Didactics and Technology in Education

This article does not really sing a song that is much different from the song sung by many other opponents of MOOCs. However, it does so quite elegantly and forcefully. For that reason alone it is worth reading.

MOOC proponents have never shied away from making bold predications, like Sebastian Thrun who predicted that "Fifty years from now there will be only 10 institutions in the whole world that deliver higher education" (http://tiny.cc/83ygyw). Aaron faces them squarely when he claims that "MOOCs are a speculative bubble … [which] will eventually burst". I would hope it does, in the way he describes them as affecting Californian HE. I hope too, though, that the discovery of distance teaching that MOOCs exemplify, has a lasting effect, by making people reflect on the pedagogy, organisation and economics of (higher) education. (@pbsloep)

A plea for a balanced view should always be taken seriously. After all, what is the point of a debate if you're unwilling to change your opinion, Habermas already noted many years ago. This does not mean that one can only articulate opinions that take a kind of middle ground, that are an amalgamate of extant opinions. Indeed, it means that one should articulate one's opinion as precisely and clearly as possible in order that others can critique it. Only that way, we can learn what different conceptions of MOOCs there are and how we think about each one of them. That is what I try to achieve through these pages, and that is exactly what Cathy Davidson does in this article of hers. 

She notes that perhaps MOOCs are a way neoliberals hope to make money, but that that observation does not exempt us from addressing the issue of their popularity. She acknowledges that rising tuition costs are a driver for MOOCs but puts this in perspective by establishing that i) there is no evidence that MOOCs do anything about those costs, ii) costs may have risen faster than inflation, but not faster than, say, the cost of luxury travel. 

In conclusion, Cathy urges that "we should all be emphasising, in every conversation: in the complex, changing world in which we live, advanced learning is necessary. Not a luxury. It deserves the public support of other necessities. Advanced education is far too important to price out of the market for all but the global 1%." (@pbsloep)

This paper is about experiences with a cMOOC, seen through the lens of chaos theory, complexity theory and emergence. If you feel comfortable with these theories, this should be an interesting paper to you. I can't help being underwhelmed by their explanatory value, and this paper is no exception to that. I would like to see explanations of what happens starting at the level of the interacting units, people, that then explain the macroscopic patterns that we see; so, in terms of social network theory, game theory, and the like. (@pbsloep)

Blog post by Terry Anderson about MOOCs, mainly about their high drop-out rates and what to think about it. In passing, he distinguishes between x-MOOCs (the CourEra, MTx, etc. type) and c-MOOCs (the Downes, Cormier and Siemans type). (@pbsloep) 

Another MOOC report, this time from University of London. Section 6 specially interesting for MOOC making. 

Project Planning a MOOC

The course teams involved with our MOOCs included experienced academics with familiarity in developing materials on a learning platform. Nonetheless, for each of them it was their first experience of MOOCs, as it was for the project planning team.

Delivering a MOOC

A range of styles and learning methods were adopted by the four MOOCs, appropriate to the subject matter covered. A MOOC structure of six weeks and 5-10 student effort hours per week of study appeared to be just right for the majority of students (55%). Some considerations for future delivery include:

< Well designed announcements at the beginning and end of each week that articulate with the topic coverage, learning activities and assessment methods can be effective at maintaining student interest and motivation.

< Management of forum threads and posts is a critical factor in dealing with massive scale short courses to ensure the majority of students are not affected negatively by the behaviour of a small number of the community, while preserving the openness of the discussion areas.

< The Coursera platform tools are significant and comprehensive in terms of plotting overall student activity, allowing evaluation of assessment data, as well as usage statistics on video resources and other learning activities; however, further refinement of these tools to enable both students and teaching staff to understand their progression at an individual level is necessary (and underway).

** Learning Resource Development

University of London MOOC Report .

I Barney Gracinger, U. London

Fukuyama's book was very influential - he claimed that history had come to an end with the arrival of democratic societies routed in neo-liberal economic views - but in retrospect also very wrong. Stefan Popenici claims that the MOOC debate suffers from the same short-comings as did Fukuyama. In the MOOC debate,  facts only seem to matter "if they serve a well funded and professionally promoted agenda." Stefan mentions Pearson as an example (see my earlier scooped quote of Matthew Poyiadgi, a Pearson executive, who in a sweeping statement called all universities in Europe and Asia mediocre (http://sco.lt/62bkm1 ). Tunnel vision and group think leads many organisations to the mistaken believe that debates online higher education essentially are debates about the pros and cons of MOOCs, Stefan claims.

Analogising MOOC debates with the debates that surrounded Fukuyama's book, results in an unorthodox view of MOOCs. But it is a view well worth taking the time to ingest, precisely because it challenges the orthodoxy about MOOCs, precisely because it questions what already seems to have become received wisdom about MOOCs. It is troubling to see how some academics, who as professionals in their respective fields practice scrutiny and carefully discriminate between fact and opinion, when it comes to MOOCs and online learning so often act as if they don't have these skills. (@pbsloep)

Series of slides by a UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources, presented in December 2012 at an EU ministerial conference.

Fred Mulder positions MOOCs and learning with MOOCs as part of the larger Open Educational Resources movement and learning with OERs. He argues that the distance learning establishment is not all that open to this newcomer, perhaps even tries to ignore, wherein his view it should in stead welcome the attention for online OER-like learning wholeheartedly. The MOOC section starts at slide 16, although the others also are worth to look at.  (pbsloep)

Marc Bousquet on what has become known as xMOOCs (bad) and cMOOCs (good) and on how xMOOCs may make their money, for somehow they need to come up with a return on the investments made by venture capitalists. Candidates are: charging for assessment, vending tutorial services, direct tuition for certain courses, advertising. The upshot is, although not put in that way, beware!, what looks like a good deal may turn sour in the end. Administrators shlould realize this but don't: "If institutions really wanted to sustain participatory learning [in cMOOCs], they would already be doing so, for instance, by reducing lectures and high-stakes testing, investing in teaching-intensive faculty and the like. Instead, driven less by cost concerns than a desire to standardize and control both faculty and curriculum, administrations rely more than ever on lectures and tests [xMOOCs]".  (@pbsloep)