[Open-education] Friday Chat: Personal experiences of MOOCs

Mon Sep 15 09:27:59 UTC 2014

Thanks, Terry,

These are wise words, in my view. The 'drop-out'/ 'drop-in' question is a good one. However, it seems to me that the debate on this has been somewhat muddied by the stakeholder perspectives which people are taking (and people often try to take multiple perspectives, or are trying to imagine themselves into roles they are not truly 'in'). From an institutional perspective,  it surely must matter how many students 'complete' or 'progress'. If the business model involves engaging more students on accredited courses, then conversion rates to these courses will be critical (just as selling 'premium' accounts is essential in 'Freemium' online businesses). Likewise, agencies responsible for funding, accreditation and quality must surely take these statistics into account.
However, an individual learner may well be able to achieve their goals without 'completing', and even without their activity being visible on the system beyond a few hits of the browser. Some of the most potent arguments from the "it doesn't matter about completion rates" camp have been based on individual experience (e.g. Donald Clarke's postings), and there is nothing wrong with that. But the debate on the impact of the MOOC on the viability of institutions is several steps removed from this.

However, when you say that we need to more flexible models of learning: Yes! Count me in.....

Paul

(Paul Richardson; Jisc RSC Wales)

From: open-education [mailto:open-education-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Terry Loane
Sent: 13 September 2014 17:20
To: open-education at lists.okfn.org
Subject: Re: [Open-education] Friday Chat: Personal experiences of MOOCs

I have taken part as a student in three MOOCs (two of which were arranged by Futurelearn<https://www.futurelearn.com/>). I certainly did not 'complete' any of these in the conventional sense of covering absolutely all of the material provided, but I certainly gained a lot out of doing what I did do. Somebody (perhaps on this list, I can't remember) once said that we should not ask the question 'How many MOOCs have you dropped out of?' but rather 'How many MOOCs have you dropped into?'

I think we still have rather a monolithic mindset when it comes to educational activity. As students (or potential students) we expect a single institution (e.g. school, college, university) to provide everything for us: teacher, course material, social learning environment, accreditation etc. But for me the key difference that open resources, and indeed digital technology in general, make is that we no longer have to think like this. We should be able to adopt a 'pick'n'mix' approach, taking personal responsibility, with suitable guidance if we need it, for choosing our own set of resources, learning environments, learning companions etc. But there is no tradition to help us think like this, and the institutions themselves do not want to give up their power over the learning process, so it is difficult to make the change that technology should, I believe, be facilitating.

So MOOCs, as they are currently created and 'delivered', will not, I think, be 'the answer'. Something like MOOCs may end up as part of the mix, but if they are to play a successful part in facilitating learning, such courses/resources will need to be used within a supportive social learning environment. And we can't have Massive Open Online learning communities, because human beings have been designed and evolved to work best within support networks provided by relatively small groups. I have not experienced such social support within MOOCs, even with so-called cMOOCs<http://degreeoffreedom.org/xmooc-vs-cmooc/>.

I believe we need to be imaginative in moving away from monolithic institution-based assumptions about learning towards more flexible models that combine the advantages both of the massive and revolutionary access to open resources provided by the web and of our need for support from small-scale learning networks and communities of practice.

What do others think?

Terry Loane
On 13/09/2014 05:24, Silvia Da Rosa wrote:
Hello Marieke,

I am Silvia, from Uruguay. I am taking this course too. It's really awsome!

I have finished succesfully only one MOOC but started other 3. Of course I think the main reasons for not finishing rhem was time and real interest, but i think there were other important factors like the quality of the resources, the ease of use of the platform and the resources, the clarity of the syllabus, the possibility of having resources in more than one language.

I have never really connected to the community, so I expect that´s something new to this course.

Kind regards,

Silvia

El 12/09/2014, a las 06:10, Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org<mailto:marieke.guy at okfn.org>> escribió:
So sort of a Friday chat thing...

I started Stanford's Open Knowledge MOOC last week (bit of an intro to it from me here<https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/stanfords-open-knowledge-mooc/>). Anyone else doing it? I'm hoping some interesting questions come out of it providing I can apply myself to do the course. [For example I learned yesterday that more people own a mobile device than a toothbrush - important stuff!!] It's my second MOOC and I completed my first one (ioe2012<https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/category/ioe12/>), but I had more spare time then...

Anyway, I was interested in people's personal experiences of MOOCs. Do we practice what we preach? Or are MOOCs just something we deliver for other people? How do you use MOOCs to support what you do? Have people had positive experiences connecting with communities in MOOCs? What about hybrid approaches - has anyone participated in a MOOC and at the same time been involved in a physical community supporting it? Are there people delivering MOOCs who fundamentally disagree with them as a form of open education?

Also if you have a topic for discussion remember to shout it out or add it to the etherpad<https://pad.okfn.org/p/Open_Education_Working_Friday_Chats>.

Marieke

---

Marieke Guy
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