E-Learning Environments team blog

I went as an observer to the first Coursera Partners Conference at the University of Pennsylvania last week with what I thought would be a simple mission. I wanted to find out the question that MOOCs (massive open online courses) are trying to answer. It turned out to be far more complex than I had thought.

Coursera was started about a year ago by Stanford computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller along with three other university partners; Michigan, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. That number has now risen to 62 partners largely from the US providing over 300 courses for a claimed 2.5 million students, almost 60% from outside the US itself.

Coursera has taken a fairly elitist policy and at the Conference were a good number of the heavy hitters of US higher education were represented, with the exception of MIT and Harvard who last year launched an even-more-elitist nonprofit rival EdX. What was really noticeable at the Conference was the prevalence of fairly senior academics. Ties almost outnumbered t-shirts and this seemed to me hugely significant, perhaps the key to understanding the Coursera phenomenon. This is not a vision initiated by individual academics, or e-learning types like myself but senior management, the ‘gift of Coursera’, as one learning technologist put it, had invariably been bestowed from above.

So what, I asked, were the institutional drivers? Activists were almost bemused by that query, there was it seemed an ideological drive to MOOC involvement. In part this was surely ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. The Keynote, former Princeton president William G. Bowen remarked, “One of the characteristics of academia is that nobody wants to be left behind”. Coursera’s ‘join our elite club’ strategy was clever and persuasive but MOOCs also seem to meet a range of institutional and even national priorities. One was the perception in the US of HE as costly, parochial and elitist, maybe unfit to skill and re-skill an under-performing workforce. The US government is clearly eyeing up MOOCs as a possible game-changer in educational delivery, if the pedagogical and economic concepts can be proven. The perceived low cost was mentioned repeatedly.

MOOCs clearly link to the ‘public good’ outreach aims of top universities, as well as raising their global profile. There is a perception that the global openness of MOOCs can improve the occasionally parochial perspectives of US programmes, good for students as well as institutions. Many individual academicsreported a real emotional buzz from teaching tens of thousands of students at a time.

Perhaps most importantly, though, it is a motivator for research-focused universities to re-focus on teaching. The Duke Provost Peter Lange said that at his university the MOOC initiative had stimulated ten times more discussion about pedagogy than had occurred in the previous ten years! For those with a responsibility for teaching and learning renewal, the MOOC must seem like a magic wand.

Interestingly there was little talk about income generation or ‘monetization’. Most initial university MOOCs has been supported by one-off university-level funds, supplemented by some departmental investment. Maybe thoughts of sustainability were yet to kick in, though some universities were now on their second iteration of delivery. Two ideas were mooted by Coursera themselves, Signature Track, a way of digitally verifying attendance on some courses that students can already pay a smallish sum for. The other was ‘course-in-a-box‘, essentially selling on prestige courses for delivery in other universities, usually with localisation of content and local support.

This led to discussions of ‘blended’ learning, using all or part of a MOOC to support a conventional course, usually in the same institution but occasionally elsewhere. There was much enthusiasm for this. The major re-thinking needed by academics to design a MOOC, and the particular focus on student-centred learning and new forms of assessment had revolutionised the way some courses were taught, usually around the ‘flipping‘ paradigm.

There was a strong feeling that MOOCs were like a magnifying glass, enabling the inspection of the educational process and the student experience in ways that had not been possible, or even considered, before, though ‘learning analytics’ (of online behaviour) and ‘A/B testing‘ (altering one aspect of design to determine effect) . I felt an unstated aspect of this innovators club was that the universities felt they were positioning themselves in some way for the future. Monetization was not really the issue at this early stage. Maybe the Google and Facebook growth models were are the back of people’s minds – build it and the income will come (eventually). The conservative fall-back model mentioned a few times seemed to be the MOOC-as-a-book model, where MOOC courses would essentially be the textbooks of the future, with ‘signature courses’ dominating some subjects and used across many institutions.

It was hard to dismiss the energy around the conference, though, there was the feeling we were all at the start of something big. Tom ‘The World Is Flat’ Friedman, speaking at the pre-Conference seminar said if MOOCs were search engines we should think of ourselves just at the ‘AltaVista’ stage, when Google was still nowhere on the horizon.

