1. HOW USEFUL ARE
MOOCS IN OUR
CONTEXT?
CILT July 2014
MOOC Implementation team

2. Massive
• Classes
may consist
of tens of
thousands
of students
Open
• Registration
open to
anyone
around the
world
Online
• The course
is taken
completely
or mostly
online
Course
• Similar to
formal
courses
with start
and finish
dates with a
cohort of
students
M O O C

4. PERSPECTIVES ON MOOCS
Participants
Institutional
researchers
Educators
What MOOCs exist
and why might I
want to do a
MOOC?
What is there is
learn from
MOOCs?
How can I use and
develop MOOCs?
Why are MOOCs
useful?

5. WHY TAKE A MOOC?
• Learn a new skill for use in your work/life(eg stats
for research)
• Learn for fun/self enrichment (eg. about climate
change)
• Gives yourself a ‘taste’/trial of a new field or
subject
• Experience online learning

6. WHAT KIND OF LEARNING?
Participant can choose:
‘Drop-in’ and have a look (like a magazine)
Start out and decide how much (like taking a book
out of the library)
Pick and choose what you want to explore(like a
reference book)
Go along for the ride (like auditing a class)
Engage fully with the intention of learning (like
taking a class)

7. COMPLETION RATES
http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html

8. WHAT WE GET FROM
MOOCS?
• Valerie: I have participated in many MOOCs since
before the name MOOC existed. Even in this
discussion, people are talking about “dropping out”
– negative, failure to comply with rules and
requirements, .. and yet they found the learning
experience personally interesting and informative
on many levels. Perhaps this is just part of a
natural process of growth for using MOOCs for
teaching and learning.

9. • Reasons for doing MOOCs are of interest
• but reasons for not completing tell us about other forms
of learning
http://www.edcentral.org/

10. BATES’ OBSERVATIONS
• Social aspect of learning is extremely important
• MOOCs are primarily instruments for non-formal
learning
• Increasing facilitation makes MOOCs like
conventional lectures
Bates. Tony. (2014) MOOCs: getting to know you better, Distance
Education.

11. https://www.class-central.com

12. PERSPECTIVES ON MOOCS
Participants
Institutional
researchers
Educators
What MOOCs exist
and why might I
want to do a
MOOC?
What is there is
learn from
MOOCs?
How can I use and
develop MOOCs?
Why are MOOCs
useful?

13. WHY USE MOOCS
• extending the classroom
• building networks
• exposure to different contexts
• accessing experts
• bringing in diversity and depth of
experience

14. WHY USE MOOCS
• putting Africa participants into a global
network
• benefit from other (high quality)
educational resource inputs
• supplement gaps in current provision

15. HOW YOU CAN USE MOOCS?
• Create your own MOOCs
• Use existing MOOCs

16. CREATING YOUR OWN
Creating MOOCs can be very resource
intensive but need not be – depends on
purpose and choices you make
Be clear on why

17. CREATING VARIANTS
• An example: ‘open boundary course’ can be a lower
cost approach to offering a MOOC and is where an
existing course is simultaneously opened out to others who
are not formally enrolled
• Key benefit: Bringing a more diverse student body into
existing course – open boundary courses
• Distance education in developing world & Africa has been
offering massive enrollments but only now tentatively
venturing into online and blended forms e.g. Unisa offering
MOCs

18. Course offered simultaneously as a formal
and as a open course.
Small private open course nested inside a
MOOC
Massive Online Course: formal course
inspired by MOOC pedagogy
Students in a course taking a MOOC with
added local support and additional material
Massive Open Online Course
Formal course with lectures and
support.

19. USING EXISTING MOOCS
• Flipping courses with MOOCs
• Blending MOOCs with face-to-face classroom
sessions
• Use MOOCs as Learning Resources
• Use for Professional Development
• Wrapping a MOOC to supplementary skills for
students

20. WRAPPED MOOCS AT UCT
Time Topic
Group meets every -Monday for 5
weeks
Critical Thinking in Global Challenges
https://www.coursera.org/course/criticalthinking
Group meets every -Thursday for
5 weeks
Principles of Written English
https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeleyx/uc-berkeleyx-colwri2-
2x-principles-1348
Group meets every -Monday for 6
weeks
Understanding Research: An Overview for Health Professionals
https://www.coursera.org/course/researchforhealth
Group meets every second
Wednesday for 5 weeks
Model Thinking
https://www.coursera.org/course/modelthinking
Group meets every Monday for 6
weeks
Design and Interpretation of Clinical Trials
https://www.coursera.org/course/clintrials
Group meets every Wednesday
for 10 weeks
Data Analysis and Statistical Inference
https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics
Group meets every Thursday for
6
University Teaching 101 *NEW*
https://www.coursera.org/course/univteaching101

21. http://ctl.utexas.edu/teaching

22. PERSPECTIVES ON MOOCS
Participants
Institutional
researchers
Educators
What MOOCs exist
and why might I
want to do a
MOOC?
What is there is
learn from
MOOCs?
How can I use and
develop MOOCs?
Why are MOOCs
useful?

23. RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY
The massiveness of MOOCs, their accessibility, and
the wide range of questions they raise make the
topic a very fertile area for research, and this is
likely to generate new methods of research and
analysis in the educational field (Bates, 2014)
Bates. Tony. (2014) MOOCs: getting to know you better,
Distance Education.

24. WHAT WE’D LIKE MOOCS
TO DO
Sipho: “I believe that MOOCs can lower the burden
of overflowing ‘face-to-face classes’ for staff and can
liberate the learner to construct his/her own
knowledge. Also, this can raise professional
education as access to tertiary education can be
increased and extended to the working class”.

25. WHAT THE RESEARCH
INDICATES…
“But the people most likely to stay the course and
gain a free qualification are well-educated men in
their 30s working in professional jobs. Research by
MOOC provider Coursera shows that 85% of MOOC
participants already have university degrees.
So the problem MOOCs succeed in solving is: to
provide free university teaching for highly qualified
professionals. (Diana Laurrilard)”

26. WHAT RESEARCH SAYS ABOUT
SUCCEEDING IN A MOOC
• Require digital literacies and know-how to
navigate the online space, make sense of
resources and (esp. Connectivist MOOCs)
• Connectivity & bandwidth constraints for signed up
participants in developing countries (heavy video-
based courses)
• Cultural and language factors
• Highly motivated learners (hence plenty of e.g. of
plucky individuals from developing countries
succeeding in MOOCs)

27. “Alin used MOOCs to get a better job. He took
Introduction to Computer Science at Udacity and at
Codecademy, Introduction to R, a programming
language used mainly for statistical analysis.
Neither of these courses were part of his
curriculum at Dhaka University.
Noting it on his CV, he was not only hired by his
employer but was made supervisor of a team of
three holding similar finance degrees to himself. He
admits not having noteworthy grades at DU, but
given his MOOC knowledge, he was able to
convince his employer he was qualified for the
job”

28. “Mony, an artist and an animator, has been working
at a prominent animation studio in Dhaka. There are
no animation schools in Dhaka. She got online
and took many tutorials to learn her craft.
Within a few years she had a portfolio of work
that was so impressive she was hired on the
spot. She is currently taking the Interactive 3D
Graphics course at Udacity”

29. IMPROVING MOOC DESIGN
• Research is indicating how to improve the design of
some MOOCs taking into account the pedagogic
benefits of scale and learning analytics.
• Researching MOOCs shed light on about participant
behaviour, video styles, lengths and formats, design of
activities & assessments
• How to design for MOOCs in resource-constrained
environments (mobiles, limited bandwidth)
Learning Design for MOOCs - guidelines for course
design: http://goo.gl/19cbTD

30. MOOC DESIGN EVOLVING
Many models of MOOC designs emerging
• E.g. George Siemens piloting a dual pathway MOOC
where learners either work though a linear pathway or
through project-based groups (Siemens 2014).
• SPOCs and other variants result of understanding
• Platform design to scale – FutureLearn based on
‘conversational framework at scale’.
• MOOCs are NOT suitable in many contexts e.g. San
Jose experiment and Sebastian Thrun’s ‘pivot’
(Chafkin). Supported learning better here.

31. IMPROVING ONLINE
LEARNING DESIGN
• MOOCs have made online learning “respectable”.
• This happened when the elite universities started
to offer MOOCs.
• But we have much to learn about how to design
effective MOOCs and how to design effective
online learning
• Often a conflation of the two, but not the same.

32. MOOCS CAN INFORM
ONLINE LEARNING DESIGN
• Huge amount of data and research that can be
mined (Harvard & MIT released anonymised data)
• Pedagogy enacted in public (pre MOOCs most
courses hidden from all but registered students –
even from other lecturers)
• MOOCs in semi-formal and non-formal spaces so
experiments tolerated

33. ONLINE LEARNING DESIGN
CAN INFORM MOOC DESIGN
• Discussion forums
• Group work
• Peer learning
Much of FutureLearn’s design is based on a socio-
constructivist approach where the massive is
mediated social and peer learning, with experiments
with group work.

34. MOOCS INFORM
CLASSROOM/ON-CAMPUS
LEARNING DESIGN
• MOOC materials used in blended and hybrid
models
• MOOC materials used in flipped classroom
models
• MOOCs used in wrapped modes
Stanford University recent report about distributed
flip.

36. FOR RESEARCHERS…
It would be a missed opportunity for African and
build knowledge around African contexts for
MOOCs, online learning and classroom-based
learning.
Opportunity is now to define forms of MOOCs,
designs for MOOCs or how MOOCs inform the
provision of more diverse and flexible forms of
learning
Many models of MOOCs, not just one.
If not us, then who ?