ASCILITE
Fellow 2012
National Teaching
Fellow 2012
Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs)
Gráinne Conole, University of Leicester
DL Forum
26th March 2013
Outline
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What are they?
Evolving MOOC landscape
Design principles
Pros and Cons
The OLDS MOOC
Disaggregation of Education
100 million adults can’t afford
university (UNESCO)
Image by James Cridland
What are they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc
Evolving MOOC landscape
• Online course with
large-scale participation
adopting open practices
• 2008 Connectivism and
Connective Knowledge
• cMOOCs and xMOOCs
• Key players: Coursera,
edX, Udacity
• Now: FutureLearn and a
new Oz platform
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a2cEzsMEMY
Design principles
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Aggregation
Remixing
Re-purposing
Feeding forward
Personalised
Multiple channels
No ‘right’ pathway
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14852568@N04/3363891963/
Pros and cons
Free
Distributed global community
Social inclusion
http://alternative-educate.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/audio-ascilite-2012-great-debate-moocs.html
High dropout rates
Learning income not learning outcome
Marketing exercise
http://www.olds.ac.uk/
Disaggregation of education
Resources
Learning
pathways
Support
Accreditation
http://openclipart.org/
The OER movement
• Over ten years of the Open
Educational Resource (OER)
movement
• Hundreds of OER
repositories worldwide
• Presence on iTunesU
The OPAL metromap
Evaluation shows lack of uptake
by teachers and learners
Shift from development to
community building and
articulation of OER practice
http://www.oer-quality.org/
POERUP outputs
• An inventory of more than 300 OER initiatives
http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Countries_with_OER_initiatives
• 11 country reports and 13 mini-reports
http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Countries
• Comparative analysis of transversal OER initiatives
• 7 in-depth case studies
• 3 EU-wide policy papers
State of the art in OER
• Builds on a UNESCO
conference on HE (09)
• Discourse on policy and
practice
• How do institutions
reposition themselves
in an information rich
world where tools and
resources are freely
available?
http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412
Combating social exclusion
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Completely open
Free
Education for all
Easy to access and use
Crosses boundaries
Access to new knowledge
and expertise
• Aggregation of resources
• Sharing ideas and practice
• Facilitates the
development of networks
Learning pathways
• Guided pathways
through materials
• Can promote different
pedagogical
approaches
– Didactic
– Constructivist
– Situative
– Connectivist
Collaborative Pedagogical Patterns
Support
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Computer assisted
Peer support
Tutor support
Community support
Mentoring
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24289877@N02/5851058394/
Accreditation
Peer to Peer University
www.p2pu.org/en/
OER University
wikieducator.org/OER_university/
Mozilla badges
http://openbadges.org/
Changing practices
• Nature of learning,
teaching and research
is changing
• It’s about
– Harnessing new media
– Adopting open practices
• New business models
are emerging
http://www.slideshare.net/GrainneConole
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance
[email protected]
http://e4innovation.com