E-Learning-Inclusivo (Mashup)

For anyone with even the vaguest of interests in MOOCs, this is a particularly useful article (in Computers & Education) as it contains the data on an extensive survey of the pedagogical (instructional) qualities of MOOCs. The paper is relatively short and makes for an easy read. For those who want the main conclusions, here they come.

76 MOOCs were scanned, 50 xMOOCs, 26 cMOOCs, using an instrument that contains items derived from Dave Merrill's five first principles of instruction and five more principles derived from the literature more generally. Of the 72 points that any one MOOC that was examined could, none scored higher than 28. The xMOOCs ranged from 3 to25 points, the cMOOCs from 3 to 28. So the xMOOCs score negligibly better only, in spite of the widely held belief that cMOOCs are the pedagogically superior kind. Although the survey logs the situation in 2013, I can't imagine that in a years' time things have significantly improved. So by and large, the conclusions still hold. 

These figures then bode ill for the wild plans of the past that MOOCs can replace most existing universities (Sebastian Thrun), falsifies Daphne Koller's claim that Coursera MOOCs are built on sound pedagogical principles, and puts and end the wide-spread fallacy that elite universities necessarily breed top level courses. They corroborate claims made by Tony Bates, which I have echoed here and elsewhere, that MOOCs ignore decades of research in technology-enhanced learning, indeed in instructional design tout court. @pbsloep

Very interesting paper.

The introduction to the article sometimes paints perhaps too simplistic a picture (such as that the xMOOCs and cMOOCs exhaust the universe of possible MOOCs; cf my recent scoop in early March: http://sco.lt/8FAEJl) or a somewhat trite one (“MOOCs represents an emerging methodology of online teaching and an important development in open education.”). Still the article is an interesting contribution to  MOOC research for the methodology it employs: text mining and analysis of blogs on MOOCs. Language technologies - in this case concept analysis and mapping using leximancer - are a powerful means to crunch large amounts of textual data, often revealing patters that are not immediately apparent to the naked eye. The value of the article therefore does not lie in its introduction, but in the results and ensuing discussion. 

Chen summarises the results under the headings of benefits for learners, benefits for providers, and trends, concluding with a discussion of the limitations of his study. His conclusions are not earth shattering, but how could they? After all, this is a mere summary of what he came across in the 360 blog posts he analysed with the help of leximancer; it is not a position paper in any sense, at best it is a kind of meta-analysis. To put it differently, tongue in cheek, there’s no need to go through the 431 scoops I collected on these pages to get an impression of what has been discussed about MOOCs in blogs over the last 4 odd years. Read the article and you have a fair idea. And then you should go to individual blog posts to collect opinions. @pbsloep

Another MOOC report, this time from University of London. Section 6 specially interesting for MOOC making. 

Project Planning a MOOC

The course teams involved with our MOOCs included experienced academics with familiarity in developing materials on a learning platform. Nonetheless, for each of them it was their first experience of MOOCs, as it was for the project planning team.

Delivering a MOOC

A range of styles and learning methods were adopted by the four MOOCs, appropriate to the subject matter covered. A MOOC structure of six weeks and 5-10 student effort hours per week of study appeared to be just right for the majority of students (55%). Some considerations for future delivery include:

< Well designed announcements at the beginning and end of each week that articulate with the topic coverage, learning activities and assessment methods can be effective at maintaining student interest and motivation.

< Management of forum threads and posts is a critical factor in dealing with massive scale short courses to ensure the majority of students are not affected negatively by the behaviour of a small number of the community, while preserving the openness of the discussion areas.

< The Coursera platform tools are significant and comprehensive in terms of plotting overall student activity, allowing evaluation of assessment data, as well as usage statistics on video resources and other learning activities; however, further refinement of these tools to enable both students and teaching staff to understand their progression at an individual level is necessary (and underway).

** Learning Resource Development

University of London MOOC Report .

