MOOC(s):
A Massive Open
Online Course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at
unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials,
such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets., many MOOCs
provide interactive courses with user forums or social media
discussions to support community interactions among students, professors,
and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick
quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a widely researched development in distance
education, first introduced in 2008, that emerged as a popular mode
of learning in 2012.
Early MOOCs
(cMOOCs) often emphasized open-access features, such as open licensing of
content, structure and learning goals, to promote the reuse and remixing of
resources. Some later MOOCs (xMOOCs) use closed licenses for their course
materials while maintaining free access for students.
Precursors:
Before the Digital
Age, distance learning appeared in the form of correspondence courses in
the 1890s–1920s and later radio and television broadcast of courses and early
forms of e-learning. Typically fewer than five percent of the students
would complete a course. For example the Stanford Honors Cooperative Program,
established in 1954, eventually offered video classes on-site at companies, at
night, leading to a fully accredited Master's degree. This program was
controversial because the companies paid double the normal tuition paid by
full-time students. The 2000s saw changes in online or e-learning and
distance education, with increasing online presence, open learning
opportunities, and the development of MOOCs. By 2010
audiences for the most popular college courses such as "Justice"
with Michael J. Sandel and "Human Anatomy" with Marian
Diamond were reaching millions.
Early Approach:
The first MOOCs
emerged from the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which was
sparked by MIT Open Courseware project. The OER movement was
motivated from work by researchers who pointed out that class size and learning
outcomes had no established connection, with Daniel Barwick’s work being the most often-cited example. Within the OER movement, the Wikiversity was
founded in 2006 and the first open course on the platform was organised in
2007. Ten-week course with more than 70 students was used to test the idea of
making Wikiversity an open and free platform for education in the tradition of
Scandinavian free adult education, Folk High School and the free school
movement The term MOOC was coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier
of the University of Prince Edward Island in response to a course
called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (also known
as CCK08). CCK08, consisted of 25 tuition-paying students in Extended
Education at the University of Manitoba, as well as over 2200 online
students from the general public who paid nothing. All course content was
available through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, and online
students could participate through collaborative tools, including blog posts,
threaded discussions in Moodle, and Second Life meetings. Stephen
Downes considers these so-called cMOOCs to be more "creative and
dynamic" than the current xMOOCs, which he believes "resemble
television shows or digital textbooks."
Other cMOOCs were
then developed; for example, Jim Groom from The University of Mary
Washington and Michael Branson Smith of York College, City University
of New York hosted MOOCs through several universities starting with 2011's
'Digital Storytelling' (ds106) MOOC. MOOCs from private, non-profit
institutions emphasized prominent faculty members and expanded existing
distance learning offerings (e.g., podcasts) into free and open online courses. Alongside the development of these
open courses, other E-learning platforms emerged – such as Khan Academy, Peer-to-Peer
University (P2PU), Udemy, and Alison – which are viewed as
similar to MOOCs and work outside the university system or emphasize individual
self-paced lessons.
cMOOCs and xMOOCs:
As MOOCs developed
with time, multiple conceptions of the platform seem to have emerged. Mostly
two different types can be differentiated: those that emphasize a connectivist
philosophy, and those that resemble more traditional courses. To distinguish the
two, several early adopters of the platform proposed the terms
"cMOOC" and "xMOOC".
cMOOCs are based on
principles from connectivist pedagogy indicating that material should
be aggregated (rather than pre-selected), remixable, re-purposable,
and feeding forward (i.e. evolving materials should be
targeted at future learning). cMOOC instructional design approaches
attempt to connect learners to each other to answer questions or collaborate on
joint projects. This may include emphasizing collaborative development of the
MOOC. Andrew Ravenscroft of the London Metropolitan University claimed that
connectivist MOOCs better support collaborative dialogue and knowledge
building.
xMOOCs have a much
more traditional course structure. They are characterized by a specified aim of
completing the course obtaining certain knowledge certification of the subject
matter. They are presented typically with a clearly specified syllabus of
recorded lectures and self-test problems. However, some providers require paid
subscriptions for acquiring graded materials and certificates. They employ
elements of the original MOOC, but are, in some effect, branded IT platforms
that offer content distribution partnerships to institutions. The instructor is
the expert provider of knowledge, and student interactions are usually limited
to asking for assistance and advising each other on difficult points.
