MOOCs in Higher Education: Options, Affordances, Pitfalls (Part 1)

Recently,I was discussing the current state of MOOCs (massive open online courses) andtheir broader applicability to academia with colleagues. MOOCs started inacademia and spread like wildfire in 2012 when certain “elite” Universitiesstarted offering their courses for free on the web through their own means orthrough venture-capital funded startups like Coursera. But my colleagues hadquestions. What about those Universities that perceive themselves not in thesame league? Can they offer MOOCs as well?

Inthis article, I expand on the first part of the poster session I presented at NERCOMP2013 on MOOC pedagogy, technologies, and the roleof the instructor. As you read this article, keep in mind that the goal isn’tto demonstrate that one type of MOOC is better than another. The terminology inthis article means something in our currentcontext. This is part one of two parts, and in it I will cover some basichistory, the two types of MOOCs that have evolved to date, and someobservations about technology and pedagogy. In part two, I will write about therole of assessment, credentialing, copyright, and some MOOC principles that Ibelieve will be informative and useful.

cMOOC? xMOOC? What the MOOC?

Ifyou didn’t know of the history of MOOCs, you’d think that MOOCs just appearedlast year through a few enterprising individuals from “elite” schools. MOOCscertainly were the work of enterprising individuals, but they are certainly notthat new, and they didn’t originate from “elite” universities.

Inthe beginning there was the MOOC, and the MOOC was good! Well, OK, maybe itdidn’t happen in such a biblical way! But the (brief) background on MOOCs isquite interesting. MOOCs first appeared in 2008, with the development andoffering of the Connectivism &Connected Knowledge course.

Thistype of MOOC has been retroactively named a “cMOOC,” or “connectivist MOOC”although I also think of them as constructivist MOOCs (see Wikipedia links atthe end of this article for quick overviews). These cMOOCs are characterized bya certain DIY (do it yourself) or “edupunk” feel. In 2012, with the introductionof ventures like Coursera and edX, we saw the rise of what George Siemens inhis July 25, 2012 blog entry called the xMOOC (please see the References for alink). The xMOOCs are another camp entirely, institutional courses materializedin Coursera and Coursera-like platforms.

MOOCsare an excellent example of the progression of the open education and opensource movements that gave us edupunks, Creative Commons, open educationalresources, and open courseware to name just a few things. Without some of thesetechnologies, resources, and ethos, MOOCsand their precursors would not be possible.

Pedagogy and educational philosophy

Technology,pedagogy, or instructional design? Where to start first? All of these elementsare integral in teaching and learning these days, regardless of learningcontext. It’s also quite important for MOOCs.

cMOOCs

Inthinking about the pedagogy involved, cMOOCs tend to focus on constructivistand connectivist approaches to learning. Whether you place any stock inconnectivism is beside the point; this is one of the theoretical underpinningsof cMOOCs.

Learninghappens when students interact with authentic materials, in learner-controlledspaces. These learner-controlled spaces often take the form of a personal learningenvironment (PLE), and in such spaces learners choose their connections andsources of materials. cMOOCs encourage active exploration on the part of thelearner, sharing with other learners, generating knowledge, and reflecting onlearning. If one were to compare a cMOOC to an on-campus course, the most similartype of course is the seminar. Another interesting note is that the cMOOC, moreoften than not, tends to be a collaborative effort in design andimplementation. If you look at the last two years of cMOOCs, you will noticethat most have had more than one facilitator interacting and guiding learners.

xMOOCs

xMOOCs,up to this time, have tended to focus mostly on instructivist approaches toteaching. The instructor, along with a support team, record and serve videolectures to learners. These video lectures, along with any supplementalmaterials, are then practiced through formative testing, or laboratorysimulations if applicable, and assessed in some sort of graded activity.

