Education 2.0 & 3.0

Another MOOC report, this time from University of London. Section 6 specially interesting for MOOC making. 

Project Planning a MOOC

The course teams involved with our MOOCs included experienced academics with familiarity in developing materials on a learning platform. Nonetheless, for each of them it was their first experience of MOOCs, as it was for the project planning team.

Delivering a MOOC

A range of styles and learning methods were adopted by the four MOOCs, appropriate to the subject matter covered. A MOOC structure of six weeks and 5-10 student effort hours per week of study appeared to be just right for the majority of students (55%). Some considerations for future delivery include:

< Well designed announcements at the beginning and end of each week that articulate with the topic coverage, learning activities and assessment methods can be effective at maintaining student interest and motivation.

< Management of forum threads and posts is a critical factor in dealing with massive scale short courses to ensure the majority of students are not affected negatively by the behaviour of a small number of the community, while preserving the openness of the discussion areas.

< The Coursera platform tools are significant and comprehensive in terms of plotting overall student activity, allowing evaluation of assessment data, as well as usage statistics on video resources and other learning activities; however, further refinement of these tools to enable both students and teaching staff to understand their progression at an individual level is necessary (and underway).

** Learning Resource Development

University of London MOOC Report .

I Barney Gracinger, U. London

And so Crispin Weston goes on to attack MOOCs, Learning Analytics and Open Educational Resources. After discussing each bubble, including why it is destined to pop, he discusses the question of what is needed to make the innovation that each bubble foreshadows, last.

Weston makes several sensible observations, such as "an academic education is not equivalent to a trip to the public library, digital or otherwise", or learning "analytics is predicated on 'big data' but in education, big data will not exist until we sort out the current failure of interoperability", or with Open Education Resources "the quality of the resources themselves and the pedagogies they represent are poor." However, these observations lead to incoherent arguments, in the case of Learning Analytics to downright insinuating ones. His arguments do not attempt to represent the complexity of the situation that surrounds each of these educational innovations. Rather they serve one purpose, portraying the innovation as a bubble. 

Weston's arguments lack subtlety to the degree that there seems to be an agenda underlying them, and indeed there is one. It is that research should be taken out of the hands of academics and public funding bodies to make place for "proper R&D that is commercially-funded and responds to market requirements." There is of course nothing wrong with companies getting involved in R&D. Indeed, in EU framework projects always commercial parties participate in the research consortia that are set up. But it is too simplistic to portray research done by companies as proper and all the rest as improper.

With Weston I have my doubt and worries about MOOCs, Learning Analytics and OERs. They have bubble-like qualities in that researchers and educational administrators seem too uncritically adopt them. Uncritically adopting technological innovations in education actually happens quite often. And industry has more than once played a dubious role in this, see what Todd Oppenheimer in his Flickering Mind writes about the money that was wasted on the introduction of computers in K-12 education. The conclusion should be that a discussion about innovations such as MOOCs, Learning Analytics, Open Educational Resources, e-Portfolios, Serious Games, Adaptive Learning systems should never be guided by political agendas such as boosting commercial research. There is enough to worry about as it is. What really gets me worried is the idea that the venture capitalists that fund the MOOCs are going to determine the destiny of Higher Education; precisely because they think commercially and respond to market requirements only.

And so Crispin Weston goes on to attack MOOCs, Learning Analytics and Open Educational Resources. After discussing each bubble, including why it is destined to pop, he discusses the question of what is needed to make the innovation that each bubble foreshadows, last.

Weston makes several sensible observations, such as "an academic education is not equivalent to a trip to the public library, digital or otherwise", or learning "analytics is predicated on 'big data' but in education, big data will not exist until we sort out the current failure of interoperability", or with Open Education Resources "the quality of the resources themselves and the pedagogies they represent are poor." However, these observations lead to incoherent arguments, in the case of Learning Analytics to downright insinuating ones. His arguments do not attempt to represent the complexity of the situation that surrounds each of these educational innovations. Rather they serve one purpose, portraying the innovation as a bubble. 

Weston's arguments lack subtlety to the degree that there seems to be an agenda underlying them, and indeed there is one. It is that research should be taken out of the hands of academics and public funding bodies to make place for "proper R&D that is commercially-funded and responds to market requirements." There is of course nothing wrong with companies getting involved in R&D. Indeed, in EU framework projects always commercial parties participate in the research consortia that are set up. But it is too simplistic to portray research done by companies as proper and all the rest as improper.

With Weston I have my doubt and worries about MOOCs, Learning Analytics and OERs. They have bubble-like qualities in that researchers and educational administrators seem too uncritically adopt them. Uncritically adopting technological innovations in education actually happens quite often. And industry has more than once played a dubious role in this, see what Todd Oppenheimer in his Flickering Mind writes about the money that was wasted on the introduction of computers in K-12 education. The conclusion should be that a discussion about innovations such as MOOCs, Learning Analytics, Open Educational Resources, e-Portfolios, Serious Games, Adaptive Learning systems should never be guided by political agendas such as boosting commercial research. There is enough to worry about as it is. What really gets me worried is the idea that the venture capitalists that fund the MOOCs are going to determine the destiny of Higher Education; precisely because they think commercially and respond to market requirements only.