Emergence of Mooc
Providers:
According to The
New York Times, 2012 became "the year of the MOOC" as several
well-financed providers, associated with top universities, emerged,
including Coursera, Udacity and edX. Many universities scrambled to join
in the "next big thing", as did more established online
education service providers such as Blackboard Inc., in what has been
called a "stampede." Dozens of universities in Canada, Mexico, Europe
and Asia have announced partnerships with the large American MOOC
providers. By early 2013, questions emerged about whether academia was
"MOOC'd out." This trend was later confirmed in continuing analysis.
The industry has an
unusual structure, consisting of linked groups including MOOC providers, the
larger non-profit sector, universities, related companies and venture
capitalists. Among these, the major
providers are as the non-profits Khan Academy and edX, and the for-profits
Udacity and Coursera.
Related companies
investing in MOOCs include Google.
In the fall of
2011, Stanford University launched three courses. The first of those
courses was Introduction Into AI, launched by Sebastian Thrun
and Peter Norvig. Enrollment quickly reached 160,000 students. The announcement
was followed within weeks by the launch of two more MOOCs, by Andrew Ng
and Jennifer Widom. Following the publicity and high enrollment numbers of
these courses, Thrun started a company he named Udacity and Daphne Koller and
Andrew Ng launched Coursera.
In January 2013,
Udacity launched its first MOOCs-for-credit, in collaboration with San Jose
State University. In May 2013, the company announced the first entirely
MOOC-based master's degree, a collaboration between Udacity, AT&T and
the Georgia Institute of Technology, costing $7,000, a fraction of its
normal tuition. Concerned about the
commercialization of online education, in 2012 MIT created the not-for-profit
MITx.] In September 2013,
edX announced a partnership with Google to develop MOOC.org, a site for
non-xConsortium groups to build and host courses. Google will work on the core
platform development with edX partners. In addition, Google and edX will
collaborate on research into how students learn and how technology can
transform learning and teaching. MOOC.org will adopt Google's infrastructure. The
Chinese Tsinghua University MOOC platform XuetangX.com (launched Oct.
2013) uses the Open edX platform.
Before 2013, each
MOOC tended to develop its own delivery platform. EdX in April 2013 joined with
Stanford University, which previously had its own platform called Class2Go, to
work on XBlock SDK, a joint open-source platform. Stanford Vice
Provost John Mitchell said that the goal was to provide the "Linux of
online learning." This is unlike companies such as Coursera that have
developed their own platform.
By November 2013,
EdX offered 94 courses from 29 institutions around the world. Udacity
offered 26 courses. The number of courses offered has since increased
dramatically: As of January 2016, Edx offers 820 courses, Coursera offers 1580
courses and Udacity offers more than 120 courses. According to FutureLearn, the
British Council's Understanding IELTS: Techniques for English Language Tests
has an enrollment of over 440,000 students.
Emergence of
Innovative Courses:
Early cMOOCs such
as CCK08 and ds106 used innovative pedagogy, with distributed learning
materials rather than a video-lecture format, and a focus on education and
learning, and digital storytelling respectively. Following the 2011 launch of three Stanford xMOOCs,
including Introduction Into AI, launched by Sebastian Thrun and
Peter Norvig a number of other innovative courses have emerged. As of May
2014, more than 900 MOOCs are offered by US universities and colleges. As of
February 2013, dozens of universities had affiliated with MOOCs, including many
international institutions. In addition, some organisations operate their
own MOOCs – including Google's Power Search.
A range of courses
have emerged; "There was a real question of whether this would work for
humanities and social science", said Ng. However, psychology and
philosophy courses are among Coursera's most popular. Student feedback and
completion rates suggest that they are as successful as math and science
courses even though the
corresponding completion rates are lower.
In January 2012,
University of Helsinki launched a Finnish MOOC in programming. The MOOC is used
as a way to offer high-schools the opportunity to provide programming courses
for their students, even if no local premises or faculty that can organize such
courses exist. The course
has been offered recurringly, and the top-performing students are admitted to a
BSc and MSc program in Computer Science at the University of Helsinki. On 18
June 2012, Ali Lemus from Galileo University launched the first Latin
American MOOC.
"Gender
Through Comic Books" was a course taught by Ball State University by
Christina Blanch on Instructure's Canvas Network, a MOOC platform launched in
November 2012. The course used examples from comic books to
teach academic concepts about gender and perceptions.
In November 2012,
the University of Miami launched its first high school MOOC as part
of Global Academy, its online high school. The course became available for high
school students preparing for the SAT Subject Test in biology.
In the UK of summer
2013, Physiopedia ran their first MOOC regarding Professional Ethics in
collaboration with University of the Western Cape in South Africa. In
March 2013, Coursolve piloted a crowdsourced business strategy course
for 100 organizations with the University of Virginia. A data science MOOC
began in May 2013.