Pedagogy and opportunity

Asfar as pedagogy goes, the challenge lies in bridging the gap between the confining instructivism of xMOOCs andthe perceived complete openness ofcMOOCs. The goal is to help scaffold learners to enable them to be lifelonglearners in open environments in order to enable them to pursue their ownlearning activities. Pure connectivism or instructivism shouldn’t be the goal. Yoursubject matter, the level at which it is offered, and your instructional goalsshould be dictating what method you pursue for teaching your course. An entry-levelcourse, with no pre-requisites, can, and most likely will, be taughtdifferently compared to a higher-level course that does have pre-requisites. Upto now, it’s been the case that xMOOCs are the courses with no pre-requisites, whilecMOOCs have some sort of pre-requisites associated with them. While it’s notimpossible for a learner with no pre-requisite knowledge to jump into a cMOOC,it is more difficult as they get bombarded with “basic” and “advanced”information in a course.

Theopportunity with MOOCs of either type is that you can reach many learners, andproper design can help learners excel. The pitfall is not preparing yourlearners (or even the instructor) for the instruction style in the MOOC. Onecommon issue for learners in MOOCs, especially cMOOCs, is the overabundance ofinformation coming to them, from all directions, that comes from aconstructivist and connectivist teaching style. By helping learners cope withthe chosen instructional strategy you are helping them be a little moresuccessful in the course.

Technologies Used, and TechnologyConsiderations

Thetechnologies used in MOOCs, of both types, do vary considerably. On the onehand you have cMOOCs bringing together diverse platforms to enable learning througha common platform and through a learner’s PLE. As such, we can consider cMOOCorganizers as DIY type of people. Each cMOOC is different in that it can use avariety of different technologies to accomplish the learners’ needs and thedesigner’s intent. You can think of the technology chosen by cMOOC designersand organizers as the town squarewhere learners come to listen, engage, share, and collaborate, but they arefree to take their learning away with them to other spaces.

Inthe past, cMOOCs have used a traditional LMS, such as Moodle, as well astechnologies such as wikis, blogs, Twitter, gRSShopper, or WordPress—just to name a few. Learning Analytics & Knowledge 2011 used Moodle as their town squarewhile Current and Future State of HigherEducation used Desire2Learn. Other cMOOCs have used other technologies. Forexample, Introduction to Open Education2011 used WordPress, while mobiMOOCused Wikispaces and Google Groups. Perhaps the most interesting use oftechnology was by GamesMOOC, which uses a guild-hosting site that allows guilds from massivelymultiplayer online games to create a spot for their groups outside of the game.This is quite apropos, given the subject matter of MOOC. All things considered,cMOOC technology seems to be chosen based on the intended educational outcomesas well as the pedagogical approach, and cost (free or close to it).

xMOOCsappear to be working mostly on standardized approaches to delivering andassessing courses, using LMS-like technologies such as the Coursera platform.These platforms for offering MOOCs seem to stem more from a traditionalconception of what education is, and how educators should deliver it. Thus,these MOOC-LMSs have traditional predefined spots for elements such as content,assessment, and grading. The software design seems to be influencing the designand pedagogy of these initial xMOOCs. In an xMOOC the LMS is more like themuseum. Learning can take place at the museum, but it’s pretty hard to engagewith the material and with learners outside of the confines of the physicalbuilding. Thus, for some people, xMOOCs fail the “MOOC test” since they are notdistributed, “distributed” being one of the hallmarks of a MOOC (Cormier,2010).

Regardlessof whether you go with a DIY or a MOOC-LMS, there are other considerations tokeep in mind when it comes to technology. As discussed in a recent paneldiscussion (Koutropoulos et al, 2013), if you want to produce videos for yourcourse, you need to think about accessibility (for example, captioning),storage of original video and final cuts, backups, creating archival materials,and, of course, serving these videos. These are major considerations if aninstitution decides to endorse and support a MOOC instead of the MOOC being justan individual faculty’s initiative.

Whenit comes to technology in MOOCs there are quite a few challenges. A keychallenge is to scaffold learners to work and learn in massive online environments regardless of the technologies you pick. Motivation is a keyfactor in implementation. MOOCs are not like a traditional online course, sothe same motions and notions from the learners don’t necessarily apply.Learners need to be able to feel comfortable learning in MOOCs, using andengaging with different technologies, and engaging with higher-than-average numbersof fellow learners. Part of this is helping learners develop a filter forinformation, and part of it is making sure learners coming to your MOOC havesome basic information-literacy skills.