MOOCs were clearly a metaphor for all sorts of issues such as the renewal of teaching and learning in the digital age, the democratisation of learning, the role of elite universities, the threat and promise of globalisation. However, as we know there is a risk of using metaphors in education; they can simplify or obscure as much as illuminate. It is the deeper impulses pushing for MOOCs that we should maybe be tracking as much as the MOOCs themselves.

Over the last few weeks we have been surveying UCL’s E-learning Champions to find out what their priority interests were for the next year or so. We had a very high engagement, over 60 responses, which is encouraging in itself. We invited Champions to select from a mix of concepts, tools and practices . In the graph top scored priorities are given as percentages.

The highest interest was around the use of video e.g. lecture capture, ‘flipping’, developing short clips and demonstrations. This is perhaps not so surprising, in our discussions with departments and Champions, the issue of how we can use video more effectively has come up repeatedly and from all parts of UCL. There are probably quite a few reasons for this; YouTube, MOOCs and video-lecture portals like the Khan Academy  have shown how even fairly low-fi video can be used in learning. Moreover Lecturecast  has proved to be an extraordinarily popular technology at UCL with both students and staff. Although the use so far has been relatively conservative so far colleagues are bginning to experiement with EchoCapture ‘personal capture’, that is using screen recordings to create short narrated video clips and then using these to provide additional resources, preparation for labs, fieldwork and tutorials and even feedback on assessments. See the UCL Lecturecast wiki for more information.

I lead a video project called REC:all (recording and augmenting lectures for learning) which is looking at how we use lecture capture in educationally interesting ways. We are compiling a quick review of how video is being used to support students learning at UCL, in order to identify good examples. If you are currently using video  – including screen-capture, use of mobile devices, animation etc, even more use of Lecturecast such as ‘flipping’ – please let us know with a few details and we will follow up with you.

Perhaps unsurprisingly electronic forms of assessment and feedback were next and taken together the highest collective priority. UCL has seen very rapid growth in the use of Turnitin, diagnostic and formative Moodle quizzes and Moodle-based e-exams. Champions were very interested in using Grademark comments and rubrics and providing diagnostic feedback through Moodle quizzes and lessons.

ELE colleagues are currently redeveloping our support for Moodle quizzes and we are closely involved in an interesting new project looking at the value of early diagnostic quizzes in a range of SLMS Masters programmes. CALT has also developed some excellent online resources available form their Assessment and feedback page.

Third was collaborative and group work in and outside the classroom, including the use of blogs and wikis and classroom technologies such as clickers. At about the same level of interest was audio, for example to provide podcasts and audio feedback to students. Audio is rightly seen as ‘simpler’ to use than video and even Grademark has a basic audio feedback feature.

Despite the drawbacks (mainly low returns and possibly skewed responses) of using online methods such as Moodle or Opinio for getting programme feedback remain of much interest.

Online discussion (forums, instant messaging and the Blackboard virtual classroom) was almost as popular, as was the growing field of fully online learning for distance learning, short courses and CPD, another area ELE are developing new support resources for.  Classroom technologies such as clickers, but also maybe new ways of presenting, using tablets, online voting and so also rated highly.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this survey was actually how wide the Champions’ interests were, this provides some challenges if we want to provide support, but is very positive in that colleagues are willing to explore and experiment with a remarkable range of new ideas and technologies. In addition to the suggestions in the survey, coleagues expressed interest in for example iPads, virtual machines, cloud-based services and automated maths marking. We are now looking into ways of further supporting Champions in all these areas and welcome your ideas.

This is me, climbing a tree.

What are you looking at?

Earlier today I was reminded of a topic I’ve wanted to explore more ever since I worked with Carl Gombrich from UCL’s BASc Arts and Sciences programme. In conversation about his flipped classroom model he mentioned, in passing, that people ‘can close the talking head’ and watch the other video feed, make notes, browse the web or simply walk around and listen. This instantly raised several questions:

• What’s the value of the talking head?
• Why do they close the talking head?
• Is there something happening here we have not explored enough?
• Why did Matt put his picture on this blog post?

