Using Someone Else’s MOOC in Your Course: Madness or Learning Opportunity?

R. John RobertsonOne Session Wonder

November 11, 2013Link to this presentation on Google Drive: http://goo.gl/5z0SID

When I say “MOOC”

Write down the first thing that comes to your mind

Now write three things you think are positive or interesting about MOOCs and three things you think are negative or misguided about MOOCs.

Introductions

Who are you?

What do you teach?

What is your interest in this session?

Have you taken a MOOC (of any kind or any part of one)?

MOOC

By Mathieu Plourde {(Mathplourde on Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Context and Assumptions

● MOOCs fit into the general spectrum of educational content and approach that might be useful for my course.

● Sharing educational content is not new and there are lots of distinct but related collections or pockets of stuff that can be useful (so OER, OCW, iTunes U and other ‘Free stuff’).

● This session is not just about ‘MOOCs’

Aside: perspective for free

MOOCs let you (as an instructor):a) get a student’s eye view for free, on your terms, and with little ‘cost’b) let you see how someone else explains or structures your topic or online or...

Finding

Finding

● Google● Destination sites (OCW, Merlot, Flickr,

Youtube)● Phone a friend● Networks of trusted and known collections of

resources

Licensing

Another discussion, but...- link to versus recreate- some MOOC platforms have an interesting take on licensing (Coursera et al.)- be careful what you ask your students to do- public on the web is your friend- open licensing is your friend

Conceptual hurdles

● Perceptions○ (self, peers, students)

● Anticipated workload○ (unexpected increase in workload)

● Intended audience○ (who is this material for, what assumptions does it

make?)

Models of use

The guest lectureThe reading The textbookThe distributed flip

The guest lecture

Use a lecture, talk, or snippet as a guest lecture. Frame the ‘event’ and discussion in the same way as you would frame inviting a speaker to your class.

Photo by Ethan Senack https://twitter.com/HigherEdPIRG/status/398498881085796352/photo/1 CC: BY

The guest lecture

What questions or concerns would have about a guest lecture in your class?How do those questions mutate or remain the same if you use a guest MOOC? Photo by Ethan Senack https://twitter.

com/HigherEdPIRG/status/398498881085796352/photo/1 CC: BY

The guest lecture

How might you scaffold student engagement with the ‘guest’?Perhaps:● provide a question for them to reflect on or

activity for them to engage with (avoid passivity)

● present an opposing point of view and ask students to evaluate and respond

The reading

Use a section of a MOOC or OER in place of a reading. Identify a resource that conveys a key concept which you can expand on, a resource that can be critiqued in class, or engaged with as a primary resource.

The reading

Does your discipline have a tradition or culture of using non-textual readings?How do you think students would respond?How would you get students to interact with the reading (in class or as an assignment)?

The reading

What challenges do you think students might have with this ‘reading’?How might you address them?

The textbook

One could find a MOOC which covers the course content and assign it as a textbook for the course. This is likely to work best if students have some form of structured engagement with and desired output from the reading. For example a ‘book report’ or quizzes.

The textbook

If you use a textbook, how do you interact with it or have students engage with it?What purpose does it serve?What do you think would be the benefits and pitfalls of having students take a MOOC alongside your course which covered the same material?

The textbook

What questions do you think students might have about this approach?

This model requires students to listen to the same content twice. Do you think this is a good idea?

aside: Flipped Classroom

To push lower order thinking activities out of the class time and use class time for activities to reinforce higher order thinking and mastery.

7 Things you need to know about flipped classroomshttps://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7081.pdfThis view of Bloom’s taxonomy (revised) fromhttp://ww2.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm

The distributed flip

Mike Caulfield & Amy Collier

Taking the notion of the flipped classroom - that students can do the ‘ordinary’ stuff outside of the classroom and spend contact time on higher order activities and cognitive challenges - and asking what it looks like if you use a MOOC (kind of).

F LI P

The distributed flip: issues

Synchronisation questions

Cohort questionsFindings suggest the wider MOOC community and local course community don’t merge. However, they also suggest the local community does merge which is a key indicator of success.

Balancing access to materials with lack of control - no modification or analytics

Distributed Flip

What are the risks of this approach?What possible benefits do you see: a) for the instructor b) for the students?

Practical Steps

1. Identify one thing that has resonated in this session and think about a particular course in which it might be of use - what could you try?

2. Is there anything from this session that you’re planning on sharing with any of your colleagues?

References and Resources● Caulfield, M., Collier, A., Halawa, S. (2013). Rethinking Online Community in MOOCs Used for

Blended Learning http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/rethinking-online-community-moocs-used-blended-learning

● MOOCs IN THE CLASSROOM? Rebecca Griffiths http://www.sr.ithaka.org/blog-individual/moocs-classroom

● The Distributed Flip (Presentation for InstructureCon 2013) http://hapgood.us/2013/06/26/the-distributed-flip-presentation-for-instructurecon-2013/

● MOOC Use in Blended Scenarios: Some Surprises and Opportunities (video of the above presentation) http://hapgood.us/2013/07/02/mooc-use-in-blended-scenarios-some-surprises-and-opportunities/

● Some Notes on Using MOOCs for Blended Instruction http://hapgood.us/2013/10/10/some-notes-on-using-moocs-for-blended-instruction/

● 7 Things you need to know about flipped classrooms https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7081.pdf