Distributedcourses, such as those in cMOOCs, offer greater flexibility where technologymolds around course outcomes, and not the other way around. This, however,increases complexity, and learners who are not prepared may feel overwhelmedand drop out. The major pitfall in using technology for MOOCs is also seen intraditional courses: starting with a technology can negatively influencepedagogy and instructional design, thus forcing you into a specific teachingstyle and delivery method. With the cMOOC crowd this may not be as big a deal;however, when institutions sign deals with a MOOC-LMS company theseinstitutional decisions can, and do, affect pedagogy. Then the questionbecomes: how nimble are these platforms when it comes to adapting to specific pedagogicalneeds?

Role of the instructor

Therole of the instructor varies as well between the two different forms of MOOCs.I should note here that these descriptiveroles are from the perspective of a learner who has taken a variety of bothxMOOCs and cMOOCs. This isn’t an exhaustive study, but rather an observation onmy part.

 cMOOC instructor roles seem to revolve aroundthe instructor-as-designer, and instructor-as-more-knowledgeable-peer. cMOOC instructors can be thought of ascourse facilitators, being where the action is, and in this role they seem toput the course together themselves and remain active in it throughout. It’salso not uncommon to have weekly experts facilitate different aspects of thecMOOC. The role of the instructor in cMOOCs has decidedly been one of “a guideon the side.”

xMOOCinstructors, on the other hand, seem more like an authoritative SME, andsometimes a facilitator. A team of designers and implementers, and notnecessarily the instructor herself, designs and puts together the xMOOC. ThexMOOC currently resembles television broadcast-based courses, coupled with theimmediacy of the internet to expedite communication and connections with peers.Instructors seem to be far more removed from the day-to-day activities of theMOOC, lending to a potential feeling of disconnect amongst the learners whenthey are not experiencing that instructor’s presence. Thus, most xMOOCs, todate, seem to have an uneasy balance between the instructor as “sage on thevirtual stage” and that of “the ghost in the wings.”

 The instructor role and presence in a MOOCposes a considerable number of challenges and pitfalls, as well asopportunities. Instructors, for the most part, seem apprenticed into teaching,thus they replicate existing structures. Recording videos and playing them backis a regression of online education back to the mid-to-late 1990s. In the lastten-to-fifteen years we’ve learned a lot from research and practice in onlineeducation that we can put into MOOCs.

Rewardingteaching and learning experiences can be had with MOOCs. This is the majoropportunity. However, the role of the instructor needs reconceiving, and itneeds to build upon what we know from research in online education. Weshouldn’t be turning back the clock, because what works for a face-to-face audiencedoes not necessarily work, as is, in an online environment, and in a massiveenvironment it has the potential to fail massively.

References and resources

Connectivism (n.d.). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism

Constructivism (n.d.) Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)

CreativeCommons. https://creativecommons.org/

Cormier, D. (2010) What is MOOC?Retrieved on March 8th, 2013 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc

Edupunk (n.d.) Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edupunk

Koutropoulos, A., deTorres, C.,Girelli, A., Hyseni, R., O’Rourke, K. (2013). What the MOOC have we done? UMass Boston Shares Design Perspectivesfrom Two Projects. NERCOMP Annual Conference 2012. Providence, RI.

Lane, L. M. (2009) Insidious pedagogy:How course managementsystems affect teaching. First Monday, Volume 14, Number 10 – 5 October2009 Retrieved from: https://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2530/2303

Lucas, S. (2013) Instructivism. Retrieved from: https://susanlucas.com/it/ail601/instructivism.html

OpenLearning Initiative.https://oli.cmu.edu/

OpenCourserware. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

PersonalLearning Environments(n.d.) Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_learning_environment

Siemens, G. (2012). MOOCs are really a platform.elearnspace. Retrieved from: https://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/07/25/moocs-are-really-a-platform/