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MOOCs just keep getting bigger!

Hype or hope? You decide.

I thought it was time to catch up on the current headline grabbing subject of MOOCs ; following my own recent MOOC experiences and a few inspirational talks here at Aston. On Monday 28 January 2013 Professor Curtis Bonk visited Aston University and delivered a brain melting talk on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). His presentation was recorded and is available in 4 chunks on the Global Dimensions in HE website 

Professor Bonk galloped through the recent history of MOOCs, models, and (learning) theories – which was both fascinating and overwhelming! The MOOC is definitely here to stay in a multiplicity of variants and pedagogic models, and all look somewhat disruptive (if you believe the hype), and some are even innovative! I still think the primary reason for most is still a “shop front” or large data collection for learning research. Some are offering innovative modes of delivery and learner engagement; i.e. the recent E-learning and Digital Cultures  course offered some interesting and engaging activities – including a final peer assessment on created digital artefacts. Whereas the Coursera course: Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application was forced to close after only a few days. I was enrolled and attended (in parts) both the above, so it was interesting to see two completely different models of MOOC courses, and experience (chaotic) social learning using two vastly different (interactive) models. It was somewhat ironic to witness the Fundamentals course fold/fail , but I’m sure they are redesigning the course for version 2 – as we speak. Let’s not forget how Daphne Koller promotes the Coursera model of altruism / openness, but then talks about the usefulness of the (learning) data they’ve gathered! This keynote by Gardner Campbell at the Open Education Conference 2012, should bring us all back down to earth, as should this recording of a debate on the subject at the ASCILITE 2012 conference?

Professor Bonk also mentioned the new Google learning platform called coursebuilder but advised that it required some coding skills to use it. On that note, I was talking to David Kernohan from JISC, at the JISC CETIS conference this week about the other types of MOOC platforms being developed; his research had uncovered most were bespoke coded products, and some were using WordPress or the Pearsons platform.
In other recent news; two of the big players in the field announce significant increases in partnerships, whilst 5 US MOOCs have been recommended for credits. In the UK, Sir Michael Barber, chief education adviser for Pearson, says online learning (not necessarily MOOCs) offers “both a threat and opportunity” for UK universities. At the Online and Open-access Learning in Higher Education event , Professor’s Josie Taylor (OU) and Diana Laurillard (London Knowledge Lab ) criticized the ethics, motives, and pedagogic models of most MOOCs (i.e. does completion = success? What are the values for those who drop out?), which are all founded concerns. Although; we don’t hear much complaining from the “students” of these courses about multi-choice assessments wrapped around (good quality) talking heads type video production! Do we?

At this week’s CETIS conference I attended presentations by Simon Buckingham Shum  (OU analytics guru), and Professor Patrick McAndrew  (OU Professor of Open Education) both talked about the creation of the FutureLearn MOOC project. Simon talked at length about [research & marketing] data, and what types of data will/could be harvested from FuutreLearn, whilst Professor McAndrew talked about the Open learning movement and the design ethos behind the new venture. Their MOOCy “good intentions” are thus:
• Build on what we know
• Innovate
• Be accessible
• Be interactive
• Make use of data
• Use the right licence
• Be prepared to re-use
• Not be in it [just] for the money
• Be happy
If you want to know more on how to design a MOOC, dip into the (OU driven) OLDS MOOC archives for the received wisdom from those that have just completed this course. I’ll finish off this update posting with a link to the new CETIS white paper on the subject : MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education which helps clarifies the current state of play. Just try not to mention the word disruption too much, will you.

Durham BB & MOOCs

This post covers the two keynotes I attended at the recent Blackboard users group in Durham. They covered networked learning and the pros and cons of Massively Online Open Courses (MOOCs).

