as traditional courses?
- What are the existing tensions between education as a business or a public good?
- Is it still legitimate to restrict access to education?
- Indeed, what is education for?
The xMOOCs seem to be trying to replicate the existing educational system but on a larger scale, and reducing the cost. It feels as if the openness part is simply a stepping stone to achieving these ends and it is a massification of education, or at least a new stream of potential mass revenue, that is the motivation. There is a risk that MOOCs will gravitate towards a massive medium for delivering what education systems already deliver.
In some ways, technology is the factor that has allowing this massification to take place. Many would argue that this is a positive; knowledge is no longer a scarcity or just the purview of existing educational systems. However, there is still some intrinsic value provided by these systems in the structuring of learning paths, supportive scaffolding of learning experiences, and to some extent legitimation of the experience. A MOOC is simply a platform to allow an educational experience to take place. This can be a rich experience, with the technology allowing greater interaction of participants with the course materials, with the facilitators and with each other. Alternatively, as with any educational platform, the experience for learners can also be a poorer one.
Statistics that have emerged (e.g. Inside Higher Education article) about the participants of the early xMOOCs show that the majority tend to be professionals who already have a degree and are following the course out of interest or to help with continuous professional development in their current role. Interestingly, the majority of participants are from outside the USA. So to some extent they are widening participation into the US higher education system, and providing a potentially new revenue stream.
However, I believe for these xMOOCs to deliver on all the hype and rhetoric about changing the existing system of higher education, they have to deliver a number of things, including:
- a sustainable business model
- widening the participation base to include greater diversity of socio-economic background, gender, culture, religion, disability, pre-existing educational experiences (or lack of formal education), etc.
- large improvements in participant retentions throughout the course period, requiring greater engagement and sense of achievement through the experience
- and remaining free.
MOOCs as they exist at the moment might not be around for very long. However, they are causing existing higher education providers to consider their business models, and for governments to consider education policy generally.
References
Marton F. and Säljö R. (1976) On qualitative differences in learning. I – Outcome and Process’ British Journal of Educational Psychology 46, pp. 4-11
Further Reading
- A recent Observer article asked the question, ‘Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university?‘ (Sunday 11 November 2012)
- Warming Up to MOOC’s – November 6, 2012, 11:00 am, The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Teaching intelligence – This game is wide open – 1 November 2012 – If Moocs are the future of learning, they’re still not without precedents or pitfalls, reports Tom Barfield
- The Knewton Blog MOOCs for good – Posted by Jose Ferreira on November 13, 2012
- Harvard Launches First Free edX Courses Today; Over 100,000 Students Registered – October 15, 2012 – edudemic
- Education Site Expands Slate of Universities and Courses by Tamar Lewin – September 19, 2012 – The New York Times
- Universities Reshaping Education on the Web by Tamar Lewin – July 17, 2012 – The New York Times
- The Year of the MOOC by Laura Pappano – November 2, 2012 – The New York Times
- The Real Tsunami by William G. Durden – June 11, 2012 – Inside Higher Ed
- The Scoop on MOOCs by Hilary Culbertson – Posted: 10/5/2012 – HASTAC
- Marvelous MOOCs by Laural Hobbes MAE 2012 Volume: 7 Issue: 8 (October)
- #Oped12 The Future of Higher Education and the MOOCs October 4, 2012 Blogpost
- Free online courses will change universities – September 24, 2012 00:03:00 updated: September 24, 2012 16:39:08 – Financial Review
- MOOC pedagogy: the challenges of developing for Coursera Posted on 08 August 2012 – ALT Online Newsletter
- MOOCs are really a platform 5 August 2012 – Blogpost
- After Leadership Crisis Fueled by Distance-Ed Debate, UVa Will Put Free Classes Online July 17, 2012 By Nick DeSantis – The Chronicle of Higher Education
- 6.003z: A Learner-Created MOOC Spins Out of MITx by Audrey Watters on 14 Aug, 2012 – Blogpost – Hack Education
- Massively Open Online Courses Are ‘Here to Stay’ by Tanya Roscorla on July 18, 2012 – Center for Digital Education
- MOOCs terminology – Blogpost
- The MOOC Misnomer – 1 June 2012 – Blogpost
- The Online Pecking Order by Steve Kolowich – August 2, 2012 – Inside Higher Education
- Dozens of Plagiarism Incidents Are Reported in Coursera’s Free Online Courses by Jeffrey R. Young – August 16, 2012 – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Squire Morley 