Students Experience
and Pedagogy:
A course billed as
"Asia's first MOOC" given by the Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology through Coursera starting in April 2013 registered 17,000
students. About 60% were from "rich countries" with many of the rest
from middle-income countries in Asia, South Africa, Brazil or Mexico. Fewer
students enrolled from areas with more limited access to the internet, and
students from the People's Republic of China may have been discouraged by
Chinese government policies. Koller stated in May 2013 that a majority of the
people taking Coursera courses had already earned college degrees.
Jonathan Haber
focused on questions of what students are learning and student demographics.
About half the students taking US courses are from other countries and do not
speak English as their first language. He found some courses to be meaningful,
especially about reading comprehension. Video lectures followed by multiple
choice questions can be challenging since they are often the "right
questions." Smaller discussion boards paradoxically offer the best
conversations. Larger discussions can be "really, really thoughtful and
really, really misguided", with long discussions becoming rehashes or
"the same old stale left/right debate."
MIT and Stanford
University offered initial MOOCs in Computer Science and Electrical
Engineering. Since engineering courses need prerequisites so at the outset
upper-level engineering courses were nearly absent from the MOOC list. Now
several universities are presenting undergraduate and advanced-level
engineering courses.
Educator
Experience:
In 2013, the Chronicle
of Higher Education surveyed 103 professors who had taught MOOCs.
"Typically a professor spent over 100 hours on his MOOC before it even
started, by recording online lecture videos and doing other preparation",
though some instructors' pre-class preparation was "a few dozen
hours". The professors then spent 8–10 hours per week on the course, including
participation in discussion forums.
The medians were:
33,000 students enrollees; 2,600 passing; and 1 teaching assistant helping with
the class. 74% of the classes used automated grading, and 34% used peer
grading. 97% of the instructors used original videos, 75% used open educational
resources and 27% used other resources. 9% of the classes required a physical
textbook and 5% required an e-book.
Unlike traditional
courses, MOOCs require additional skills, provided by videographers,
instructional designers, IT specialists and platform specialists. Georgia Tech
professor. The platforms have
availability requirements similar to media/content sharing websites, due to the
large number of enrollees. MOOCs typically use cloud computing and
are often created with authoring systems. Authoring tools for the creation
of MOOCs are specialized packages of educational software like Elicitus,
IMC Content Studio and Lectora that are easy-to-use and support e-learning
standards like SCORM and AICC. The Outcome or the result is much
impressive through MOOCs than the traditional teaching and passing out
students’ ratio.
Many MOOCs use
video lectures, employing the old form of teaching (lecturing) using a new
technology. MOOC "courses are 'designed to be challenges,' not
lectures, and the amount of data generated from these assessments can be
evaluated 'massively using machine learning' at work behind the scenes. This
approach, dispels 'the medieval set of myths' guiding teacher efficacy and
student outcomes, and replaces it with evidence-based, 'modern, data-driven'
educational methodologies that may be the instruments responsible for a
'fundamental transformation of education' itself".
Some view the
videos and other material produced by the MOOC as the next form of the
textbook. "MOOC is the new textbook", according to David Finegold
of Rutgers University. A study of edX student habits
found that certificate-earning students generally stop watching videos longer
than 6 to 9 minutes. They viewed the first 4.4 minutes (median) of 12- to
15-minute videos. Some traditional schools blend online and offline
learning, sometimes called flipped classrooms. Students watch lectures online
at home and work on projects and interact with faculty while in class. Such hybrids
can even improve student performance in traditional in-person classes.
Because of massive
enrollments, MOOCs require instructional design that facilitates large-scale
feedback and interaction. The two basic approaches are:
·
Peer-review and group collaboration
·
Automated feedback through objective, online assessments, e.g. quizzes
and exams. Machine grading of
written assignments is also underway.
Peer review is
often based upon sample answers, which guide the grader on how many points to
award different answers. These rubrics cannot be as complex for peer grading as
for teaching assistants. Students are expected to learn via grading
others and become more engaged with the course. Exams may be proctored
at regional testing centers. Other methods, including "eavesdropping
technologies worthy of the C.I.A." allow testing at home or office, by
using webcams, or monitoring mouse clicks and typing styles. Special
techniques such as adaptive testing may be used, where the test
tailors itself given the student's previous answers, giving harder or easier
questions accordingly.
"The most
important thing that helps students succeed in an online course is
interpersonal interaction and support", says Shanna Smith Jaggars,
assistant director of Columbia University’s Community College Research
Centre. Her research compared online-only and face-to-face learning in studies
of community-college students and faculty in Virginia and Washington state.
