2. Hans Põldoja
Lecturer of educational technology
Tallinn University, Institute of Informatics
Doctoral student
Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture
hans.poldoja@tlu.ee
http://www.hanspoldoja.net
23. Why Open Educational
Resources?
For learners:
• Free access to learning resources in different schools
and universities
• Alternative to expensive textbooks
For teachers:
• Legal way to adapt existing learning resources
• Saving time
• Getting recognition for good learning resources
33. Course format
• Course blog + learner blogs
• Additional Web 2.0 and social media tools (Twitter,
SlideShare, YouTube, …)
• Open enrollment
• Open educational resources
• Assignments through blog posts
• Feedback and discussion in comments
• Summary posts by the facilitators
34. Benefits of using blogs
• Supporting learners to develop and express their ideas
• Supporting collaboration and group work
• Getting feedback from others
• Enriching the learning environment
• Promoting new educational practices
• Motivating learners
43. Väljataga, T., Põldoja, H., Laanpere, M. (2011). Open
Online Courses: Responding to Design Challenges. In H.
Ruokamo, M. Eriksson, L. Pekkala, & H. Vuojärvi (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 4th International Network-Based
Education 2011 Conference The Social Media in the Middle
of Nowhere (pp. 68-75). Rovaniemi: University of Lapland.
Proceedings of the NBE 2011
68
Open Online Courses: Responding to Design Challenges
Terje Väljataga
terje.valjataga@tlu.ee
http://terjevaljataga.eu
Hans Põldoja
hans.poldoja@tlu.ee
http://www.hanspoldoja.net
Mart Laanpere
mart.laanpere@tlu.ee
Tallinn University
Centre for Educational Technology
Narva road 25, 10120 Tallinn, Estonia
Tel: +372 6409 355, Fax: +372 6409 355
Open education and open educational resources movement as a recent trend in higher education focuses on providing free access to a
wide range of educational resources and online courses. However, such a narrow approach fails to acknowledge the transformative and
innovative opportunities openness can offer in higher education. The authors of the paper take a wider perspective to the concept of
openness in formal higher education. In addition to open technology, content and knowledge sharing openness in course design is an
important dimension to consider. Although open online course design solves many educational problems and challenges, at the same
time it also creates new ones. This paper discusses about the re-occurring course design challenges that facilitators face while designing
and running open courses. Through a multiple case study a variety of design responses to the design challenges is analyzed and
demonstrated.
Keywords: open online course model, open educational resources, pedagogical design, multiple
case study
1 Introduction
The concept of openness has multiple interpretations and dimensions in the context of higher education. Among
others, it has been used by proponents of open classroom approach in 1970-ties and by distance education
enthusiasts while establishing open universities”. The purpose was to solve a number of educational problems
and challenges, for instance, to improve access to existing study programmes and attract more (or better)
students following Huijser, Bedford, and Bull’s (2008) claim that everyone has the right to education. In
general, openness in education is attributed to a barrier-free access to education in terms of time, affordability
and admission requirements being freely available through the Internet.
A recent trend is the open educational resources (OER) movement (Atkins, Brown & Hammond, 2007), which
provides free access to a wide range of educational resources and online courses. OER and its importance has
been widely documented and demonstrated (Downes, 2007). The key tenet of open education is that “education
can be improved by making educational assets visible and accessible and by harnessing the collective wisdom
of a community of practice and reflection” (p. 2) (Iiyoshi & Kumar, 2008).
The notion of openness in education is clearly triggered by the opportunities technological development offers.
In addition to growing access to Internet, the latest evolution of digital technology and Web has fostered a new
culture of creating and sharing open content in online communities. It has been possible due to the blurred line
between producers and consumers of content allowing shifted attention from access to information toward
access to other people (Iiyoshi & Kumar, 2008). In the light of ongoing technological development, there are
educators who are exploring ways to expand the notion of openness in education beyond public sharing of
educational content. Iiyoshi & Kumar (2008) point out that with the concept of openness we might tend to grow
our collections of educational tools and resources and miss the transformative and innovative opportunities
“openness” can offer. One of the emerging practices in this direction is the open online course model.
44. Creating and sustaining
community gravity
• How to design sustainable community gravity?
• What are the mechanisms for bringing and keeping
together distributed groups?
• What are the tools and techniques that facilitate and
support the emergence of strong community gravity?
45. Monitoring participation and
content flows
• What are the possible technological solutions for both
students and facilitators to monitor participation, observe
content flows and comprehend the overall course
progress?
• How a course design can contribute to support
monitoring heterogeneous landscapes of tools and
services, student created content and their flows?
46. Designing materials and
activities
• To what extent the material and activities are pre-defined
before the course starts?
• To what extent students’ created and recommended
activities should be included into this emergent course
design?
47. Providing feedback
• What type of feedback is realistic and required in open
courses?
