Bursting the MOOC bubble

 by Isabel Bloedwater

After a couple of years basking in the spotlight the tide seems to have turned in MOOCland and we seem to be heading for the dreaded trough of disillusionment (now that's what I call a metaphor-rich opening!).

Diana Laurillard, Five myths about Moocs, bursts some of the inflated claims made about MOOCs in recent months. The main point is that education is not mass production. MOOCs offer a well-designed content package for self-study but providing thousands of students with qualified guidance and facilitation simply does not scale. Many MOOC providers are experimenting with peer learning, encouraging participants to give feedback to each other and assess each other's work. While it is true that more experienced students are able to provide competent peer review and assessment, this is not true of inexperienced learners unused to both higher education and the online environment. Students are not as self-sufficient as we sometimes imagine. In reply to this it could be argued that many undergraduate campus courses are not so good at providing qualified feedback and face-to-face tuition. All higher education requires the student to be highly self-sufficient and success depends very much on developing good peer networks for discussion and feedback. MOOCs of course take this self-sufficiency to an extreme. However as the focus in education moves towards learning how to learn I believe we will certainly see future generations becoming more self-sufficient and better at peer learning. We aren't there yet but that movement has already started.

"The simple fact is that a course format that copes with large numbers by relying on peer support and assessment is not an undergraduate education. Education is not a mass customer industry: it is a personal client industry. The significant initial investment required in the preparation of educational resources can be distributed over very large student numbers and repeated runs of the course, but education is fundamentally about learning concepts and skills that we do not acquire naturally through our normal interaction with the world. And this takes time. It requires personalised guidance, which is simply not scalable in the same way. This is what the private educational sector continues to ignore, and it is why every new idea for solving the problem of mass education with technology falls flat."

Then there are the claims that MOOCs are going to solve the problems of expensive undergraduate education or educational scarcity in emerging economies. This myth is already exposed as studies show that the vast majority of MOOCers are graduates and only a tiny minority live in developing countries. However, just as I agree that we should expose some of the wilder claims around the MOOC phenomenon we have no idea as yet where this movement is taking us. As I've written many times, it's time to discard the term MOOC and look at what openness (in many different shades) can offer education and learning. MOOCs are simply one of many experiments in the development of using technology to widen access to education. No one model is going to solve these problems but many variations on the theme may well lead to opening up education. It's a glacial change not a tsunami and don't expect miracles overnight.

Martin Weller's article, The Dangerous Appeal Of The Silicon Valley Narrative, discusses how the the media and many educators locked on to the appealing idea that education was broken and that it could only be saved by radical change lead by innovative entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. This was the narrative behind the explosion of xMOOCs that began with the Stanford Artificial Intelligence course back in 2011 and which hogged the media spotlight at the cost of more low-profile but much more innovative projects within the education community like Peer2Peer University, OER university and all the connectivist MOOCs.

"This analysis also reveals why other open education initiatives haven’t garnered as much attention. They often seek to supplement or complement education, thus ruining the education is broken argument. Similarly, they are often conducted by those who work in higher education, which undermines the narrative of external agents promoting change on a sector that is out of touch. And lastly, they are supported by not-for-profit institutions, which does not fit the model of new, disruptive businesses emerging."

So where are we today? I see this year as the year when the MOOC as a concept melts into something else as the hype-seekers move on. The MOOCs will keep on coming but the rhetoric will change and they will find a place in the educational eco-system. They are after all simply one part of a longer evolutionary process. What is clear is that there will be a wide range of paths to learning; some very traditional, some radical and experimental and others on a scale between the two. The problems occur when we start comparing apples with pears and claim that the new will sweep away the old. The new will complement the old and offer more choice and new opportunities that will benefit more people than the present system does.

Living in your calendar

 by Mufidah Kassalias

Have you got a to-do list that hangs over you like the sword of Damocles with all those tasks that you really should be attending to? I have both an app in my laptop and mobile as well as a paper notebook on my desk that remind me every day of all those nasty tasks that I somehow still take ages to get round to. I can set myself deadlines but it's equally easy to shift the deadlines when I don't like them. I've tried several types of to-do lists over the years but have never really warmed to any of them. They're simply not much fun, in sharp contrast to so many other apps that beg for my attention daily on my devices. I don't think they make me any more productive either.

So what's the answer to becoming super-productive? An article in Harvard Business Review, To-Do Lists Don't Work, offers the humble calendar as a solution. Instead of writing deadlines and reminders in your to-do list, you schedule a time slot in your calendar where you dedicate time to get the task done. Don't let that dreaded task hang over you for weeks, book 2 hours on Wednesday and devote that time to getting it done. One problem with to-do lists is that we tend to overload them and when we see such a long list the natural reaction is one of paralysis and we end up achieving even less. Your calendar has a very limited number of slots in the coming weeks and that means that you have to deal with a realistic workload instead of overloading yourself with false expectations.

