Slides as presented at ALT-C 2016 by Kirstie Coolin: A team approach to design and delivery of our MOOC Designing E-Learning for Health. On behalf of the Health E-Learning and Media Team.
Kirstie Coolin, Heather Wharrad, Richard Windle, Mike Taylor, James Henderson, Simon Riley
1. Collaboration at the Heart of the
MOOC
Presenter: Kirstie Coolin, E-Learning & Media Manager
&
Professor Heather Wharrad, E-Learning and Health Informatics
Dr Richard Windle, Associate Professor of Health E-Learning
Mike Taylor, Learning Technologist
James Henderson, Learning Technologist
Simon Riley, Learning Technologist
Health E-Learning and Media Team
School of Health Sciences, University of Nottingham
www.nottingham.ac.uk/helmopen @UoN_Helm
2. Aims
To introduce our process of development we undertook in
writing the MOOC
To show how a team approach to MOOC delivery worked to
reinforce our ethos of participatory design
To provide examples of learner collaboration on the MOOC itself
10. We used Google Docs to
collaborate on the course
design
5 Week Course led by HELM academics & Learning
Technologists
Week 1 – Heather Wharrad
Week 2 – Richard Windle
Week 3 – Kirstie Coolin
Week 4 – Mike Taylor
Week 5 – James Henderson &
Simon Riley
11. The whole team
facilitated the
discussions.
Filmed and edited
the weekly
videos.
Supported the
content
development.
16. Before course
Pre-course email & discussion, interactive map, ‘HELM’ game (get
to know the team), Twitter.
Licensing our course content as CC
During course
Storify, weekly Q&A
Sharing ‘common journey’ story of a real-time RLO development,
encouraging discussions
Clear instructions/expectations, modelled process
Facilitation!
Encouraging collaboration, linking people, supporting ideas, tips
& tools
20. Just a small sample of storyboards from the MOOC
Paradigm Shifts in Health Education
Leadership for Health Personnel in Cameroon
Prevention of Mosquito breeding around homes
What is HELM?
The Health E-Learning and Media Team are based in the University of Nottingham’s School of Health Sciences.
Curriculum, Community, Research and Open are the essential strands of HELM practices and strategy.
Curriculum drives the e-learning resources required;
Research funds cutting-edge resources, and dissemination;
Communities are involved in research and development of e-learning ;
Opening up resources increases impact and knowledge transfer;
HELM’s ethos is to embrace participation and collaboration at every level. Our partners, collaborators and co-designers are: students, teachers, clinicians, service users, carers, NGOs, social enterprises, local authorities, families, parents and more.
HELM and participatory design / Video
Participation and collaboration are at the heart of everything we do in HELM. The team has a long history of creating stakeholder-led high quality e-learning that is free and openly available for anyone to use, and has been used in over 50 countries by 1.5 million users.
HELM have a tried and tested methodology developed over the years, and we wanted to also share this with the wider world via our MOOC as a useful and effective way of creating e-learning that is engaging and authentic.
This short video showcases a few of our resources.
To develop these, we use a methodology developed in HELM called ASPIRE.
In short it is based around:
A short and tightly defined learning aim
Storyboarding workshops around the learning aim involving stakeholders
Populating a resource specification, thinking about graphics, text, activities
Implementing the resource – which tools to use to develop it.
Release – this is where it is hosted, who can access it, how can it be made accessible?
Evaluation – each RLO has a feedback form so we can conduct research on their use and establish re-use.
The whole process is enveloped in peer review, iterative quality processes and pedagogy.
The whole team developing the RLO are involved at each stage, so it is very much driven by the participants working together with HELM.
We decided to open up our e-learning design methodology to over 6000 learners in 50 countries on our MOOC, Designing E-Learning for Health which ran in February this year.
It was the first MOOC in the University delivered by a whole team, HELM, together with staff and students.
Everyone was involved: from teaching, facilitating to developing a resource.
I want to talk about how we tried to embed collaboration and participation into our course both from the point of course design and delivery, as well as with the learners.
Firstly, a little more about us. As a team, we like to offer plenty of development opportunities, and we work well together on many different projects.
From the outset we wanted to ensure that our MOOC was a team effort and that everyone had the opportunity to be involved.
VIDEO – MOOC – Behind the Scenes
The course was designed by a group, and we worked closely with University staff, Sarah Stubbings, Steve Stapleton and Sarah Speight from the central team who were very much a part of the team.
Here is a MOOC montage showing some behind the scenes footage - from design to delivery.
We split the MOOC into 5 weeks, and 6 Educators. A mixture of academics and non-academics.
Dr Fern Todhunter was running a project with Birmingham City called Virtual Exchange and they were developing an RLO about professional standards.
Their development journey was a big part of the course, and they all became involved with the content and delivery of the course.
Students’ took part in the filmed workshops, but also in developing the Virtual Exchange RLO and acting in filming for the final learning resource!
The course ran alongside Fern’s project
Students were involved
ALL of HELM involved in online discussions & trained to facilitate
Academics and HELM involved in Q&A sessions
HELM team members, collating & sharing stories from each week
As our methodology is built around collaboration and participation, we wanted to try to create an environment where the collaborative aspects of our methods could be nurtured in a virtual environment.
We designed collaborative features into the course because we wanted to encourage people to attempt to work virtually on resource design.
Eventually groups started to self-organise
Some formed virtual groups with other learners on the course
Groups in their work places,
Storyboarding with Families, friends.
Here is a word cloud showing the topics people were starting to develop. Facilitators made sure that this list was available for learners so they could identify common areas if they wished.
This is where learners shared their completed storyboards from the course.
Facilitation was key – all of the team provided facilitation, and we established a rota to involved everyone. Maintaining a high level of facilitation was important.
For some it was the first time facilitating online discussion, so training was provided by the University MOOC team.
We used a Yammer group to alert team members to relevant posts or questions.
Everyone had different styles of facilitation – for some answering questions, asking questions, making links between learners.
For those who weren’t as comfortable in the discussion boards, there was plenty of opportunity to work on content, film, graphics etc. and to upgrade skills in these areas.
The whole experience was good for team building and a sense for every member of the team of shared ownership – which we think reflects our ethos of collaborative working - which includes the academics outside of HELM who took part.
In terms of a joint approach to developing the course, the team felt motivated and supported to collaborate – there was freedom for individuals to put their style into the design of the content. We also made sure we included prompts for the learners, to encourage them to feel involved too. We have had a couple of bit whole-team projects since the MOOC which have benefitted from the team-experience.
We all learned a lot from the experience, as did many of the staff in our School which has enabled us to better lead online developments in the future. Our experiences have helped to move the School forward, particularly in our postgraduate offerings, and has improved knowledge and practice within the School.