• Who should provide feedback and how often?
• How to increase the quality of feedback given by
facilitators and participants?
48. Why open online courses?
For participants:
• Free access to courses in different universities
• Becoming a part of the learning community
• Learning from the course design
For the institution:
• Promoting the institution
• Getting new students
56. Assessment issues in blog-
based courses
• Private grading in open learning environment
• Recognizing the learning outcomes of informal
participants
58. Composite badges
Blog posts on each of the
13 course topics
OpenEd
Overview
Badge
In-depth blog posts on 3
selected course topics
OpenEd
Researcher
Badge
(Wiley, 2013)
59. Activity-based badges
N blog posts or tweets
Activity
Badge
N received comments or
retweets
Quality
Badge
Completed milestone or
assignment
Result
Badge
(Santos, Charleer, Parra, Klerkx, Duval, & Verbert, 2013)
60. Grade-based badges
95% of points or more Gold Badge
85% of points or more
Silver
Badge
75% of points or more
Bronze
Badge
(Rughiniș & Matei, 2013)
63. Basic knowledge badges
Basic
knowledge on
learning
objects and
repositories
Basic
knowledge on
authoring tools
Basic
knowledge on
computer-
based
assessment
Basic
knowledge on
new
technologies
Basic
knowledge on
copyright of
digital
learning
resources
Basic
knowledge on
quality of
digital
learning
resources
Content
package author
Assessment test
author
e-Textbook
author
Advanced
knowledge on
learning objects
and repositories
Advanced
knowledge on
authoring tools
Advanced
knowledge on
computer-based
assessment
Advanced
knowledge on
new
technologies
Advanced
knowledge on
copyright of
digital learning
resources
Advanced
knowledge on
quality of digital
learning
resources
Blogging assignment 1 Blogging assignment 2 Blogging assignment 3 Blogging assignment 4 Blogging assignment 5
Group assignment on
developing a digital
learning resource
Blogging assignment 6 Literature review
Describing the
advantages and
disadvantages of learning
objects approach
Searching for learning
objects from learning
object repositories by
metadata and licenses
Creating simple content
packages, tests and e-
textbooks, and describing
these with metadata
Following copyright
principles for digital
learning resources
Evaluating the quality of a
learning resources using
an evaluation framework
Using one authoring tool
to create a more
comprehensive digital
learning resource
Analyzing the current
issues, research studies
and trends in one sub-
topic related to digital
learning resources
Learning outcomes
Assignments
Advanced knowledge badges
Skills badges
64. Students' perspectives on Open
Badges
• Main benefits: feeling of recognition and confirmation
about accepted assignments
• Badges would become more valuable, if they are used in
several courses, not as a one time experiment
• Students are interested in recognizing prior learning with
badges
65. Recommendations from
students
• Offer at least two levels of badges for each assignment
• Provide more choice of different badges / learning paths
• Visual aesthetics of badges is also important for learners
66.
67. Additional ideas
• Combining outcome-based badges with other types of
badges
• Student-designed and student-awarded badges for peer-
assessment
• Combing personal learning contracts and badges
69. Open Source projects in Tallinn University
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
LMS's and
lightweight
VLE's
Experiments
with weblogs
Digital
learning
ecosystems
LePress
86. References
• Wiley, D.: Assignments: Introduction to Openness in Education, https://
learn.canvas.net/courses/4/assignments
• Santos, J.L., Charleer, S., Parra, G., Klerkx, J., Duval, E., Verbert, K.:
Evaluating the Use of Open Badges in an Open Learning Environment. In:
Hernández-Leo, D., Ley, T., Klamma, R., Harrer, A. (eds) EC-TEL 2013. LNCS,
vol. 8095, pp. 314–327. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg (2013)
• Rughiniș, R., Matei, S.: Digital Badges: Signposts and Claims of
Achievement. In: Stephanidis, S. (ed) HCI International 2013 - Posters’
Extended Abstracts, pp. 84–88. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg (2013)
• Randall, D.L., Harrison, J.B., West, R.E.: Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due:
Designing Open Badges for a Technology Integration Course. TechTrends.
57, 88–95 (2013)
87. Used images
• Jonathas Mello, Global OER logo: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/
communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-
resources/global-oer-logo/
• Mathieu Plourde, MOOC Poster (no border): https://www.flickr.com/photos/
mathplourde/10425003764/
• Class Hack, Open Badge Anatomy (Updated): http://classhack.com/post/
45364649211/open-badge-anatomy-updated
• Open Badges, http://openbadges.org/about/
88. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Hans Põldoja
Lecturer
School of Digital Technologies
Tallinn University
Estonia
hans.poldoja@tlu.ee
@hanspoldoja
http://www.hanspoldoja.net
http://www.slideshare.net/hanspoldoja