"It’s an eye-opening exercise: you’ll probably find that it’s tough — if not impossible — to find a place for everything. But this is the reality of your life. You’ve simply used the calendar to paint a true picture of the time commitments you have on your plate. And whether or not you make these commitments visible, they’re there. After all, if you’re going to be run over by a truck, you might as well get its license plate."

It sounds convincing. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who works this way.

Don't fence me in

 by Fovea Centralis

I have quite a number of friends on Facebook but only a few of them ever show up in my news feed. I used to think that maybe they weren't so active but now I suspect that they are simply filtered out. A video (see below) by Derek Muller of Veritasium, an educational science channel on YouTube, featured in an article on the Huffington Post, Nobody 'Likes' Your Status Updates Any More? Blame Facebook, explains how Facebook is increasingly filtering what we see. Muller explains how we only see a fraction of what our friends post and that some friends never show up at all. Basically each one of us is an advertiser on Facebook and we are marketing ourselves. As a result we might be interested in paying for increased exposure. You can already pay to boost the impact of particular posts and although this applies mostly to companies and organisations a likely development, according to Muller, is that we too may have to pay extra to make sure our updates reach most of our friends out there. As Facebook, like all social media, tries to find new ways of monetizing their service it's not surprising that you may have to pay for maximum impact, even if Muller is highly critical of this tactic in the film. So we live in a kind of bubble in Facebook with a select band of faithful friends selected not so much by us but by an algorithm at Facebook. Read a reaction to Muller's film in Business Insider: Blogger Nails A Major Problem With Facebook's Newsfeed.

There has been similar criticism of Google cocooning us in a comfort bubble due to personalised search results. As Google learns your preferences it searches for sites that you have previously used and as time goes on you will get results that are customised to your preferences. That explains why my own blog posts always feature prominently when I search for something via Google (I bet they don't show up in your searches!). This creates a false bubble that could lead me to believe that my opinions are shared by the world and means that I am seldom exposed to ideas that are radically different from mine.

Personalisation sounds great but when it leads to a bubble culture it becomes rather dangerous. We develop tools that help us distill the vast reserves of raw data there will be increasingly sophisticated levels of personalisation. Learning analytics appears in most predictions of the next big thing in education and undoubtedly our devices will be able to lead us to learning resources that match our preferences and interests. The problem with all this is that it lacks serendipity and often real learning occurs when you meet the unexpected and have to deal with answers that question your thinking.

I don't want to be herded into personalised bubbles, no matter how convenient and comfy they may be. I want to have the option to switch off the bubble and see all my Facebook friends' updates now and again (well, minus the Farmville updates!). Let me choose if I want appropriate learning resources chosen for me or whether I want to take pot luck out there in the wild west of the web.

Will my plea be heard? No chance, I fear, but at least I've asked.

A global perspective on online learning

 by Judy **

The sheer volume of writing in the field of educational technology and online learning is almost overwhelming; theses, articles, blogs, magazines, e-books, films, lectures. However one missing element so far has been reliable and regular global statistics. There are plenty of national surveys but nothing that takes a global perspective and provides a statistical base for researchers and educators. With the current media focus on open education and MOOCs and the resultant risk for hype and optimistic estimates it is essential to establish a sound statistical baseline.

That's why this week's announcement from ICDE (International Council for Open and Distance Learning), launching a Global Online Higher Education Report was welcomed by many. The aim is to produce a survey of online learning featuring statistics, strategies, attitudes and trends. The report is to be compiled by ICDE in partnership with UNESCO, the European Commission, the International Association of Universities, the Sloan Consortium, StudyPortals and Babson Survey Research Group.

Although there is clear evidence of the growth of online learning, the global data remains anecdotal or limited in scope. There has been no formal effort or process to define online learning in the global context, to document levels of participation, the importance of online learning in institutional strategies or the policy implications for online learning. The Global Online Higher Education Report, (GlobalOHER) initiative is designed to address this deficiency by conducting a global survey and issuing a report that will provide:

• Information on enrolments and programmes offered online 
• Information on the role of MOOCs around the world 
• Information on the adoption of Open Education Resources, OER 
• Perspectives on the importance of online learning in institutional strategies 
• The challenges institutions face in delivering high quality programmes and services 
• A framework of the policy issues that institutions believe need to be addressed

They hope to include information from the world's higher education institutions or at least the majority of them, a formidable task but with such a strong partnership, not unrealistic. The first report is due later this year and will be published openly with a Creative Commons license in a number of formats to ensure the widest dissemination. The report will then be updated twice a year providing researchers with invaluable information and trend indicators.

Read a more detailed description of the initiative.

