Tito O. OKUMU
“Open Educational Resources (OER) (including open textbooks), Open
Access, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have all gained
traction as significant drivers of education innovation”(Stacey, 2013).
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Massive- Large Scale interactive Participation
(Large Numbers, no limit on attendance)
Open- Open access, content, registration
Online- Local & Real time
Courses- Community, Self paced, structured
against learning goals.
A MOOC has a syllabus, and course content consists of readings, assignments, and
“microlectures.” discussions etc.
Local group cohorts can meet face to face & is supported by organisations (profit &
Non Profit provided they mission includes education.
The organizations decide what to teach and at what level, and they form teams of
faculty and support staff to design the MOOC, develop the content, and conduct the
course.
Based on Connectivism theory — a pedagogy in which knowledge is not a destination
but an ongoing activity, fueled by the relationships people build and the deep
discussions taking place formally & informally (COP, Personal Networks etc).
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Mostly North American and Canadian Universities over
33universities, offering more than 200 courses to over
two million students in 196 countries. The universities
include: Harvard, Yale, Duke, MIT etc.
MOOC platforms Coursera (2012a), edX (2012) and
Udacity (2012).
Bill and Melinda Gates is sponsoring MOOCS Research
to explore how they impact on teaching, learning and
education.
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cMOOCs attributed to Cormier & Alexander for the course
Connectivism and Connective Knowledge developed by Siemens
& Downes
In 2012 Stanford University offered a free, chunked course on
Artificial Intelligence online and 58,000 people signed up. This
was beginning of xMOOCS.
Quasi MOOCS with OCW offered later evolved into MITx
and edX
Pedagogical Benefits
Characteristics of MOOCs and their related pedagogical benefits.
MOOC characteristic
Pedagogical benefits
Online mode of delivery
Efficacy of online learning
Online quizzes and
assessments
Retrieval learning
Short videos and quizzes
Mastery learning
Peer and self–assessment
Enhanced learning through this assessment
Short videos
Enhanced attention and focus
Online forums
Peer assistance, out–of–band learning
Whenever there is high
interaction between student
to student, Student teacher or
student content, there will
high
quality
without
impairing
the
learning
experience. (Anderson 2003,
Interaction
Equivalency
Theorem)
Quality
Access
Cost
Technology is a key factor in adjusting it in favour of the learner
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A wiki (e.g.,Wikispaces) – The ideal tool to set up your course
syllabus.
A discussion group or list-serve (e.g., Google groups) –
Enables sharing discussions online and through e-mail while
keeping the topics nicely grouped based on their title.
Microblogging (e.g., Twitter) – Allows a quick exchange of
resources and thoughts.
Social bookmarking (e.g., delicious) – participants share
resources on the Web that can be retrieved later on.
Virtual classrooms (e.g., Elluminate) – Enable synchronous
sessions (live meetings) so that people can put forward different
questions. Virtual classrooms also allow more human,
immediate interaction to occur, and they are ideal to give an
expert the floor to express her/his framework of ideas.
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University brand is a surrogate for teaching quality. The elite
universities that are rushing into xMOOCs gained their reputations
in research.
Rate of course and degree completion low mainly taken by tourists
and curious people who want to know what the fuss was.
Certification
- MOOCS does not lead to credit, but to a
certificate. What decides whether or not a student can obtain a
degree is determined not by their mastery of the courses, but by the
admissions process to the university.
Registration & authentication of student difficult
Pedagogy- it follows lone ranger approach
Why offer it? OER is slowly getting the business model but not
xMOOCs
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Improving teaching and encouraging institutions to develop
distinctive missions.
May encourage universities in Developing world, to develop online
learning more deliberately, and OER from MOOC courses may find
their way but will not expand higher education.
Teaching quality assessment may affect traditional universities.
Improvement of the pedagogical models.
Selling the University brand rather than the level of expertise.
Technological colonisation.
Rapidly changing University funding models.
New avenues for publishing
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What does Makerere do better than any other college or university
ISSUES
UPE & USE has opened doors to a large no of students.
What role has the University played in ensuring its success?
How much have put in Knowledge Transfer partnerships &
Networking?
Some suggestions
 Get staff to embrace Open platform whether software, resources, books
etc. Requires champions.
 Develop a policy to guide this framework
 Identify what should be open
 Engage government to address the issue of large numbers.
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What revenue model will be followed.
Course completion rate
Accreditation
Student authentication
Ownership issues
Sponsorship
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http://www.moocresearch.com/
http://www.educause.edu/events/educause-sprint-2013
http://edtechfrontier.com/2013/05/11/the-pedagogy-ofmoocs/
http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com/a+MobiMOOC+hello!
http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/issues/pdf/9.2.1.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7iWmCsyrRo
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4350/
3673
http://www.udemy.com/
http://see.stanford.edu/see/faq.aspx
http://www.bdpadetroit.org/portal/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti
cle&id=57:moocs-top-10-sites-for-free-education-withelite-universities&catid=29:education&Itemid=20
Contact:
[email protected]
Thank You
In one of the session in the University