To MOOC or Not to MOOC (eBook)

How Can Online Learning Help to Build the Future of Higher Education?

Sarah Porter (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
156 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-08-100061-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Scarcely a week goes by without coverage in the UK and international media about the latest MOOC revelation. Despite some significant initiatives in the dotcom era, online learning has somehow never delivered on its promise to revolutionize education. To MOOC or not to MOOC explores the history of MOOCs and analyses the current MOOC context by describing six institutions and the story of their engagement with MOOCs. Looking at each of the different type of institution in turn, it analyses the processes behind their decision to engage with online learning and MOOCs, how the MOOC project is managed and led, and discusses issues such as quality assurance, governance and partnerships. Chapters draw together and analyse the data and draw out advice for institutions, to help them make choices about how to respond to MOOCs and other high-impact changes in digital education. The book contains checklists and planning tools to support strategy and planning, and concludes with a future look at MOOCs  exploring some of the possible trends that may impact upon higher education, such as business models, data and analytics, learning design and competitors in the MOOC marketplace. - Aimed at higher educational professionals who are interested in the strategic importance and potential of online learning - Written from an understanding of the strategic context for senior managers in universities - Focus upon a major trend in technology and education illustrated by concrete examples of real practice in institutions - Implement case studies to draw out conclusions not only about online learning but also decision-making and innovation

Sarah Porter is currently an academic visitor at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford where she is researching how universities can better adapt to their current and future challenges and to embrace the opportunities that are offered to them through new developments such as MOOCs.

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1

What are MOOCs?

Abstract

This chapter defines MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and other forms of online learning, and describes the history of MOOCs, how they were first developed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes and how they have evolved since. MOOCs are described as having two main types, xMOOCs (traditional) and cMOOCs (connectivist), but this distinction is becoming less relevant as new models for MOOC are rapidly being developed that combine elements of both or extend and change the model for one or the other. MOOCs are set in the context of the growth of online learning more generally, and statistics is provided for this and also for the growth of popularity in MOOCs. Common criticisms of MOOCs are analyzed and described, namely apparently poor retention rates and attempts to make sense of some of the discourse around this.

Keywords

cMOOC; Definitions; History; MOOCs; Online learning; xMOOC

Introduction

Definitions for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and other forms of online learning, the history of MOOCs, how they were first developed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes and how they have evolved since have been described in this chapter. Before examining the short history of MOOCs and discussing their evolution, it is useful to understand what exactly a MOOC is and what makes it different to similar systems, in particular online learning and open educational resources (OER).

Definitions

MOOCs are about 7 years old, though it is only in the last 3 years that they have achieved a widespread, global, profile. MOOCs have arisen from a long continuum of experimentation with educational technology and online learning, and with pedagogic approaches that are made possible through technology. And as with a small number of other technological innovations, the results have then been replicated many times since to create an established and well-understood model that is being used world wide.

There is no shortage of new terminology and acronyms in the field of educational technology, and many of the terms are used interchangeably, or with subtly different meanings.

The most commonly used terminology that is relevant to MOOCs is summarized below:

• Technology-enhanced learning or e-learning: any technology that is used to support a learning experience. This may or may not use the Internet, so electronic white boards and interactive polling systems are both forms of e-learning technologies, as well as learning systems such as virtual learning environments or learning management systems, that rely upon Internet technologies in order to deliver content and connect learners together.

• Online learning: learning that takes place online using Internet technologies. It will rely upon e-learning systems in many cases.

• Open educational resources: digital content that is licensed so that it can be used for educational purposes by others than the content owner. Licenses vary and may be broad and inclusive or more narrowly defined, for example, only allowing not-for-profit use of the resources. OER are also supported by an international movement that aims to make increasing amounts of digital content available for free, public use.

• MOOC: a specific online course that is openly available to unlimited numbers of participants, free of charge. It is also a form of online learning and MOOCs use educational technology in order to function. They may also use OER as their main source of content.

MOOCs have the following characteristics:

• Massive: MOOCs are intended to be run at scale, with hundreds or even thousands of participants and without any limit to student numbers being imposed.