Horizon 2014

 by Ben Ashmole

One of the highlights of the edtech year is the release of the annual NMC Horizon Report with its predictions on the most important trends in educational technology for the coming years. We don't need to wait in suspense for this year's report because NMC (New Media Consortium) have already released a preview report listing the key trends and challenges facing higher education: NMC Horizon Report - 2014 Higher Education Preview. This preview gives a summary of the main findings in the report but does not provide all the excellent examples and case studies that the final report provides.

Here are the trends they see in the usual classification of short-term, medium-term and long-term. I have added some comments of my own on each point.

Fast moving trends (1-2 years)

• Online, hybrid, and collaborative learning
  This refers to the integration of online and classroom learning where students are able to combine online collaboration and face-to-face instruction. Often referred to as hybrid or blended learning this is already a reality at many institutions where online is default in all courses. However what is often missing is systematic quality assurance to ensure that technology is implemented in a strategic and consistent manner. This is a trend that I see coming to the fore in the next couple of years, integrating technology use into mainstream quality assurance systems for higher education.
• Social media use in learning
  This is no real surprise either since educators and students have been using social media for years but the issue here is that social media are now gaining mainstream acceptance and have gained credibility in the academic world. We can expect to see social media used more naturally in education and only by the pioneers.

Mid-range trends (3-5 years)

• The creator society
  Teachers and students are increasingly creating their own learning resources in the form of videos, e-books, Wikipedia entries, podcasts etc. Creating such resources is a powerful learning process and moves the focus from content consumption (reading textbooks, listening to lectures) to content creation and co-creation.
• Data-driven learning and assessment
  Learning analytics has been on the Horizon list for a few years now though has now changed name. Data is the new oil and we are now learning how to refine the raw data and develop tools to help us find the right educational resources that will be adapted to our learning preferences. Giants like Google, Facebook and Apple are hot on the trail and many speculate that MOOC consortia like Coursera are hoping to develop powerful tools that can exploit the vast archive of student data they have already acquired.

Slow trends (5 years and beyond)

• Agile approaches to change
  The Lean movement is already well established in industry along with the concept of agile development. It's all about leading innovative organisations that are flexible and can react quickly to change. This is not something we generally associate with higher education to say the least. Does this mean universities functioning like Silicon Valley startups? I'm doubtful on this one but look forward to reading the full report's analysis.
• Making online learning natural
  This is about integrating more natural communication into online learning by using more audio and video rather than the present text-only learning environments. I can already see this trend in progress with teachers giving feedback by audio or video and asynchronous video/audio discussion forums using tools like VoiceThread. Most learning management systems also offer voice or video communication options that are becoming increasingly attractive but it is taking time for educators and students to actually start using them. I don't see this trend on the long-term list, rather medium-term.

The report also highlights a number of significant challenges impeding ed tech adoption in higher education and these make all too familiar reading though all are well worth repeating and emphasizing. Teachers' low level of digital fluency and the lack of rewards for good teaching are placed on the list of factors that demand urgent attention. Linked to this is the problem of scaling up teaching innovations. Many teachers are innovative but how can this energy be transformed into new practice at institutional level?

One common thread I notice is that educational technology is finally moving into the mainstream of education but urgent work is needed to revise quality assurance systems to embrace technology integration and to develop faculty digital skills. The final NMC Horizon report should not just be read by the ed tech specialists but needs to be on the desks of all educational decision makers.

Read also David Hopkins' post on the Horizon preview on the University of Leicester staff blog.

Start the year with a MOOC

 by mksmith23

In my previous post I wondered if we have overrated the impact of MOOCs and that although they have been massively hyped in educational circles they haven't really made a significant impact on the world outside. This sentiment is echoed in an article on Open Culture, 180 MOOCs to Start the New Year (Is This the Crest of the Wave?). They have compiled an excellent list of all the MOOCs starting in the next couple of months but urge readers to make the most of this bounty while it lasts.

If you haven’t tried a free MOOC, I’d do it sooner than later. In recent weeks, the whole MOOC project took a hit when a University of Pennsylvania study found what was becoming empirically obvious — that MOOCs generally have very low participation and completion rates, and what’s more, most of the students taking the courses are “disproportionately educated, male, [and] wealthy,” and from the United States. This study, combined with other disappointing experiments and findings, will likely make universities think twice about sinking money into creating MOOCs (they can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 to develop). It might take another 6-12 months to see the shift. But I’d hazard a guess that this January might be the peak of the free MOOC trend. Enjoy them while they last. Whatever their shortcomings, they can be quite informative, and you can’t beat the price.

Free open education will continue in the form of cMOOCs and initiatives like OER university and Peer 2 Peer University but I share the suspicion that 2014 will see the commercial MOOC consortia starting to roll out new business models. A clearer freemium model will appear with possibly a basic self-service course available for free but with options for support, tutoring, validation and examination available at a price. The venture capital backers of many MOOC initiatives will naturally want to see some return on investment in 2014. It promises to be an interesting year and I suspect we'll see more changes in the educational landscape.

