Professional development session about pedagogical possibilities of MOOCs and flipped classrooms. Drawing on Collier and Caulfield.

1. Using Someone Else’s
MOOC in Your Course:
Madness or Learning
Opportunity?
Link to this presentation on Google Drive: http://goo.gl/5z0SID
R. John Robertson
One Session Wonder
November 11, 2013

2. When I say “MOOC”
Write down the first thing that comes to your
mind
Now write three things you think are positive or
interesting about MOOCs and three things you
think are negative or misguided about MOOCs.

3. Introductions
Who are you?
What do you teach?
What is your interest in this session?
Have you taken a MOOC (of any kind or any
part of one)?

4. MOOC
By Mathieu Plourde {(Mathplourde on Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

5. Context and Assumptions
● MOOCs fit into the general spectrum of
educational content and approach that might
be useful for my course.
● Sharing educational content is not new and
there are lots of distinct but related
collections or pockets of stuff that can be
useful (so OER, OCW, iTunes U and other
‘Free stuff’).
● This session is not just about ‘MOOCs’

6. Aside: perspective for free
MOOCs let you (as an instructor):
a) get a student’s eye view for free, on your
terms, and with little ‘cost’
b) let you see how someone else explains or
structures your topic or online or...

7. Finding

8. Finding
● Google
● Destination sites (OCW, Merlot, Flickr,
Youtube)
● Phone a friend
● Networks of trusted and known collections of
resources

9. Licensing
Another discussion, but...
- link to versus recreate
- some MOOC platforms have an
interesting take on licensing
(Coursera et al.)
- be careful what you ask your
students to do
- public on the web is your friend
- open licensing is your friend

10. Conceptual hurdles
● Perceptions
○ (self, peers, students)
● Anticipated workload
○ (unexpected increase in workload)
● Intended audience
○ (who is this material for, what assumptions does it
make?)

11. Models of use
The guest lecture
The reading
The textbook
The distributed flip

12. The guest lecture
Use a lecture, talk, or
snippet as a guest
lecture. Frame the
‘event’ and discussion
in the same way as
you would frame
inviting a speaker to
your class.
Photo by Ethan Senack https://twitter.
com/HigherEdPIRG/status/398498881085796352/photo/1 CC: BY

13. The guest lecture
What questions or
concerns would have
about a guest lecture
in your class?
How do those
questions mutate or
remain the same if
you use a guest
MOOC?
Photo by Ethan Senack https://twitter.
com/HigherEdPIRG/status/398498881085796352/photo/1 CC: BY

14. The guest lecture
How might you scaffold student engagement
with the ‘guest’?
Perhaps:
● provide a question for them to reflect on or
activity for them to engage with (avoid
passivity)
● present an opposing point of view and ask
students to evaluate and respond

15. The reading
Use a section of a
MOOC or OER in
place of a reading.
Identify a resource that
conveys a key concept
which you can expand
on, a resource that can
be critiqued in class, or
engaged with as a
primary resource.

16. The reading
Does your discipline
have a tradition or
culture of using nontextual readings?
How do you think
students would
respond?
How would you get
students to interact with
the reading (in class or
as an assignment)?

17. The reading
What challenges do you think students might
have with this ‘reading’?
How might you address them?

18. The textbook
One could find a MOOC
which covers the course
content and assign it as a
textbook for the course.
This is likely to work best if
students have some form
of structured engagement
with and desired output
from the reading. For
example a ‘book report’ or
quizzes.

19. The textbook
If you use a textbook, how do
you interact with it or have
students engage with it?
What purpose does it serve?
What do you think would be
the benefits and pitfalls of
having students take a
MOOC alongside your course
which covered the same
material?

20. The textbook
What questions do you think students might
have about this approach?
This model requires students to listen to the
same content twice. Do you think this is a good
idea?

21. aside: Flipped Classroom
To push lower order
thinking activities out of
the class time and use
class time for activities to
reinforce higher order
thinking and mastery.
7 Things you need to know about flipped classrooms
https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7081.pdf
This view of Bloom’s taxonomy (revised) from
http://ww2.odu.
edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm

22. The distributed flip
Mike Caulfield & Amy Collier
Taking the notion of the flipped
classroom - that students can do
the ‘ordinary’ stuff outside of the
classroom and spend contact
time on higher order activities
and cognitive challenges - and
asking what it looks like if you
use a MOOC (kind of).
F
I
L
P

23. The distributed flip: issues
Synchronisation questions
Cohort questions
Findings suggest the wider MOOC community and local
course community don’t merge. However, they also
suggest the local community does merge which is a key
indicator of success.
Balancing access to materials with lack of
control - no modification or analytics

24. Distributed Flip
What are the risks of this approach?
What possible benefits do you see: a) for the
instructor b) for the students?

25. Practical Steps
1. Identify one thing that has resonated in this
session and think about a particular course
in which it might be of use - what could you
try?
2. Is there anything from this session that you’
re planning on sharing with any of your
colleagues?

26. References and Resources
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Caulfield, M., Collier, A., Halawa, S. (2013). Rethinking Online Community in MOOCs Used for
Blended Learning http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/rethinking-online-community-moocsused-blended-learning
MOOCs IN THE CLASSROOM? Rebecca Griffiths http://www.sr.ithaka.org/blogindividual/moocs-classroom
The Distributed Flip (Presentation for InstructureCon 2013) http://hapgood.us/2013/06/26/thedistributed-flip-presentation-for-instructurecon-2013/
MOOC Use in Blended Scenarios: Some Surprises and Opportunities (video of the above
presentation) http://hapgood.us/2013/07/02/mooc-use-in-blended-scenarios-some-surprisesand-opportunities/
Some Notes on Using MOOCs for Blended Instruction http://hapgood.us/2013/10/10/somenotes-on-using-moocs-for-blended-instruction/
7 Things you need to know about flipped classrooms https://net.educause.
edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7081.pdf