EADTU 2014 - KRAKÓW, POLAND Successful Design approaches to MOOCs

Steven Warburton and Yishay Mor

CC By Mathieu Plourde, 2013 – http://flickr.com/photos/mathplourde/8620174342/

"Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." – Herbert Simon

$What do we mean by success?

Let’s examine a concrete example:Open Learning Design MOOC

http://olds.ac.uk (Open Learning Design Studio)

Participation as a success criterion - OLDS MOOC

• 20,000 students enrolled is a typical MOOC size.

• most MOOCs have completion rates of less than 13%.

Source: http://katyjordan.com

How do we measure participation?

Clow, Doug (2013). MOOCs and the funnel of participation. In: Third Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK 2013)

Global reach as a success criterion - OLDS MOOC

Sustainability as a success criterion – OLDS MOOC heritage

$Can we share ‘patterns’ of success?• Participation rate (start and/or finish)• Quality of the learning experience• Economic return on investment• Reach, sphere of influence• Fun• Brand recognition• All of the above?

cMOOC

xMOOC

iMOOC

pMOOC

COOC

SOOC

SPOC

BOOC

DOCC

MOOC

TOOC

http://blog.yesnyou.com/?p=829 and othersOpen Online Course - differentiations

Inquiry

Small Private Self-paced

Project

Distributed Online Collaborative

Practice

Small

CorporateCommunity

TrueBig

NOOCNiche

GOCCGood Old Classroom

And …some historical perspective ...

1844 1858 1946 1969

Alan Tait, 2013, 'Reflections on Student Support in Open and Distance Learning' http://irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/134/214

http://www.moocdesign.cde.london.ac.ukDesign Patterns for MOOCs project

159...LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM

When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty.

Therefore:

Locate each room so that it has outdoor space outside it on at least two sides, and then place windows in these outdoor walls so that natural light falls into every room from more than one direction.

(Alexander et al., 1977)

Context: building an internal space for people

Problem Solution

Context

Participatory pattern workshops (PPW)

Mor, Y.; Warburton, S. & Winters, N. (2012), 'Participatory Pattern Workshops: A Methodology for Open Learning Design Inquiry', Research in Learning Technology 20

Constructing design patterns – a methodology

From Design Narratives...I convinced my university that we need to experience with MOOCs. And I succeeded! From January to April we built the “cope14” MOOC: competences for global collaboration, which is running from 22.04 - 02.06. (so it is active, today starts week 6). I love cMOOCs but in the project team we opted for a mixture of c and x. I’m glad that “cope14” is open, we use a wordpress blog. There are questions and links and assignments and videos of course. And - we have two moderators who are monitoring the learning processes and try to support the learners a little bit.

http://zmldidaktik.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/interacting-as-moderator-and-facilitator-inthe- cope14-mooc/

… to Design Patterns

Integrated Learning Design Environment (ILDE … METIS project)

Pattern: Chatflow

This is relevant if the platform doesn't offer threaded discussion tools.

SolutionUse a third party tool off platform to provide a more managable discussion.

ExamplesAt Leeds University synchronous events are recorded via adobe connect, transcribed it (GoogleDoc) then users could comment on specific parts of discussion (off platform). Afterwards should there be the opportunity for a discussion around the recorded session.

In Commonwealth of Learning MOOC on mobile for development learner lead use of Google doc as a collaborative document creation. (off platform)

Pattern: Adjacent Platform

Platforms which support/underpin MOOCs - often used to provide places to share resources or bespoke tools to create learning objects. Used when the MOOC platform falls short (usually technical, could be for quality or other reasons).

ProblemCoursera / FutureLearn / edX etc. are new, limited in some of their scope. When extra functionality is required course teams / learners make things outside to share.

SolutionAccept that people use a range of platforms, tools, approaches for online teaching and learning - build this into design patterns. Integrate platforms together e.g. LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability)

ExamplesTagging: Twitter hashtagsVideo conferencing: Google Hangouts; BB Collaborate; Adobe ConnectBlogging: WordpressPeer assessment: Turnitin

http://ilde.upf.edu/moocs

Bring them along

Bend don’t break

Induction

Know your audience

Scaffolded MOOC

ECL MOOC LDS

Fishbowl

Provocative question

Chatflow

MOOC Legacy

Crowd bonding

Drumbeat

Large diverse groups

Knowing the storyHerding cats

Adjacent platforms

LEARNING

ORIENTATION

STRUCTURE

COMMUNITY

PARTICIPATION

MOOC Design Pattern Mapping

Design elements – from workshops

More visible

• Pedagogy• Constraints of ‘the’ platform• Audience diversity

(ascertain, activate prior knowledge*)

• Community (learning as a social enterprise)

• Control and flow

Less visible

• Business, brand• Analytics, adaptive

pathways• Innovation e.g. gamification• Self organisation of learners• Segmentation of market

[target audience]• Articulated learner goals

*Ausubel (1968), “[t]he most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows; ascertain this and teach him[her] accordingly”

Research

Prototype

[Design] challenge

Evaluate

Six-step design model

1

IdeateIterate6 3

4

5

2

Design Patterns

Open Design: the concept of design as a fluid, instinctive process, open to everyone. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/arts/design/can-anybody-be-a-designer.html)

Success criteria1a

2a

Incorporating design patterns into a design process

Design Patterns for MOOCshttp://www.surrey.ac.uk/tel/projects/mooc/

MA Higher EducationUniversity of Surreyhttp://www.surrey.ac.uk/dhe/programmes/ma/