Flop of the year - MOOCs?

 by lewishamdreamer

As another "year of the MOOC" draws to a close it's worth stepping back a little and see what impact the phenomenon has really made on the world of education. Anyone who is part of the global edtech community has been eating, breathing and sleeping MOOCs for at least the last two years and it's easy to believe that the rest of the world is equally excited and involved in the discussion. However I still meet lots of clever updated students and teachers who've never heard the term and when it comes to friends outside education it doesn't even get a blip on the radar.

Infoworld has an article revealing the tech flops of the year, The worst tech predictions of 2013 -- and two that hit the mark, and guess what makes the flop list - yes MOOCs! A surprising choice given all the publicity and impressive numbers (Coursera's 5.8 million students) but a few million here and there don't add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world (to quote Bogart in Casablanca). There's a lot of activity and experiment but MOOCs are not yet reaching the lives of the real target audience, those with no access to regular higher education. The article presents the familiar evidence of few learners lasting more than a week or two on the majority of MOOCs:

Despite the unending hype, MOOCs have not taken off. A study of more than 1 million MOOC enrollees, released in December by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, found that on average only about half of those who registered for a course ever viewed a lecture, and only about 4 percent completed the courses.

The mere inclusion of MOOCs in a list of flops gives food for thought and invites us in the edtech community to step back a few paces and consider what real effects this alleged revolution has really had. I suspect that 2014 will see the term MOOC beginning to disappear and a more mature terminology evolving. There will be a wide flora of online education with wide-ranging interpretations of the word "open" and we will see some models make significant inroads in offering educational opportunities for people unable to participate in the traditional higher educational system. The full impact however of this movement will take several years to become fully apparent. Some present MOOC models will become purely commercial whilst others will embrace openness and innovation. They will complement not replace the traditional education system and hopefully contribute to its development. 

Maybe MOOC has become a bit too big for its boots and needs to be taken down a peg. A place on the flop of the year list may not be a bad move at all. Time for the trough of disillusionment anyone?

Reading on paper or screen - what's the difference?

 by Jemimus

I often get into discussions about the pros and cons of reading print or screen texts. It's an emotional issue as many book lovers feel threatened by a digital takeover and the possible demise of books and newspapers. Many find screen reading a strain and prefer to print longer texts they find on the net. Many find digital formats lack the feel and soul of the print version and enjoy the tactile appeal of a book. I read both varieties and although I still prefer print I realize that it's largely a matter of what you are accustomed to. I can't see printed media disappearing in the near future though just take a look at the music industry to see an equally radical change that took place without many people really noticing - our music collections have moved from the shelves of our living rooms to our mobiles and record stores have almost disappeared from most high streets. Certainly there is discussion about how the sound quality of digital mp3 files is far inferior to that of vinyl records but for the vast majority that doesn't seem to matter. So what about the differences between print and screen reading?

I found an article from last year by Cindy Orr called Paper Vs. Screen—Does It Matter Anymore? She reviews research evidence for a significant difference between screen and print reading and finds that previously perceived differences are slowly disappearing.

• We're reading much faster on the screen today than a few years ago and studies indicate that the gap is narrowing into insignificance.
• Comprehension levels are about the same even if many people think they understand a print text better.
• We feel much more comfortable with screen reading especially with the advent of tablets.
• Our reading behaviour, in terms of eye movements, is very similar between print and screen.

A BBC article, Young people 'prefer to read on screen', describes the rapid shift to screens among children, with over 50% preferring screen to print, and how this affects reading ability.

"Younger children who read printed books as well as used computers were more likely to have higher reading levels than those who only read on screen, the study said. Although this gap did not apply to those children who used tablet computers or e-readers."

If the differences are melting away our perceptions are not changing as fast. Maybe there are other factors that affect our attitude to screen reading. A good summary of such factors is presented in an article by Ferris Jabr in Scientific American, The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens. One important aspect is the tactile aspects of a print book or magazine. We can feel the weight of the book, easily see how far we have progressed and can quickly flick the pages to see where the present chapter ends. We also have spatial aspects of print reading, remembering where we were in the book when something happened or remembering the layout of a particular page. Screen reading is often seen as putting a strain on the eyes and affecting concentration but new studies suggest that these problems occur when using a computer where scrolling and mouse clicks are necessary. The latest tablets reproduce the feeling of a print book much more realistically and few find reading a strain on such screens.

Another interesting factor is that maybe we treat screen content as somehow less "serious" than print and are not prepared to concentrate as hard. Digital content has lots of tempting links to check and your are likely to have other applications open at the same time leading to all the tempting distractions of social media and e-mail that I wrote about in last week's post.

