Week 7 Review

This week we concentrated on completing the micro ethnography on ‘community membership’ inside a MOOC.

The ethnography:  I placed my ethnography here and was glad to see that some classmates commented on it.  As noted in my comments, my chosen MOOC had been laid out in a clear and sequential way: the curriculum was set, students had a clear path of progression, and discussions were optional. However this strict structure did not allow much room to manoeuvre in terms of co-creation, collaboration, teaching presence and social presence.

Whilst a MOOC has much to offer in terms of breaking down barriers to accessing education, allowing increased class sizes, and exposure to many cultures, the MOOC does not straightforwardly deliver education in the way that many institutions are promising.  Missing is much of the educational experience of a full time online course. Aspects of the community of inquiry model, so important to the creation of an online culture, example sharing personal meaning, collaboration, connecting ideas and exchange of information, is very difficult to achieve on a MOOC. There are exceptions to this if you intrinsically motivate your students to participate. The interplay between the extrinsic forces acting on persons and the intrinsic motives and needs inherent in human nature is the territory of Self-Determination Theory. When a MOOC achieves the delicate balance of convincing students that they want to participate, then that MOOC is on to something.

Peer Interactions & ethnographies:  I spent some time in the last day or two looking at my classmates ethnographies which were as broad and diverse as a vibrant Arabian marketplace. The quality of the artefacts makes me quite proud of being part of such a talented group. It was interesting to see how different people focused on both specific interactions and/or broad scope.

I will continue to comment on classmates ethnographies as they go up but the several comments I made on their work are on the links below.

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/jjack/2020/03/02/ethnographic-object/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/msiegenthaler/2020/03/02/micro-ethnography/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/dyeats/2020/02/27/micro-netnographic-artefact-community-pushing-through-the-cracks/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/mwolfindale/2020/02/28/micro-ethnography-entangled-communities/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/vmuscat/2020/03/01/micro-netnography-artefact/

https://edc20.education.ed.ac.uk/jkwon/2020/03/02/mscedc-this-is-the-link-of-my-microethnography-but-i-am-a-bit-embarrassed-having-seen-other-classmates-wonderful-outcomes-anyway-i-hope-everyone-enjoyed-this-artefact-https-t-co-jnmmjh2/

5 key points to increased pass rates on a MOOC

Thanks to Irene  (previous class?) for sharing this

In this video Mr. Agarwal discusses 5 key points to helping students successfully pass a MOOC.

  1. Active learning- 5 minute videos followed by interactive exercises- when students answer questions, they are learning.
  2. Instant feedback- the green tick is positive reinforcement & turns teaching moments into learning outcomes.
  3. Self paced learning- students can rewind, so they don’t get lost.
  4. Gamification through drag and drops can simulate a lab environment and changing scenarios.
  5. Peer learning via discussion boards. When students respond to each other’s questions, they are learning by teaching other students.

The MOOC that I am studying has put structures in for the first 3 elements.  Gamification is not included and item 5 discussion boards are visibly present but under utilised because online community relations are underdeveloped (see Kozinets review),Weaker social ties and weaker consumption is linked to the weaker skill set of a lurker (Kozinets 2010) so this is an area that Moocs offer promise in but have yet to take full advantage of. In a blended learning environment,   the gamification element would take place in a real lab environment via a -flipped classroom setting.

In Mr Agarwal’s study, failure rates fell from 40/41% to 9% using the flipped classroom model. So blended learning using a flipped classroom technique that facilitates students working together in labs, still seems to be the most optimal type of learning.

Whilst Mr Agarwal believes in the power of peer learning in Moocs via discussion boards, this element of the MOOC still needs teacher presence in order to offer guidance and prevent  misinformation from peers,  an impossible task for courses of thousands of participants.

Another thing I note is Mr Agarwal’s plan to license his successful MOOC to other universities. Whilst it would be good to cherry pick lessons to supplement learning,  the result of several major institutions adopting the same MOOC, to teach the same subject would be a homogenising of the learning from one source. This reminds me of an article written by jiyoung Kwan on gender and language imbalance on WIKIs. What is right or wrong or missing on Wikipedia affects the entire internet.

some other elements not mentioned but useful for interaction are; Twitter hash tags, a wiki for sharing articles and  a poll to gauge what learners already know or how they feel about the topic.

References

Kozinets, R. V. (2010) Chapter 2 ‘Understanding Culture Online’, Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage. pp. 21-40.

Bayn, Nancy K. (1999) Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. As quoted by Kozinets (2010)

Walther, Joseph B. (1992) ‘Interpersonal Effects in Mediated Interaction: Relational Perspective’, Communication Research, 19: 52–90. As quoted by Kozinets (2010)

12 ways to make MOOCs more interactive

Thanks to Thomas for linking into this article.

The negative heading and the sub-heading don’t reflect the actual content of the article which is more or less positive. It is listing 12 ways to make MOOCs more interactive. Actually the 12 ways can be bundled into 8 or 9, as ‘gamification’ and ‘simulation’ could be considered the same step for example. The article reinforces the ‘key pints to successful pass rates on a MOOC’ article, that  I wrote about here . This article is less concise, but it is useful in that it contains some sub links to interesting websites which I’ll explore further in week 7.

I disagreed with two points for ‘increasing interactivity on a MOOC’- the author suggests use of discussions facilitated by subject matter experts, to answer questions and moderate class discussions, and a second suggestion, to Hold virtual office hours for an instructor mediated online chatroom- are both unfeasible for the same reason, i.e too many students, too many questions, across too many time zones

MOOCs Aren’t Interactive, So There’s No Real Learning Taking Place

 

Free courses as ‘Loss Leader’ Moocs

Maggioncalda (a CEO in Coursera) sees Coursera’s user base as its greatest advantage, and he has launched a series of experiments to expand it. In a pilot program called Coursera for Partners, the company is offering Duke students, staff and faculty, free of charge, all the Coursera courses taught by Duke faculty and by the Google Cloud team.

Why give up all that tuition revenue? They are seen as loss leader courses that may encourage the user to invest.

My question is though, what is a free certificate worth?  From an employer’s perspective, interpreting MOOCs on a CV is complicated further if the recruiter is not familiar with this form of education. One would have to link it to academic credits to judge its relevance to the workplace. In order to convert MOOC coursework into university credit, you have to be enrolled in a program at a university. And that usually means going through an admissions process and paying tuition. Still, it is significant that the general public can audit the very same courses that paying students are taking for credit.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2018/10/16/this-company-could-be-your-next-teacher-coursera-plots-a-massive-future-for-online-education/#934963f2a39b

400+ Online Courses With Real College Credit That You Can Access For Free

Who are the 5% of people who complete MOOCs?

#mscedc https://t.co/ROwOLddB0C

Last week I commented on article about “low completion rates of Moocs”, and the findings that many of the 95% who don’t complete a MOOC are getting SOMETHING from the learning. But what of those 5% who DO commit to completing the MOOC? What kind of people are they, and aren’t they the kind of people that Universities would want to invest their resources on?