Assigning mentors
to students is another interaction-enhancing technique.[60] In 2013
Harvard offered a popular class, The Ancient Greek Hero, instructed
by Gregory Nagy and taken by thousands of Harvard students over prior
decades. It appealed to alumni to volunteer as online mentors and discussion
group managers. About 10 former teaching fellows also volunteered. The task of
the volunteers, which required 3–5 hours per week, was to focus on online class
discussion. The edX course registered 27,000 students.
Techniques for
maintaining connection with students include adding audio comments on
assignments instead of writing them, participating with students in the
discussion forums, asking brief questions in the middle of the lecture,
updating weekly videos about the course and sending congratulatory emails on
prior accomplishments to students who are slightly behind. Grading by peer
review has had mixed results. In one example, three fellow students grade one
assignment for each assignment that they submit. The grading key or rubric
tends to focus the grading, but discourages more creative writing.
Information
Architecture:
When searching for
the desired course, the courses are usually organized by "most
popular" or a "topical scheme". Courses planned for synchronous
learning are structured as an exact organizational scheme called a
chronological scheme, Courses planned for asynchronous learning are
also presented as a chronological scheme, but the order the information is
learned as a hybrid scheme. In this way it can be harder to understand the
course content and complete, because they are not based on an existing mental
model.
Industry:
MOOCs are widely
seen as a major part of a larger disruptive innovative taking place
in higher education. In particular, the many services offered under
traditional university business models are predicted to become unbundled and
sold to students individually or in newly formed bundles. These services include research, curriculum design,
content generation (such as textbooks), teaching, assessment and certification
(such as granting degrees) and student placement. MOOCs threaten existing
business models by potentially selling teaching, assessment, or placement
separately from the current package of services.
Principles of openness inform
the creation, structure and operation of MOOCs. The extent to which practices
of Open Design in educational technology are applied vary.
|
Attributes of
major MOOC providers, with update
|
|
Initiatives
|
Nonprofit
|
Free to access
|
Certification fee
|
Institutional
credits
|
|
edX
|
Yes
|
Partial
|
Yes
|
Partial
|
|
Coursera
|
No
|
Partial
|
Yes
|
Partial
|
|
Udacity
|
No
|
Partial
|
Yes
|
Partial
|
|
Udemy
|
No
|
Partial
|
Yes
|
Partial
|
|
P2PU
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Fee Opportunities:
Course developers
could charge licensing fees for educational institutions that use its
materials. Introductory or "gateway" courses and some remedial
courses may earn the most fees. Free introductory courses may attract new
students to follow-on fee-charging classes. Blended courses supplement MOOC
material with face-to-face instruction. Providers can charge employers for
recruiting its students. Students may be able to pay to take a proctored exam
to earn transfer credit at a degree-granting university, or for certificates of
completion. Udemy allows teachers to sell online courses, with the course
creators keeping 70–85% of the proceeds and intellectual property rights.
Benefits:
Improving access to higher education
MOOCs are regarded
by many as an important tool to widen access to higher education (HE)
for millions of people, including those in the developing world, and
ultimately enhance their quality of life. MOOCs may be regarded as contributing
to the democratisation of HE, not only locally or regionally but globally as
well. MOOCs can help democratise content and make knowledge reachable for
everyone. Students are able to access complete courses offered by universities
all over the world, something previously unattainable. With the availability of
affordable technologies, MOOCs increase access to an extraordinary number of
courses offered by world-renowned institutions and teachers.
Providing an affordable alternative to formal education
The costs of
tertiary education continue to increase because institutions tend to bundle too
many services. With MOOCs, some of these services can be transferred to other
suitable players in the public or private sector. MOOCs are for large
numbers of participants, can be accessed by anyone anywhere as long as they
have an Internet connection, are open to everyone without entry qualifications
and offer a full/complete course experience online for free.
Sustainable development goals
MOOCs can be seen
as a form of open education offered for free through online platforms. The
(initial) philosophy of MOOCs is to open up quality higher education to a wider
audience. As such, MOOCs are an important tool to achieve goal 4 of the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Offers a flexible learning schedule
Certain lectures,
videos, and tests through MOOCs can be accessed at any time compared to
scheduled class times. By allowing learners to complete their coursework in
their own time, this provides flexibility to learners based on their own
personal schedules.