What is a MOOC? George Siemens explains, in the context of the original Connectivism MOOC

Two keynotes this year covered the highly topical subject of MOOCs. Professor Allison Littlejohn from Glasgow Caledonian University covered three primary paradigms   for the increased need for collective learning by citing her own research papers. She then recounted results of her research into knowledge based networks by Shell Oil employees during 2004. This research illustrated the effect of professionals using networks to demonstrate how the single person builds upon their knowledge and contributes to the mass of knowledge via networked connections. Her presentation illustrated the moves towards collaborative learning and knowledge building using [social] networks. She also covered research into the motivational drivers for students to learn using structured xMOOCs, i,e Coursera courses and unstructured cMOOCs i.e. phonar. That research covered the understanding of learning and learner defined pathways within HE. Her recent research covers the use of shared goals as a learning approach, and her (Open Source) Charting tool – which uses learning goals as a social object. She also mentioned that they had also implemented some research on learners who had engaged in a MOOC during 2011. Finally she mentioned an impact study on the UKOER programme on behalf of HEFCE. This looked at various areas of impact. Promising results of witnessing more use of openness in all aspects of education, therefore indicating [some] change in academic attitudes to openness. A slight shift in (open) ideals of working and sharing.

Jeremy Knox of Edinburgh University covered the MOOC Pedagogy, developing for Coursera in his keynote on day 2. He gave a much more detailed account of the current state of play for the cMOOCs Vs xMOOCs modes of design and engagement, i.e. George Siemens Connectivism MOOC  Vs the more high profile Coursera/Udacity/edX/KhanAcademy type designs. In summary xMOOC type courses are designed more towards automation, whereas cMOOCs offer far more learner defined pathway – with the knowledge of the network being the focus – not a suite of learning objects. The xMooc type is how they were instructed to design their new Coursera course (beginning next Monday 28th) – which unsurprisingly took much longer (and cost more) than they anticipated! If you think about it, xMOOCs mimic established distance learning design without the close facilitation of the learners or the validation! Most Coursera courses consist of chunks of head and shoulder video lectures with self checking quizzes to follow. The grading is automated (que howls of unfair play across the MOOC community) with supposed communities of practice forming spontaneously.  I attended part of a Coursera course last year, and was impressed at the quality, and depth of subject covered – but you need to be 100% motivated to cover the sessions in full! Certificates of completion are issued rather than credit, but…. edX are developing credits for theirs! This summary of funding models also proved to be useful to remind us how they’ve got off the ground; Udacity = for profit, edX = not for profit, Coursera = venture capital funded for profit and a dedicated platform.

Jeremy stated that their Coursera course (‘E-Learning and Digital Cultures) is being viewed as a complement to on campus learning – not a disruptive area. It is being blended with their distance MSC . He will researching how their fee paying masters students will engage with the course alongside people like me who are dipping in to keep our knowledge fresh – for free!

He finished off with stating that both open (MOOCs) and closed (degrees) learning experiences can coexist happily together – it just relies on the institution to carefully pitch it alongside their traditional offerings. He stressed, that it’s not a question of MOOCs or not for HEI’s, its a matter of getting the blend right with traditional offerings. Just like distance learning then? His talk also echoed aspects of Alison Littlejohn’s theories of the importance to understand self directed learning in HE and the motivational forces and facilitative aspects of [guided] learning. So the stampede to join the MOOC bandwagon is just beginning – keep your eyes on OU FutureLearn, and book onto the session next Monday where Professor Curtis Bonk is talking at Aston on his very subject.

Active MOOC

I’ve been dipping into the Blackboard MOOC  called Designing an Exemplary Course. I have found it to be quite useful picking up instructional design nuances from previous exemplary course winners . The weekly course structure is run via BB own CourseSites platform and makes use of a blog plus weekly webinars showcasing  online or blended courses.

The supporting blog also reinforces the learning theory; active (and social) learning  which is proving to be a key scaffolding concept . I’m currently designing a new staff development course promoting active learning by exploiting experiential methods using the tools (discussions, wiki, blog, journal) in a student context. The top ten methods summarised in the active instructor post resonated with my own approaches , i.e. exploiting adult learning theories; real world projects, collaborative work, peer learning using a variety of media. I’m also including opportunities for reflective thinking throughout, and group presentations in the final week.