"An emerging collection of studies emphasizes that in addition to screens possibly taxing people's attention more than paper, people do not always bring as much mental effort to screens in the first place. Subconsciously, many people may think of reading on a computer or tablet as a less serious affair than reading on paper. Based on a detailed 2005 survey of 113 people in northern California, Ziming Liu of San Jose State University concluded that people reading on screens take a lot of shortcuts—they spend more time browsing, scanning and hunting for keywords compared with people reading on paper, and are more likely to read a document once, and only once."

Despite all this I still feel that reading is reading whatever the delivery medium. I'm sure you can read as deeply on a screen as you do in a print book but you have to make a conscious decision to concentrate. Digital reading can be distracting if you choose to keep the distractions active but the same is true with print. If you try to read a complex print book with the TV on, music in your headset or with friends or family in the same room your concentration will be equally impaired. Once again it's about focus.

Learning to focus

 by toolstop

The topic of multitasking and our inability to concentrate on one thing at a time is a recurring topic in the media and on this blog (while writing this sentence an e-mail and a few Twitter messages rolled into my laptop with accompanying bleeps - must switch them off!). Our obsession with mobiles and social media is not a simple generational issue since parents and teachers are often just as likely to be distracted by the lure of their mobiles as teenagers are. If you think teenagers have difficulty concentrating in class just sit at the back of any conference room and see what adult professionals are doing on their laptops while someone is speaking on stage. Basically when it comes to digital technology we're all like cows who have just been let out into the field after a long cold winter. Few are able to control our desire for recognition, self-promotion and communication that technology offers us and we haven't yet had time to calm down and wonder what we're really doing.

So maybe the ability focus attention will become a key competence in schools in the near future. We need to explicitly practice the skill of focusing on one task like deep reading or simple silent reflection and learn to switch off all the bleeping distractions. This is the topic of an article in Mindshift, Age of Distraction: Why It’s Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus, that interviews Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of the book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. The ability to focus is a key factor behind all high level performers. Top artists and athletes all have the ability to focus completely on their task and in some cases enter into an almost trance like state. Today's love for multitasking and switching constantly between different activities can lead to us never acquiring this vital skill.

“This ability is more important than IQ or the socio economic status of the family you grew up in for determining career success, financial success and health,” Goleman said. That could be a problem for students in the U.S. who often seem addicted to their devices, unable to put them down for even a few moments. Teachers say students are unable to comprehend the same texts that generations of students that came before them could master without problems, said Goleman. These are signs that educators may need to start paying attention to the act of attention itself. Digital natives may need help cultivating what was once an innate part of growing up.

How and when to use digital tools and devices is an essential part of the school curriculum today and that includes knowing how and when to switch off and focus. I'm not sure that having tech-free days is particularly useful because technology is ubiquitous today. Instead we should try to foster a wise use of technology. If you're focusing on writing an assignment you must of course use your laptop or tablet but you need to learn to only use the tools essential for that job and switch off the distractions. Switching off everything is an unnecessary "cold turkey" solution. We need to develop a mature relationship with technology and this will take time.

MOOCs - the tip of the iceberg?

 by dnkemontoh

A new survey of almost 35,000 Coursera students has revealed that the vast majority of them already have university level education, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, MOOCs Are Largely Reaching Privileged Learners, Survey Finds. The study has been carried out by a group from the University of Pennsylvania and although it has only surveyed that university's MOOC students the number surveyed is large enough from which to draw some overall conclusions (read the study: The MOOC Phenomenon: Who Takes Massive Open Online Courses and Why?). The results show that the vast majority using MOOCs are those who are already well educated and digitally literate. This is further confirmed by Edinburgh University's recent survey of their MOOC students (see article in MOOC News and Reviews, What Do We Know About MOOC Students So Far?: A Look At Recent User Data).

The promise of MOOCs democratizing higher education is still to be fulfilled and it would seem that MOOCs are at present only preaching to the converted. Nothing surprising really though some critics will certainly use it as ammunition to shoot down the whole concept. The real impact of MOOCs relies on many factors that the MOOC providers can't really influence. Participation in any online course, regardless of acronym, demands a high level of digital literacy, good study skills,  plenty self-confidence and access to a computer and broadband internet access. The people who would benefit most from open access to education are not in that position yet and radical changes in education policy and infrastructure are required before they can participate in any significant numbers. Even in most developed countries the clear target group for open education is not even aware that such opportunities exist, far less participate in such courses.

I believe that open education (not necessarily MOOCs) can and will enable millions to access educational opportunities that are denied to them today but it's going to take more time than we might hope. Open resources are available, open courses are ready but the participants aren't ready yet. They need government initiatives in digital literacy and support from libraries, schools and learning centres to learn how to learn in an online environment and be able to find the courses they need. For now MOOCs are full of early adopters and  members of the online learning community. Shouldn't we be investing more in digital literacy and net access for all. Are we concentrating too much on the tip of the iceberg and not investing enough in the mass under the surface?