I was reminded of this today, in a meeting with an external group I noticed most of the people around the room starred into the conference phone. Most did it when they were talking, others for listening – those who looked to be thinking of complex mathematical formulas and the science of life (or lunch) gave a mixed set of data. Without any research backing whatsoever (hold tight), Carl is right. When watching a recorded lecture, people can close that talking head at their discretion. For lecture capture we’re talking about a camera fixed to the back of the room, a pixellated academic  who goes in and out of shot but does have their best tie on. The other thing to consider is that  focusing on the captured display device might be a preference anyway – as it’s showing the projected content but this is a bigger video, centered to the screen – it’s more dominant.

So what is the value of the talking head?

Value (y) of talking head over time (x)

As indicated by my very technical graph made from assumptions alone (yikes) I’d expect to see it starts really high, peaks around a muddy spot, point of clarification or unexpected event and then finally towards the end. Otherwise I’d expect it drops to very low levels the rest of the time. What does this head add? Perhaps initially we want to see who’s talking to us, but I’d expect most people may know the speaker and instead want to know other questions. Previously these have ranged from:

• When studying from non-class/campus locations I like to see who’s talking to me
• I’m a social being, I like to see others
• Checking the speaker isn’t doing it in their pants from home
• And so on.

I am sure there’s better reasons, but ultimately we’re generally a social animal and perhaps it’s as simple as ‘I like to see them, at least for a bit’.

Why do people close the talking head?

Perhaps once we’ve confirmed how nice their office / home is and checked weather they are indeed wearing clothes we’re less attracted by this face and we close it off. A real study here would be fascinating. Imaging the same recording to thousands of people and all your measuring is when the talking head is closed/opened. With large classes or a MOOC this is easy or longitudinally over the same service and many, many different videos and viewers  (i.e. Lecturecast) it’s also easy and the data should show measurable results.

Is there something happening here we have not explored enough?

I think so. If anyone out there has done more on this it would be interesting to see it. There’s something in here about clearly highlighting the level of human to human face-exposure. It’s higher than zero but I’d expect lower than 100%. But where does it sit? If anyone’s got more research/data do let me know. For distance learning or massive online courses, I think this information could be very interesting.

What did you look at at the beginning of the post?

Answers below please

Paul, Vicki and myself had the privilege of welcoming Graham Walton from Loughborough University to UCL following a reciprocal visit last week.

Our two campuses could not be more different.

UCL is landlocked in Bloomsbury, heart of the University of London, in one of the most intense concentrations of college buildings in Europe. Every virtue and vice of the capital is on the doorstep. Loughborough is a low-rise, spacious campus with excellent sports facilities and acres of playing fields.  And a long walk to the town centre.

Yet there was much common ground to enjoy on our tours, not least seeing the ways in which students made spaces their own, confounding our attempts to ‘keep the furniture here’ or ‘make this room silent there’. Lots of thinking about the organic, evolving use of spaces, and plenty of just watching what was happening.

Tours of UCL usually take in three of my favourite spaces on campus.

The UCLU Wolfson Study is a student owned space where anarchy – of the most thoughtful kind – ensures the kind of collective respect of the space and others around, even when they are strangers. The fact that students voted to turn a bar into an alcohol-free study area seems to mark this room as a hard-won achievement; a victory for the student voice that is guarded with a sense of pride.

The second is the BASc (Bachelor of Arts and Sciences) common room, a new type of space at UCL for a new type of programme – and probably a new type of student. These are free-range students, allowed to graze on a diet from across the academic spectrum, and they are experts in negotiation and driving consensus in all that they do. The ever-changing layout of the funky furniture, accessories brought in from home, decorated fish tank with its feeding rota, the self-organising committee posters are the markers they leave in their territory.

The third of my favourites – for today – is the pilot room in the Cruciform Hub. It’s actually very modest in what it does, but its purpose is to try things out, make mistakes and learn from them. And mistakes were certainly made; the benches and seats don’t work well together (unless you have particularly long arms), the exposed group working monitor doesn’t get used due to lack of privacy, and so on. But so much more was got right, and simple observations help us know what to do better when the real Cruciform Hub work starts later this year.