• Open: MOOCs are intended to be open—with the word “open” used to imply that access to MOOC is both free of charge and also that access to MOOCs is unrestricted. MOOCs have no entry requirements and are open to learners of all educational background, age, and location.

• Online: MOOCs are delivered completely online and involve no face-to-face contact. They are delivered through Internet technologies and so make it easy for students to communicate with each other while learning and for students to access resources that are available elsewhere on the web.

• Course: One of the key attributes that differentiates MOOCs from an open educational resource is that they have the characteristics of a traditional course—they are run during a specific time period, based upon prescribed content, and instruction is provided to the student during that period of time. As with traditional courses, there is also usually an element of assessment included in MOOC, and this may include some form of accreditation (which is a thorny topic and one to which we will return later on).

MOOC terminology

Through this work, we will use some MOOC terminology regularly. We will define these terms here in order to be clear about the differences between each of them.

MOOC(s): The individual online courses that are made available for anyone to study.

MOOC platforms: The branded online systems that are used to host MOOC courses. Coursera, EdX, Udacity, and FutureLearn are some of the best known at present.

MOOC providers: The universities or other organizations that create the MOOC courses and, in most cases, provide teaching and learning support to MOOC students through the online platform.

Even in their short history of development, MOOCs have already diversified into other models, for example, MOOCs which are aimed at smaller groups of learners and are usually available to a limited group of people, and not open to the general public; these are being called Small Private Online Courses. As the MOOCosphere develops and changes very quickly, many other new models and approaches will be developed, with varied models for learning, teaching, and delivery, and different underlying business models. The future sustainability of MOOCs as a model of higher education depends largely upon developing models that have the right combination of learners, delivery, and business model. We will discuss some of the different MOOC models in the case studies and also analyze their respective pros and cons in the final chapters of the book.

Where did MOOCs come from?

This section briefly describes the genesis of the MOOC phenomenon. The first course labeled as an MOOC was created and taught by George Siemens and Stephen Downes, two well-known pioneers of online learning working in Canada. Siemens and Downes share an interest in education and models of learning, with particular affiliation to a theory of learning called connectivism. Siemens is a leading academic working with this theory, while Stephen Downes in particular had long experience of working at the cutting edge of e-learning practice, leading initiatives in OER, personalized learning, and other areas, and is a respected commentator on some of the most challenging topics of the future of online education.

In 2008, the team taught a traditional, fee-paying course to 25 students at the University of Manitoba but also made the radical and far-sighted decision to open up access to the course to anyone who wished to join it online. About 2200 people joined the students on the course. The course topic was Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, connectivism being an educational theory that emphasizes the importance of connections between people and knowledge. The Internet and social media allow new possibilities for exploring connectivist approaches, as they enable communication between very large groups of people to happen quickly and easily, so the subject matter was ideally suited for the experiment that was to take place.

The hope and expectation of Siemens and Downes was that by opening up the course to a much wider and nonselective group of students, it would provide a rich and fertile ground on which to test out connectivism in practice, bringing together a small cohort of students following a formal educational route with a much larger and more diverse group of interested individuals.

So did it work? It was clearly a fascinating experiment and it comes to life as we read Downes’ updates on his experience of teaching the course (Downes, 2008) and subsequent reflections by Siemens and others (Fini, 2009). Downes muses upon the student responses to the course materials, which included weekly videos of himself and others, live discussions sessions (run twice in order to cope with the range of time zones in which students were based), an online discussion forum, and the overall course delivery system, which he adapted from his online newsletter system. Like many ground-breaking initiatives in online learning, this was a live and raw experiment where the teachers had to wrestle with technical systems to “bend” them to work how they wanted and had to carry out their own administration—registering students online in batches—as well as creating digital course materials just days or sometimes hours before they went live.

Some years after the course was taught, it is still considered to have been a success on two levels. First, as an approach to learning and teaching with a large cohort of distributed students, it proved itself to be successful: the use of the digital medium made it easy to gather data about how students interacted with the course content and their level of contribution to class...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.5.2015
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik ► Web / Internet
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Erwachsenenbildung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 0-08-100061-8 / 0081000618
• ISBN-13: 978-0-08-100061-8 / 9780081000618