There are also links to another Blackboard blog, discussing active learners in relation to 21st Century teaching, including the very outdated reference to “digital natives” in the form of a particularly cheesy video.

The visitor & resident metaphor developed by David White  is a more accurate portrayal of the continuum we all reside on in relation to the use of technology. Make sure you follow the link to the peer reviewed journal to read his critique of Prensky’s digital native/immigrant paper. As we all know, the concept of digital native is an overhyped myth, which is currently being investigated by the JISC funded digital literacies programme. They say..

“By digital literacy we mean those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society: for example, the skills to use digital tools to undertake academic research, writing and critical thinking; as part of personal development planning; and as a way of showcasing achievements”.
The Study of how UK FE and HE institutions are supporting effective learners in a digital age (SLiDA) is well worth reading.

Obviously I’m currently focussed with developing the digital literacies of our staff in relation to the exploitation of the tools we have here, which in turn should cascade down to our students learning experiences. I’m finding the use of small developmental steps beneficial – taking inspiration from the 3E Framework developed by Dr Keith Smyth.

Turnitin updates

Metal Slug by Demonsub - distributed by CC

I recently attended the International Turnitin User Group meeting on Monday 16th July at the Sage in Gateshead (see picture). This was held just before the start of the 5th International Plagiarism Conference, so there was a healthy attendance. This was quite a unique event, in which the whole iParadigms management team were present, to answer a whole raft of questions posed prior to, and during the session.
Given the recent UK outages, the Q&A sessions were quite civilised, with some very useful questions being posed about the direction of the company and its suite of products.  On that note, Lucy Cave a Phd researcher here at Aston – gave a presentation on her latest findings. Lucy’s presentation was reported in their local paper, which covered student’s attitudes/understanding towards plagiarism and collusion. This raises further questions about student use and support of the WriteCheck tool.

Dr Christian Storm, Chief Technology Officer and last remaining founder of Turnitin covered their current research projects. These include;

•  Improving the audio feedback length of time (from the current 3 minutes), and the ability to embed the audio feedback into a pdf download,

• Continual refinement of their algorithms to ensure fewer noisy matches and false positives, as a result of the growing paper database of papers and indexed internet matches,
• Tackling translated paraphrasing as a form of plagiarism,
• Support for right to left languages (e.g. Arabic),
• Advanced phrase exclusion, so that particular phrases or “boilerplate” text  can be excluded from reports by assignment or all assignments.
• Stylometrics, which can identify changes in writing style, which will help address the problem of identifying students employing ghost writers. This was mentioned in relation to the new e-rater tool which is still in the testing phase, and requires further refinement,
• New “role types are to be developed, i.e. reviewers and viewers.
• And finally he mentioned developments into extracting text from “scanned” pdf files using new OCR methods.

In my view, the statement that had the most impact by Dr Storm was his reinforcement that the underlying purpose of Turnitin is as a teaching and learning tool, used to improve student academic writing skills. NOT just as a “checking” tool. This was reassuring to hear from a founder member – and underpins my ethos of this tool.

Read more

We see data

Approximately a year ago we contributed a suite of learning resources into Jorum for HE consumption. They were tagged with AUOER .  The video below depicts the contributions tagged UKOER into Jorum by everyone involved in that funded project. Stunning data visuals by Martin (Mashe) Hawksey.

New EU cookie law

Delicious Cookie (CC) Andreas Moreno

On Saturday May 26th the new EU cookie law (e-Privacy Directive) came into force. Any website/learning platform must provide advice and information to users. Those website visitors can chose to accept or deny the use of cookies on their computer. Most of the time cookies (small text file) are harmless, and provide a mechanism to easily store data we re-use, when revisiting a website. But sometime the same “good cookie” technology can be used for illicit means, eg. capturing personal data.  The new law  will mean that you will see many more of these statements  (see image below) requesting  user consent to use their cookies.

The ICO states:

Cookies or similar devices must not be used unless the subscriber or user of the relevant terminal equipment:

(a) is provided with clear and comprehensive information about the purposes of the storage of, or access to, that information; and

(b) has given his or her consent.