Lectures can be good for you

 by teddy-rised

I'll admit a little secret; I actually enjoy lecturing. I also enjoy and learn a lot from a well-delivered lecture from an enthusiastic and knowledgeable speaker. I know I've written and spoken many times about the limits of the lecture and how new pedagogies are needed to facilitate more student-centred learning but sometimes I find the anti-lecture rhetoric in some articles rather too dismissive. Statements about the death of the lecture or the end of universities as we know them simply polarise opinion and only lead to unnecessary conflict between traditionalists and innovators that divert attention from the real issues. I wrote about this back in June, In defence of the lecture, and this week I read an interesting article by Abigail Walthausen in The Atlantic, Don't Give Up on the Lecture, showing that, when done well, there is a strong case for the lecture to continue as an important feature in education.

One point in the article stood out for me. Many want the focus to shift from the information transfer of the traditional lecture to more student interaction in the form of seminars (face-to-face or online). Although I agree with this we need to question whether seminars or tutorials are always effective learning arenas. Often they are dominated by the most vocal students and the structure can be rather loose and chaotic for quieter students. I remember being overawed by some of my fellow students in tutorials and as a result I could never find anything clever enough to say and therefore kept quite. As Walthausen remembers from her own student days:

As a college student, I was often advised by well-meaning adults to sign-up for seminars rather than lectures in order to get “face time.” To be perfectly honest, though, the lecture format, far more than the noisy seminar, enabled me to think deeply about a topic rather than being distracted by poorly planned and redundant comments from peers (often aggravated by a teacher who is reluctant, for fear of being too top-down in terms of pedagogy, to deflect them). Besides frustration with the dominant participants in many a seminar class, I have also wasted time distracted by the anxiety that I had to race others to an appropriate comment in order to accumulate those necessary class participation points.

Some learn a lot from seminar discussion and others find them intimidating and unrewarding. Same goes for lectures. Traditional educational methods should not be categorically dismissed. The world is full of creative and intelligent people who were educated in the traditional system so it can't be all wrong. There is a place for lectures and many other traditional concepts as long as we realize that the toolbox is so much bigger today and teachers need to be able to mix and adapt all these tools to their students' needs. Don't throw the baby out with the dishwater.

There is no one method of education that fails across the board, only the occasional rigid ideology that criticizes “one-size-fits-all education” while discontinuing a few of the less popular sizes.

Staying the course

 by West Point - The U.S. Military Academy

This week's main  MOOC story has been an article by Max Chafkin on Fast Company, Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course, revealing that Sebastian Thrun is having second thoughts about his Udacity initiative. Having rocketed to world fame with the astounding success of the Stanford University artificial intelligence course in 2011 he founded Udacity with a mission to make higher education freely available to all. The MOOC hype revved into top gear and the rest is history. Now Thrun seems disillusioned with the MOOC concept as a disruptive factor in higher education and intends to focus more on the corporate training sector which will appeal more to the venture capital investors who are backing Udacity.

The main reason behind this abrupt change is the low completion rates in Udacity's courses and the realisation that no amount of attractive graphics, production and design is persuading learners to complete the courses. The dream of replacing expensive university education and offering it free to the world was simply unrealistic, at least in this version.

"We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product," Thrun tells me. "It was a painful moment." Turns out he doesn't even like the term MOOC.

He's not alone in disliking the term MOOC. It was once an apt term for a genuine form of collaborative learning that has now been twisted into a diffuse variety of interpretations and the term itself has become an empty cliché. Massive open learning is about developing learning networks and communities and investigating the potential of such arenas for learning. We need to really start investigating what massive and open really mean to education rather than repackaging traditional models as Bonnie Stewart writes in her post: in the wake of MOOC hype, what shall we talk about?

Yet the institutional structures and norms that dominate our society and particularly our education system do not foster networked identities. In the midst of all the pressure for educators to somehow prepare students for this mythical “21st century” we seem to be both living in yet still casting as the eternal and exotic future, the whole fact that schooling practices are broadly structured to create herd identities of compliance and uniform mastery rather than networked identities of differentiation is…well…not surprising. But definitely a disconnect.