I Barney Gracinger, U. London

The term 'research paper' is somewhat of a misnomer, that is, if you expect a paper in which factual claims are backed by data and the heritage of the ideas put forth is acknowledged by referring to people who first published those ideas. Although they do claim the paper is based on interviews with people at the companies, the ideas they describe about social learning, about learning in communities, about peer support are not attributed to anyone and seem to originate from the Brandon Hall research group. Even if the paper ostensibly serves marketing purposes, I find this reprehensible. But setting such quibbles aside, the Brandon Hall report is valuable and interesting as it makes a plea for professional networked learning and describes peer support as a powerful means to facilitate such learning. It does so by examining four large companies who have embraced networked learning.

For those of you who are familiar with professional networked learning, the paper contains not so much novelty. What caught my attention, though, is their attempt to blend informal development and knowledge sharing with formal training. Thus the companies have deployed a platform (®River) for networked learning through peers who engage in community formation  (for which the report seems to be a plug), but they also retain their LMS. Another thing that struck me is the pivotal role they attribute to competencies. Whether learning informally in the network or formally in the LMS, employee development is gauged in terms of competency development. Although there certainly is a place for that, lists of competencies rapidly  become a straightjacket. Either people refrain from learning new things (knowledge creation) altogether or if they do it remains under the company's radar. Neither, I would say, is in the company's interest (@pbsloep)

NB This scoop refers to a press release about said report. It contains a link to the report itself, which you may download after leaving your contact.

A useful collection of 51 slides, inventorying the state of MOOC usage in Europe. Of course, the inventory is incomplete in that countries and projects are missing, but it is a good starting point for awareness raising. The collection also contains an invitation to contribute slides. So if you are aware of European MOOC initiatives, contribute! (@pbsloep)

Exactly what it says it is, but it nicely highlights the variety that underlies MOOCs and our talk about them (@pbsloep)

un concepto dudoso y intrigante.

A insightful and thorough critique of why peer grading in the humanities won't work. Jonathan Rees is a professor of history himself who uses peer assessment in this classes a lot certainly is the right person to pass judgement (note the difference between assessment and grading, the former is formative, the latter summative). And it is negative. Indeed, he argues that if this practice were to catch on, it suggests grading (in the humanities) is easy, while in actual fact it is through careful comments and not the grades per se that people learn. Actuallly, I think this applies quite generallly. It is through reflection that you learn deeply, good feedback helps you reflect more deeply and a grade isn't good feedback. (@pbsloep)

Connie Yowell, director of education at the MacArthur Foundation, which supports the Research Network says it all for me: "In today's networked world that is so rich in social connection, we have been handed the ability to suddenly be able to make hands-on, real-world, inquiry-based learning far more accessible. It's not a question of how we can achieve this--we have that in our sights now--it's a question of will."

Report is a worthwhile read too: http://dmlhub.net/sites/default/files/ConnectedLearning_report.pdf

Another MOOC report, this time from University of London. Section 6 specially interesting for MOOC making. 

Project Planning a MOOC

The course teams involved with our MOOCs included experienced academics with familiarity in developing materials on a learning platform. Nonetheless, for each of them it was their first experience of MOOCs, as it was for the project planning team.

Delivering a MOOC

A range of styles and learning methods were adopted by the four MOOCs, appropriate to the subject matter covered. A MOOC structure of six weeks and 5-10 student effort hours per week of study appeared to be just right for the majority of students (55%). Some considerations for future delivery include:

< Well designed announcements at the beginning and end of each week that articulate with the topic coverage, learning activities and assessment methods can be effective at maintaining student interest and motivation.

< Management of forum threads and posts is a critical factor in dealing with massive scale short courses to ensure the majority of students are not affected negatively by the behaviour of a small number of the community, while preserving the openness of the discussion areas.

< The Coursera platform tools are significant and comprehensive in terms of plotting overall student activity, allowing evaluation of assessment data, as well as usage statistics on video resources and other learning activities; however, further refinement of these tools to enable both students and teaching staff to understand their progression at an individual level is necessary (and underway).