…………………………………………………………..Read more here

Flipping Vital

In most examples at Aston,  Replay (Panopto) lecturecasts are made available to students immediately following the formal lecture. But “flipping” could provide another equally popular model?

What is flip teaching?
This refers to a method of instruction where classroom-based teaching time and traditional “homework” time are reversed (flipped). A teacher provides video lessons to be reviewed outside of class, which in turn gives teachers more time in class to focus on higher-order learning skills. Ref: http://ed.ted.com/about

I recently attended a webinar organised by the ViTAL SiG.  This caught my eye as it covered a new ideology called Flipping the classroom. The webinar by Carl Gombrich outlines his approach to successful flipping. Carl, records lectures, then encourages students to ask three questions about them (in the VLE) – and add a timestamp video reference.
Essentially this “movement” entails the use of short video “lectures” either using tools such as Panotpo, or shorter chunks of videos posted on YouTube, or hosted on sites like the popular Kahn Academy. Essentially the idea is to make traditional lecture material available to students BEFORE a lecture, in a more informal/accessible/varied format.

By supplementing the [chunked] video material with tasks/questions in a VLE or by using the new TED ed tool box – you extend the learning, and move towards a more inquiry based model. The students then arrive at the traditional lecture primed full of ideas they want to discuss – as per a standard tutorial format. We used to call this homework! The same outcome of promoting learner autonomy, inquiry, and problem solving, can be also achieved by posting any resources for students to work on before lectures into Blackboard or Pebblepad. The aim is to promote a more discursive, Q&A lecture format. The use of chunked video clips or lecturecasts in this new “flipping” ideology ensures that core course resources could be presented in a more engaging format (as opposed to text) and could therefore improve motivation?

Further information;

• http://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/news/carl-gombrich-flipping-the-lecture-theatre
• http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/04/flipping-the-classroom/
• http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/flipping-lectures/
• http://www.khanacademy.org/
• http://ed.ted.com/about
• http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDEducation 
• http://tlc.aston.ac.uk/aston-replay/case-study-lecture-capture-aston-university
• MIT & Harvard release Edx

Tasty Pi

This UK company is taking the one laptop per child concept to a whole new new level.   RasberryPi.org have developed a tiny Linux powered “PC” for only $25!  Anyone interested in downsizing their PC footprint, or those who teach programming should be very interested in this development. The wearable PC comes closer to reality!

Q:  What’s a Raspberry Pi?

A: “The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.”

It was due to be available towards the end of February, but they are still tweaking the final product.  Read more here, and pre order it here.

JISC funding- elevated

I noticed a recent article entitled ” How to make your JISC funding bid stand out from the crowd” on the CETIS news pages recently.  I thought it was nigh time that I posted a similar bid writing guide that Christa Appleton (JISC RSC West Midlands) and I crafted last year.  The Aston Research Support Unit have assisted us previously with the (TRAC) costing process of JISC bids – this aspect not to be underestimated!

Along with the above guide, JISC have also announced a new method of bidding for smaller project funds using their Elevator service.  The new service is designed for innovative projects that need to  gain funding up to £10K – without having to adhere to the strict criteria of their usual project funding programmes.

As Martin Hawksey has already Tweeted – it would be useful to see collaborative ideas with students pitching for funds.

Turnitin – turnitup!

Turnitin; our text matching tool of choice are currently beta testing two new additions to their ever growing suite of features:

First is the direct integration – useful for those (like us) who have Turnitin fully integrated with their VLE.    We will be joining the beta testing process in the near future. I am attending a demonstration of this next week, and will report back soon.

Secondly is the beta release of translated paraphrasing. This relatively new method of converting text into different languages – then back into English, can be now be “checked” to detect this practice.

Training news

Turnitin are also  running a series awareness sessions running during February and March, covering a wide range of academic misconduct and plagiarism topics. Most are free, and can be attended via an online webinar. Find out more and book onto these here: http://community.turnitin.com/events/event_list.asp