However I'd like to dwell on the last element in the MOOC acronym; the concept of a course. When we speak of completion rates or more negatively drop-out rates it assumes that a student somehow breaks a contract. The course is a preset unit that a student makes a commitment to either by applying for admittance, by paying a fee or both. Once admitted there is strong motivation for the student to complete the course and hopefully be rewarded by some form of hard currency (certificate, grade) at the end. Dropping out is a significant decision since you are breaking a contract (however weak) and not fulfilling your side of the bargain. Since most MOOCs are free and completely voluntary there is no pressure to complete the course other than your own self-discipline. Being one of thousands means that your absence will pass completely unnoticed. Maybe you're only really interested in one part of the course, maybe you simply don't have time or most commonly life simply gets in the way with work demands, family responsibilities and so on always taking priority. Those who devise the course may see it as a coherent unit that should be completed but most participants will see it as something to dip into, test, learn from and then leave when their own curiosity has been satisfied. MOOCs may look like courses and are certainly designed as such but they are not seen that way by the majority of learners. They offer a package of learning materials that can be accessed for a myriad of reasons, like a good reference book, and learners will dip into whatever interests them. Most will not buy into the whole course concept that the institution has devised. Can we therefore compare MOOC completion rates with regular course completion rates?

I think there is a place for even the most traditional information transfer xMOOCs as long as they are honest about what they are and what they intend to do. Many people learn a lot this way and if this type of course inspires thousands of people to learn more or maybe motivate them to more formal studies then that's a worthwhile contribution. At this level the MOOC is part of a lifelong learning framework with the aim of awakening interest and in this context completion rates stats are totally irrelevant. Udacity could easily continue to offer their courses as part of this context as a way of inspiring people to learn more but that sort of activity does not offer any return on investment for the investors.

The keys to completion are active participation, a sense of belonging to a community and a shared purpose (see more on this in my article in a recent issue of EURODL, Completion Rates – A False Trail to Measuring Course Quality?). This requires a different approach than many of the current xMOOCs and in the well-developed field of for-credit online learning there are plenty of excellent examples of courses that have high completion rates. There is a tendency to confuse MOOCs with online learing and maybe it's time for the MOOCs to learn from successful online for-credit courses. 

Lighting the fire of webinar participation

 by RaSeLaSeD - Il Pinguino

This week I and three colleagues arranged a webinar with the challenging title Running an effective webinar - experience and opportunities. It was part of a long series of webinars we've run over the last two years and the idea behind this one was to share our experience of webinars and invite participants to contribute their experience. We did not intend this webinar to be a masterclass(that would be tempting fate) but as an exchange of ideas and possibly the establishment of a community around the topic. About 160 people took part out of 244 registered and many more will watch the recording. Once again the most striking feature of the webinar is the high level of audience participation. Opening sound and video to such a large number of participants can lead to technical problems so interaction is largely limited to the chat window.

The use of the chat function in webinars intrigues me. A few months ago I wrote a post here about the problem of effective communication in webinars (Effective Communication in a webinar) and especially the issue of multitasking where the chat session competes with the speakers for attention. It's easy for a webinar to be a simple lecture with little of no interaction and sometimes there is merit in keeping things that simple. However to meet demands for audience involvement there is usually a chat window open for participants to ask questions, make comments or provide relevant links. This chat is almost always highly relevant to the topic being discussed and is mostly inspired by comments from the speakers but opinions differ on whether this type of parallel discussion is a positive contribution to the webinar or an irritating or even rude distraction.

Even if I have become a habitual "multitasker" and admit that it simply means that I can do several things rather badly, I also believe that we need to focus on a speaker to really understand their message. We've tried to limit the distraction factor by making the chat window extremely small when all focus should be on the speaker and explaining that after a short input the chat window will be enlarged to show that the focus is now on the participants' views. I thought that was a nice and tidy solution and that the multitasking could be limited by visual hints. However in our last two webinars this tactic has not worked. The chat is like a fire; once you get it started it just keeps burning and it's almost impossible to stop. This is precisely the lesson I have learned from this webinar. You simply can't control the interaction once it gets going and even if we reverted to a small chat window for the next chunk of input the chat just kept burning.

I can see both sides of the coin here. I agree that we are losing the ability to concentrate on what one person is saying and many people have become accustomed to having a buzz of communication about them all the time. This has a negative effect on our ability to really listen and reflect because our distractions are too loud. Howard Rheingold's work on attention (Attention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies, Educause Review 2010) as a key digital skill is relevant here. On the other hand there is already a tradition of chatting in a webinar as a way of creating a sense of community and participation. People expect to be able to chat while the webinar is in progress and once the chat starts it's hard to stop. Even if you take the chat window away I'm sure people will quickly find another channel to use. We need to make it clear to participants that this parallel communication will take place and that it's important to decide whether to concentrate on the speakers and ignore the chat or participate in the chat to the detriment of the speakers. Some can cope with both but not many. If you ignore the chat in the live session you can concentrate on it in the recording.

Have a look at the webinar below and see if you agree with the advice and experience that was shared. During the webinar we started a Facebook group in order to extend the discussion beyond the webinar. You're welcome to join us.