** Learning Resource Development

University of London MOOC Report .

I Barney Gracinger, U. London

The scooped article reviews a book edited by Lucila Carvalho and Peter Goodyear. It contains a collection of stories on networked learning that share the intention to look at learning networks as designed entities. As one of the contributors to the book I should say no more about it and let Terry Anderson’s review speak for itself. However, if his review does wet your appetite I should perhaps confess that I myself am quite enamoured with the collection of articles that has emerged. I genuinely belief this book, to which I only made a very small contribution, marks an important step in the efforts to come up with a theoretical foundation for networked learning. @pbsloep

Terry Anderson is always worth a read. Productive learning networks seem to be very relevant to our current interactions on ocTEL

Another MOOC report, this time from University of London. Section 6 specially interesting for MOOC making. 

Project Planning a MOOC

The course teams involved with our MOOCs included experienced academics with familiarity in developing materials on a learning platform. Nonetheless, for each of them it was their first experience of MOOCs, as it was for the project planning team.

Delivering a MOOC

A range of styles and learning methods were adopted by the four MOOCs, appropriate to the subject matter covered. A MOOC structure of six weeks and 5-10 student effort hours per week of study appeared to be just right for the majority of students (55%). Some considerations for future delivery include:

< Well designed announcements at the beginning and end of each week that articulate with the topic coverage, learning activities and assessment methods can be effective at maintaining student interest and motivation.

< Management of forum threads and posts is a critical factor in dealing with massive scale short courses to ensure the majority of students are not affected negatively by the behaviour of a small number of the community, while preserving the openness of the discussion areas.

< The Coursera platform tools are significant and comprehensive in terms of plotting overall student activity, allowing evaluation of assessment data, as well as usage statistics on video resources and other learning activities; however, further refinement of these tools to enable both students and teaching staff to understand their progression at an individual level is necessary (and underway).

** Learning Resource Development

University of London MOOC Report .

I Barney Gracinger, U. London

I have little to add to this other than that the collection of papers provides a distinctive European perspective on MOOCs. As a consequence (?), the focus is more on the pedagogy than on the economics of higher education (@pbsloep)

H817 students, this blog and Sloep's response are worth thinking about. It's something we can directly relate to within our own MOOC. Are you satisfied with the learning effect and production of knowledge? Are blogs and forum postings mainly reiterations or are novel ideas coming to the fore and being developed in further discussions?

If you read this scoop alongside the previous one on edX, you'll see that MOOC platform providers are becoming creative about ways to monetize the platform. Now they are trying to make money from certifying that a particular user actually is the user they claim to be.  As Alastair formulates it, if you can't make money from the content, then it needs to come from the layer of services you offer on top of that. This, of course, is a familiar model in the open source software world, where, for example, the virtual learning environment Moodle is free, but you need to pay if you want to have it installed or maintained for you; or the various UNIX variants are free in principle, but installers that put the operating system on your computer come at a price.

It is sensible model, from the point of view of the learner and the platform provider. The learner gets a cheap course and can decide what services to add. Platform providers get access to a stream of income. I am not so sure, however, what participating universities make of it. They are used to recouping costs by packing content with services. If content is free and MOOC platforms provide the services, where does their income come from? I am afraid that the measly 6% or so that Coursera shares back will not be sufficient to produce high quality content. So perhaps universities will start setting up their own MOOC platforms or negotiate better deals? (@pbsloep)

comprehensive indeed - author has participated in a lot of moocs. Very readable intro for those who have never heard of moocs

Interesting and detailed personal insight into cMOOCs and xMOOCs from a participant. I sincerely hope more learners take the time to reflect and share the experiences they have with this kind of learning context. I find as an educator that the student voice is important and assuming that the developers of MOOCs are prepared to listen to critique, both postive and negative, then this is a valuable factor which can lead to improvements which hopefully will have a positive effect on the learner experience and quality of learning.

MOOCs are not going away!