EPIC 2013 Short Paper

Presented on Wednesday 10th

July 2013, IET, London

Wanted: Well Organised ePortfolio to Manage an Unruly MOOC. Skills

Required.

Kirstie Coolin, University of Nottingham

Background

The web is awash with rhetoric about MOOCsi (Massive Open Online Courses), which “have

quickly traversed the cultural cycle of hype, saturation, backlash, and backlash-to-the-

backlash”ii (Carey 2012). Shirky helped draw the battle lines claiming that “Higher education

is now being disrupted”iii

(2012) and prompting Universities to defend their institutions

without which, there would arguably be no MOOCs in the first place.

A more measured response proposes the advantage that “MOOCs can become another

generally benign way that universities can extend their influence and general visibility while

realizing some of the benefits of university education for those who might not otherwise

receive it.”iv

(Thrift 2013)

Meanwhile, as debates rage, people are taking these free online courses in their thousands

from every corner of the globe, creating new online communities and opportunities to pursue

low/no cost and low-risk learner-centred Lifelong Learning. When the MOOC excitement

subsides, whatever pedagogical models emerge as the most successful for large scale online

learning, learners will be at the centre – a model already familiar to the ePortfolio

community.

Objectives

This paper discusses a personal perspective on using a learner-centred ePortfolio to manage

learning in a MOOC and reflects on the skills and literacies required to maximise the benefits

of a MOOC experience.

In January 2013, the author enrolled, with 40,000 others, on the 5-week ELearning and

Digital Cultures MOOC (edcmooc) run by the University of Edinburgh. Almost immediately,

numerous social media networks, links and materials emerged, and it was evident that these

needed managing in one place. It seemed logical to use an ePortfolio to build structure around

the course to manage personal learning.

Also in January, Trent Baston, in Campus Technology argued that

“MOOCs are one manifestation of our era of openness in which learning opportunities are

almost infinite. MOOCs need ePortfolios to improve their value.”v (Batson 2013)

Edcmooc is considered a good examplevi

of how to run a MOOC. Edinburgh reported

“Shifting from a focus on content delivery to a foregrounding of process, community and

learning networks”vii

promoting connectivism as the dominant pedagogy, resulting in a high

volume of student-led social learning occurring before, during and after the course. However,

this course demographic was already well educated, including a high number of educators.

To have a ‘successful MOOC experience’ therefore there will require competence in skills

and literacies in order to organise and self-direct learning, self-motivation, digital literacy and

use of social networks.

Summary of results

The author was motivated to undertake edcmooc by; subject interest; curiosity about the

learner experience and; that it was at no cost/risk.

ePortfolio was used to structure the tasks, temporally and thematically, using public and

private spaces where appropriate, re-considering these throughout the course. It provided:

Placeholders for tasks and social media channels

Public and Private/reflective blogs

Aggregated external content

A trusted place to create, host and share the final assignment artefact

An archive to record learning

Public/private spaces helped the author to engage with other participants flexibly (alongside

the social media spaces) with confidence about privacy, thus entries were more reflective.

Regular reflection meant that the final assessed artefact was easy to create and share. A

general feeling of ‘being overwhelmed’ was reported by participants on the course; the

ePortfolio helped counter this early on.

Conclusions

The ePortfolio was beneficial in managing edcmooc learning and the author would concur

with Baston that it helped ‘tame’ the MOOC. ePortfolios have great potential to support self-

directed, online learning in this massive context for a wide range of learners. However, there

are still implicit skills required, in particular related to autonomous learning. In addition,

engagement with and confidence within the connectivist model requires a significant level of

digital literacy skills, not only in tool-use, but in developing and engaging in online

community, navigating networks, data privacy, and presentation of an online identity.

If these skills barriers can be cracked and the drivers behind providing low/no cost online and

quality education represent a genuine desire to democratise and widen educational

opportunities, then MOOCs may represent a significant democratic force, promoting Lifelong

Learning in accessible and affordable ways for huge numbers of individuals, and a learner-

centred portfolio is its logical companion.

i Whitehead, J. (2013) What is a MOOC

http://comms.nottingham.ac.uk/learningtechnology/2013/01/03/what-is-a-mooc/

ii Carey, K. (2012) Into the Future with MOOCS http://chronicle.com/article/Into-the-Future-

With-MOOCs/134080/

iii

Shirky, C. (2012) Napster, Udacity and the Academic

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/

iv

Shrift, N. (2013) To MOOC or Not To MOOC http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/to-

mooc-or-not-to-mooc/31721

v Batson, T. (2013) The Taming of the MOOC

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/01/16/the-taming-of-the-mooc.aspx

vi

Morrison, D. (2013) A Tale of Two MOOCS

http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-tale-of-two-moocs-coursera-

divided-by-pedagogy/

vii

Knox, J. et al. (2012) Pedagogy: the Challenges of Developing for Coursera

http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/2012/08/mooc-pedagogy-the-challenges-of-developing-for-

coursera/