Graham noted that we’d seen about 10 different learning environments in our 90 minutes on the campus, which I reckon is about 5 or 6 more than we had – or at least knew we had – a couple of years ago.  I wish I could take the credit for having written all 10 down in some planning document three years ago, but I didn’t so I can’t. Instead, our students inhabit, colonise, adjust and redefine our spaces to make them their own, and tell us a little more about learning each time they do so.

By the way, if you are a UCL person, feel free to go and look at the Wolfson Study or the Cruciform Hub pilot room.  But as for the BASc common room, you’ll have to make do with just peering in the windows along Malet Place – your card is unlikely to open the door. But see what you think, and if you experience a touch of ‘common room envy’, you won’t be the first.

Simon Sinek’s talk, How great leaders inspire action filmed at TEDxPuget carves a visual model for inspirational leadership. By going into examples of Apple, Martin Luther King and the Wright brothers Simon unearths what he calls the ‘golden circle’ and how leaders in their field can inspire others where the others are not.

The ‘golden circle’

Before you carry on, you might want to watch his talk:

(if that doesn’t load – Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action)

As bought up in the talk and mentioned by my colleague Clive a few times is Roger’s 1962 model of diffusion of innovation and Clive has mentioned how this can be used to view e-learning permeation across the institution. The model isn’t some theoretical utensil; it’s actually fairly useful for measuring innovation within certain contexts. For example if we look back to our Total Moodle (where every taught module/programme of study must have at least a Baseline Moodle component) from 2010 we were geared up with an email template called ‘laggards’. Naturally we’re not some kind of automated E-Learning-a-tron-2000 unit who fire our emails of disgust to the rebellion, but we expected the hesitant, reserved, traditional or otherwise objectors to stir. This email never saw the light. For one reason or another; a significant majority came on board. If we have laggards now, we’re on a 1-2% group – and you know what, their autonomy is sacred, and we’re really busy with the other 98%.

To think of this diffusion of innovation within E-Learning Environments we have the privilege to work with academic and support staff to support, promote, develop and evaluate e-learning within UCL’s teaching and learning. This generally means inspiration from the innovators, a lot of work with the early & late majority and having some of the most interesting (and sometimes heated) interactions with Those on the Right (*ahem* or laggards, not that we see them that way). But the e-learning staff member does not say ‘this is how it’s done, so get on with it’. As mentioned in the talk, people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. What you do simply serves as the proof of what you believe. We believe in e-learning, it makes an impact, some call it supportive, others disruptive – and we subscribe, invest and build.

When considering any of the activities within the e-learning team (learning spaces, new projects, existing services, biggest problems, smallest ideas, daily support) and overlay each and every user over diffusion of innovation model we’ll find they’re scattered all over the place. Some are more to the left, others to the middle or the right & many are in multiple places. The implication was that people will only subscribe to what they believe in, so we have to keep refining that Why component.

I’ve just watched Professor Keith Devlin of Stanford and a colleague being interviewed about their first experiences of running a MOOC last September. The interview touched on some of the lessons they’d learned which they’re hoping to use to improve the second iteration of their popular MOOC on mathematical thinking. The second version kicked off a few days ago on the 4th March.
I enjoyed the interview and Professor Devlin’s obvious enthusiasm and humility regarding his role as teacher made it easy to warm to him as a person. Some interesting points are made regarding changes to the course after analysis of the demographic and feedback from students. Much of the discussion revolves around the importance that Professor Devlin places on trying to put a human face to a  ’dry’ subject made potentially even dryer by it’s mode of delivery.

The interview suggests that the team have succeeded, at least to some extent, in creating a feeling of instructor presence resulting, they think, in students committing more to the course than they otherwise might have. Worth a look for anyone interested in the development of distance learning, but also interesting  perhaps for tutors involved in the teaching of large cohorts of students and also concerned about issues of de-personalisation.

The interview can be viewed at:       https://class.coursera.org/maththink-002/lecture/126

Unfortunately you have to create a Coursera account to view the interview which forms part of the introductory material to the new course – fortunately it’s free!

Professor Devlin is also maintaining  ’A real-time chronicle of a seasoned professor who is about to give his second massively open online course.’   a (probably) unique opportunity to get behind the scenes and see some of the thinking behind the development of this MOOC as it unfolds. To read more got to: http://mooctalk.org/