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.

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.

Converting conventional face-to-face teaching to online distance learning formats has long been recognised as a dauntingly challenging task for academics and learning technologists alike.  The classroom and the computer environment are both complex, subtle and surprisingly hard to describe, so translating from one mode into the another very different one is fraught with pitfalls, especially for academics with little experience of online course formats.

As UCL moves inexorably towards more blended and distance forms of delivery, these hard issues are coming up for us, too. Colleagues in departments are keen to develop distance learning modules and programmes but need a lot of personal input from ELE and CALT to guide them. We recognise this is hardly scalable so ELE is piloting checklists to help UCL, timings, contingency, developers identify critical initial questions around market analysis, finances resourcing, staffing, learner profiles, assessment, editing, copyright and so on.

We are now thinking about tools to help learning design itself and the stereotype question is; “What would the Open University do?”. Although the OU is very different organisation to UCL addressing an hugely different clientele, they actually face similar issues. At an OU event last week I came across their current course planning tools, which are actually based on an open JISC project called OULDI (Open University Learning Design Initiative). The two tools I saw in action were the Activity Profile and the Module Map.

The Activity Profile is a spreadsheet designed to provide an insight of what kind of learning actually goes on inside a course, identified by different types of learning activities; Assimilative, Finding and handling information, Communication, Productive, Experiential, Interactive/ Adaptive, Assessment. Each activity is associated with familiar Bloom-style ‘process outcomes’ or action verbs i.e. learners will collaborate/engage/explore etc.  The developers are asked to allocate study hours in the face-to-face course against each activity against each activity type. The results often show a skew towards Assimilative activities (e.g. Read, Watch, Listen, Think about, Access, Observe, Review). This is designed to generate discussion about what type of balance developers want in the online course, bearing in mind the online format requires active and preferably visible engagement with the course.

The Course (or Module) Map gives another perspective, an ‘at a glance’ view of the course or module across four dimensions (see illustration), and is more analogous to some of the materials now being developed by ELE. It captures a brief textual overview of the course activities in terms of the types of learning experience the learner will have, how they will communicate and collaborate with tutor and peers, as well as the guidance and support provided and the nature of any assessment.

The point of these tools is not to be prescriptive but to stimulate discussion and accurate description of the module so leading ultimately to more ‘aspirational’ designs which make better use of the online environment. I hope we will be able to build some aspects of OULDI into our own learning design processes.

One final OULDI tool I thought intriguing was the set of printed Course Features Card Sort. This comprises around 45 printable cards to help module teams decide on and describe their course. I expressed some cynicism about giving academic colleagues such materials but was assured that once their own scepticism was overcome, lecturers found the prompts to be useful to capture the intangible ‘feel ‘of a course. If anyone out there wants to try these out, I would be very happy to facilitate!

After five weeks the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC eventually reached its conclusion. I completed the required marking last night, minimum three other participants (in fact I marked four). This morning I could access my result; two very nice and thoughtful pieces of feedback from my anonymous markers*.  I must say I found both activities rather satisfying educationally. Submitters were automatically allocated three artefacts to mark and I spent about half an hour with each, coming up with about 300 words of feedback using a rough rubric. The artefacts were all multi-media (e.g. using Prezi, video, audio, images, mind-maps), some clearer and more polished than others. The tools seem to encourage a “briclolage” approach, so it took some marker engagement from me to “join the dots”. This interpretation effort meant I felt I was still learning from the course at even at this late stage and indeed one of the submissions was a real privilege to read, a complex reflection on the nature of educational change anchored in a very personal testament.  It was quite clear that at least some of the small band who reached the end of the MOOC had engaged and reflected on the course in sometimes quite profound and moving ways, though I notice other reviewers on the MOOC’s Facebook page complaining about the quality of the artefacts they marked.

So how did the MOOC work more broadly as an educational experience? Bearing in mind this was, according to UCL colleagues, an unusual MOOC in terms of subject, scope and approach, I thought it worked quite well. I still remain deeply sceptical though of the M-word (i.e. massive). Enrolment ‘likes’ is not participation, so high registration is simply misleading. To do any form of distance learning, especially one you have not paid for, requires a remarkably high level of motivation. A reflective, challenging subject will inevitably weed out the vast majority of students, leaving a hard core of a few hundred highly-engaged completists who are to be fair likely to get a lot out of it.

Where I felt this MOOC fell down for me was the lack of a clear communication framework. The discussion was far too dissipated and I missed that form of interaction. The forums should have been structured by topic from the outset with a more prominent ‘blogroll’ to capture the rolling debate. The course also needed weekly Google hangout review sessions from the tutors – this would have helped keep participants orientated. The Facebook page worked well, though.

That said I still feel I have completed a ‘proper’ course from the University of Edinburgh. The educational brand is very important here, both to differentiate the course in the noise of the internet and also to motivate students such as me to enrol and invest time in it. If the course is not very good, however, branding is unlikely to save it.

Nonetheless I suspect if MOOCs are to survive their current honeymoon period it will be because they will be seen to have broken a marketing rather than an educational mould. For institutions wanting to build a global market presence and have capacity to monetise that market, i.e. through paid-for distance learning or conventional offerings, MOOCs must be an attractive proposition. For others I’m not sure if the numbers stack up. Does 50,000 ‘likes’ (enrolments) actually mean anything when only 500 will complete? Is that genuinely good value for money, even from a marketing perspective? Is a 90%+ drop-out ratio the message/image that any university wants to promote?

My own feeling currently is that MOOCs have a real educational value, at least for highly motivated students. What is less clear is their long-term future. The moment of truth may occur when the feeding frenzy of initial enthusiasm wears off (as it undoubtedly will) and enrolment numbers start falling. Universities may become more critical of their involvement.  If – a big if – the high drop-out rate can be overcome, maybe though badges or rewards, I wonder if MOOCs will start to fragment into more specific markets. I suspect will we could soon see sponsored sector-specific MOOCs (e.g. health care), tie-ins to commercial offerings from broadcasters, charities and publishers and many more geographically-targeted and language-specific MOOCs.

*due to a mix-up in timings the submission deadline was reset after I wrote this, meaning my result disappeared!

… in both senses of word!

I’m one of the team of UCL staff who participated in the E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC (Massive Online Open Course), and I have just submitted my digital artefact, which briefly summarises my thinking about the course. You can view my artefact, created using Glogster, here.

I must be obsessed with shoes, because I have labelled the central feature my ‘digital footprint’. This was a Wordle (tag cloud) of my discussion posts in the forums. I’ve provided some audio narratives too – an overview of my Glog, an interpretation of my tag cloud in under two minutes and finally, some implications for teaching and learning. The sound could have been of better quality – but I think the message gets across. As educators, we often worry too much about delivering a polished performance and actually – it’s the spontaneous, raw, unedited performance that engages people – it might even be what we could call the ‘human’ aspect!

I feel, as we are coming to the end of this particular MOOC, that I’m really just getting into it, so I hope to continue discussions with other participants in UCL and online. For others who might be interested but who weren’t able to take part, Clive has provided a nice overview of the MOOC in his blogs (see ‘Meditations on a MOOC’) and he includes some of the references and links to videos which is a great way of making an online open course even more open!

The next stage for us is to wait patiently until Friday when we will receive the marks given to our digital artefacts by our peers, and in the meantime we will be marking other participants’ work, so this is a nice experience of peer-assessment too (from the student perspective).

‘Til next time …