How much does free cost?

 by Sharon Drummond

Free is the norm on the net. You expect to access just about everything for free and if someone tries to put up a paywall around their content most of us simply don't visit that site any more. At the same time we are acutely aware of the bombardment of advertising that accompanies most websites and some are so full it's hard to actually read the content. There's a lot of quality content out there that costs time money and professional expertise to produce and neither of the present models (free with ads or paywall) work very well. I'd be happy to pay for quality content if there was a flexible and painless way to do so. I'm not interested in paying a subscription to a newspaper when I only read a handful of its articles each month but I recognize that good journalism costs money.

A BBC article, Are the days of free content on the net numbered? questions whether the present advertising-driven free content model is sustainable. Signs are that revenues are falling and that news sites in particular will be unable to continue unless they can find a new revenue model. The answer would seem to be some kind of micropayment system where you are charged a tiny sum every time you read an article or watch a film on certain sites. Web content produced by individuals without commercial interest (blogs, wikis, hobby sites, clubs etc) will of course remain free but newspapers, TV sites and so on will get paid per click in a similar system to paying artists whose music is streamed via Spotify. If this means that serious journalism is available without paywalls or irritating advertising then I'm all for it. Otherwise we risk losing such media and our view of the world will be controlled by blatantly commercial media channels.

The article quotes web pioneer Robert Cailliau:

Mr Cailliau thinks that monthly subscriptions are too expensive and restrictive. He says the pay-as-you-go mobile phone model is a great one for online content.
"When you send an SMS, you pay a small amount of money. Each individual action should be billed individually," he says.
"My browser should pay you automatically a cent or two cents per page without me feeling it. I should not have to prepay a large amount of money."
"Why re-invent? The telephone already does that. We already have a worldwide system that's capable of billing the customer for every move he makes."

It isn't easy getting people to pay for something that has been free but maybe the model will be to pay a small flat rate to help pay for quality content but also for the right to avoid drowning in ads. If this helps to pay for serious journalism then it's worth trying.

Credentials for experience

 by Oberazzi

University has always been a rite of passage; a period of your life devoted to study and network building before entering the world of employment. If you attend for three years you get a batchelor's degree and if you stay a year or two longer you get a master's degree. The focus is on the time spent on campus and the intangible assets of "student life" that can only be gained by being there. This time-based institution has therefore great difficulty accepting that some people can learn the same things without physically uprooting themselves and living on or around campus for the allotted time. No matter how well online students perform there's always suspicion that they have not gained the full benefit of higher education and that off-campus learning can never match "the real thing" (see my last post for more on that topic).

However, as university fees soar in many countries there are more and more new paths to higher education (MOOCs, for-credit online courses etc). The rite of passage aspect is also less relevant, especially for the growing ranks of lifelong learners who need small and regular injections of higher education but have no interest in actually attending a brick and mortar institution.

An article in the New York Times by Anya Kamenetz, Are You Competent? Prove It.
Degrees Based on What You Can Do, Not How Long You Went, discusses the demand for credits for experience and the concept of fast-tracking a degree for people with extensive experience in the subject area. Some colleges are offering students the chance to complete courses as fast as they want and get due credit for validated practical workplace experience.

College leaders say that by focusing on what people learn, not how or when they learn it, and by taking advantage of the latest technology, they can save students time and lower costs. There are 37 million Americans with some college but no degree, and political leaders at the local, state and national levels are heralding new competency-based programs as the best way to get them marketable diplomas.

We need to develop credible systems for giving talented people recognition for work experience and informal learning without having to return to campus of take on crippling loans. This is a potentially massive new market for universities but is viewed with extreme suspicion since it means offering credit to students who haven't attended the college in the traditional sense. One institution that is working on this is the University of Wisconsin who are offering flexible courses that can be completed at the student's own pace. According to Kevin P. Reilly who's in charge of the university's flexible initiative:

“It’s scary for faculty,” Dr. Reilly says. “There’s a continuing sense that students can and do draw on so many sources of information that are now available at their fingertips. They don’t need to come to the monastery for four years and sit at the feet of the monks.”

This week saw the long awaited official launch of  OER University which offers a serious alternative to the hyped xMOOC consortia. OER University are a partnership of 37 universities and organisations under the auspices of UNESCO and Commonwealth of Learning that offer truly open online courses using open educational resources and learners can get their learning assessed for real credits at a fraction of the cost of attending campus. Students need to pay a fee to get their learning and experience validated and credits awarded but it's a fraction of the cost of the full campus experience.

The rite of passage campus experience is not going to die out. It's still attractive for many but is only possible when you're between 18 and 25 and if you can afford it. For everyone else we need to offer other paths that may not give you that all-round learning experience of campus but are more practical and give recognition for the skills and knowledge that people gain at work and in leisure time. Will universities dare to award credentials to someone else's students? The members of OER University say they are willing and let's see who joins in.