Online collaboration
The learning
environments of MOOCs make it easier for learners across the globe to work
together on common goals. Instead of having to physically meet one another,
online collaboration creates partnerships among learners. While time zones may
have an effect on the hours that learners communicate, projects, assignments,
and more can be completed to incorporate the skills and resources that
different learners offer no matter where they are located. Distance and
collaboration can benefit learners who may have struggled with traditionally
more individual learning goals, including learning how to write.
Challenges and Criticism:
MOOCs face the following
challenges:
1. Relying on
user-generated content can create a chaotic learning environment.
2.
Digital
literacy is necessary to make use of the online materials.
3. The time and effort
required from participants may exceed what students are willing to commit to a
free online course.
4. Once the course is
released, content will be reshaped and reinterpreted by the massive student
body, making the course trajectory difficult for instructors to control.
5. Participants must
self-regulate and set their own goals.
6. Language and
translation barriers.
7. Accessibility
barriers for differently-abled users
8. Access barriers for
people from low socio-economic neighbourhoods and countries with very little
internet access
These general
challenges in effective MOOC development are accompanied by criticism by
journalists and academics.
Some dispute
that the "territorial" dimensions of MOOCs have received
insufficient discussion or data-backed analysis, namely: 1. the true
geographical diversity of enrolls in/completes courses; 2. the implications of
courses scaling across country borders, and potential difficulties with
relevance and knowledge transfer; and 3. the need for territory-specific study
of locally relevant issues and needs.
Other features
associated with early MOOCs, such as open licensing of content, open structure
and learning goals, and community-centeredness, may not be present in all MOOC
projects.
Effects on the
structure of higher education were lamented, for example, by Moshe Y.
Vardi, who finds an "absence of serious pedagogy in MOOCs", and
indeed in all of higher education. He criticized the format of "short, unsophisticated
video chunks, interleaved with online quizzes, and accompanied by social
networking."[ An underlying reason is simple cost-cutting pressures, which could
hamstring the higher education industry.
Alternative to MOOCs:
At least one
alternative to MOOCs has advocates: Distributed Open Collaborative Courses
(DOCC) challenge the roles of the instructor, hierarchy, money and massiveness.
DOCC recognizes that the pursuit of knowledge may be achieved better by not
using a centralized singular syllabus, that expertise is distributed throughout
all the participants and does not just reside with one or two individuals.
Another alternative
to MOOCs is the self-paced online course (SPOC) which provides a high degree of
flexibility. Students can decide on their own pace and with which session they
would like to begin their studies. According to a report by Class Central founder
Dhawal Shah, more than 800 self-paced courses have been available in 2015.
Although the
purpose of MOOCs is ultimately to educate more people, recent criticisms
include accessibility and a Westernized curriculum that leads to a failure to
reach the same audiences marginalised by traditional methods.
The Experience of
English Language Learners (ELLs) in MOOCs:
Language of
instruction is one of the major barriers that ELLs face in MOOCs. In recent
estimates, almost 75% of MOOC courses are presented in the English language,
however, native English speakers are a minority among the world's population. This
issue is mediated by the increasing popularity of English as a global language,
and therefore has more second language speakers than any other language in the
world. This barrier has encouraged content developers and other MOOC stakeholders
to develop content in other popular languages to increase MOOC access. However,
research studies show that some ELLs prefer to take MOOCs in English, despite
the language challenges, as it promotes their goals of economic, social,
and geographic mobility. This emphasizes the need to not only provide
MOOC content in other languages, but also to develop English language
interventions for ELLs who participate in English MOOCs.
Areas that ELLs
particularly struggle with in English MOOCs include MOOC content without
corresponding visual supporting materials (e.g., an instructor narrating
instruction without text support in the background), or their hesitation to
participate in MOOC discussion forums. Active participation in MOOC
discussion forums has been found to improve students grades, their engagement,
and leads to lower dropout rates, however, ELLs are more likely to be
spectators than active contributors in discussion forums.
Researching studies
show a “complex mix of affective, socio-cultural, and educational factors” that
are inhibitors to their active participation in discussion forums. As
expected, English as the language of communication poses both linguistic and
cultural challenges for ELLs, and they may not be confident in their English
language communication abilities. Discussion forums may also be an
uncomfortable means of communication especially for ELLs from Confucian
cultures, where disagreement and arguing one’s points are often viewed as
confrontational, and harmony is promoted. Therefore, while ELLs may be
perceived as being uninterested in participating, research studies show that
they do not show the same hesitation in face-to-face discourse. Finally, ELLs
may come from high power distance cultures, where teachers are regarded
as authority figures, and the culture of back and forth conversations between
teachers and students is not a cultural norm. As a result, discussion forums
with active participation from the instructors may cause discomfort and prevent
participation of students from such cultures.
