Learning through MOOCing or earning through MOOCeting?

Some thoughts about MOOCs inspired by the RIDE Event (London) and theALT MOOC SIG

(Southampton), November 2013Gabi Witthaus

MOOCing for learning

Learners

Quality of learning

Widening participation

Reusing existing resources (£xx)

Low-cost assessment & accreditation

Innovation

MOOCeting for earning

Institution

Quality of content

Marketing/Recruitment

Creating new content (£xxx,xxx)

“Conversion rates” from MOOC students to fee-paying students

Innovation

Language of the MOOCosphere

MOOCs and campus-based learning

• MOOCs provide high quality multimedia content for use in on-site provision. The on-site experience is the “wrapper” surrounding the MOOC content. (Don Nutbeam, Southampton)

• MOOCs flip the classroom: more time for hands-on laboratory experience, small group work

• Coventry photography MOOC (PHONAR) – 300,000+ worldwide students add value to small group of fee-paying students

• Edinburgh: on-site students encouraged to join MOOCs in different but related disciplines

MOOC-based degrees?

• UCLAN (UK) - gives credit for attendance on Coursera, Futurelearn, Udacity, Canvas Network, edX MOOCs

• Vanderbilt Uni gives credit for Harvard courses• Uni of Maryland delivers Edinburgh Uni’s MOOC

content for credit• Athabasca University and Thomas Edison College

offer credit for MITx and Coursera courses• 26 institutions in OER university (OERu) consortium

give credit for each other’s courses

What we know: MOOCs can be good for CPD

• MOOCs work well for self-regulated learners who have access to computers and the Internet.

• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) learners tend to fit these criteria.

Littlejohn: http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/milligan_0613.pdf

MOOCeting: expanding global footprint

• It’s all about institutions making themselves known to the world

• Edinburgh MOOCs offered in China on a parallel server that bypasses firewalls

• University of London has “converted” at least 40 MOOC students into fee-paying students.

• Question: when a MOOC student becomes a fee-paying student, do they feel disappointed at quality of the non-MOOC course?

How much does a MOOC cost?

Coventry’s PHONAR MOOC: no cost

University of London’s 4

MOOCs:£20,000 each

Bill Gates Foundation “Bridge to Success” Math MOOC: $

750,000

(Half of this total was spent

on video production)

(Existing course made

openly available. Students )

(Some of this was used to fund travel

between UK and USA by MOOC team)

Monetizing MOOCs

• University of London’s 4 MOOCs - 40 MOOC students have “converted”, i.e. registered as fee-paying students so far (out of 241,000)

• Some FutureLearn universities are considering charging learners for a “certificate of completion”

• MOOCs as a loss leader (based on fear that institutions not offering MOOCs will be “left behind” and lose students to other unis)

How massive is a MOOC?

• FutureLearn MOOCs: 25,000 people registered from over 150 countries in first day after launch

• Uni of Leicester’s King Richard III MOOC: – 6,000 registered in first 24 hours. – 11,000 enrolments received in total – Futurelearn caps MOOCs at 10,000 so the overflow is on a

waiting list for next iteration• Coventry PHONAR MOOC: 330,000 people participating

alongside 10 fee-paying students• Despite high enrolments, completion rate of MOOCs is

estimated to be around 6%

Big Data will inform decisions…

• Optimal course duration? • Optimal amount of work for students to be given per

week?• Optimal video length? (Data so far: 6 minutes)• How “open” should the MOOCs be?• Use of emails to prompt students to engage? (Data from

Uni of East Anglia shows huge spikes in MOOC student activity immediately after sending email prompts)

• Learner expectations and targets?• What metrics?

Notes on this slide taken from Simon Nelson’s presentation at ALT MOOC SIG

Thanks to wordle.net for the wordle.