Jun 20, 2013

Golden advice for designing a MOOC - part 3

This is the final part in the series where we summarise the advice we got from a bunch of people on designing our LeaderMOOC.
See also Part 1 and Part 2

8- Blend in with daily lives and technology

The magic word according to Inge is one I can't pronounce: "ubiquituous". It is a word often used when it comes to technology that becomes so natural it becomes background rather than prominently in your face. In terms of MOOC design it means to select technology that people would use already anyway (otherwise you make extra thresholds for people to participate) but as Hans points out succesful MOOCs also blend in easily in your work and life schedule.

On the technological side Inge thinks that for this reason every MOOC should use mobile-enabled technology, because that's the most ubiquituous technology out there. She has a point. Chris suggests to make content pieces available in multiple formats because not all formats go as well for everyone in the world - eg in some countries bandwidth for video might be a problem.

But also think about the MOOC work itself: can people easily do that in the schedules of their current lives, and will they be able to apply some of the assignments within their life? Hans suggests to make little and low threshold assignments.


9- It's all about community

We have talked before on how you need to make up your mind on what's a MOOC to you. If it is about broadcasting your expertise, this section will not be relevant to you. But if you agree with the original terms of MOOC and the 'M' to be massive enough for network effects and network learning to occur it means that the community is the keystone of the MOOC?

Inge talked with me in great detail about the community aspect. It doesn't just happen. She has spend a lot of time facilitating the community and with great success in her MobiMOOCs. And of course trust is the foundation of a community to work. Here are a few observations and suggestions:

  • Ultimately the success of a MOOC is in its community of participants - so it is crucial to build the community in the first weeks of the MOOC, especially if you know the dropout trends. A 'stable', core community will have formed after a few weeks, and people may drift into their own sub-networks within the MOOC based on interest or location. 
  • So include a few community building assignments and icebreakers and fun assignments in the first weeks of the MOOC. If the community doesn't form and if the trusted learning platform isn't created in those weeks, it will hamper knowledge sharing and creation.
  • To do this well, it requires a lot of facilitation time. Probably your MOOC is global, so this might require a facilitation 'shift' to cover all timezones, eg 3 facilitators around the world.
  • When facilitators personally contact people who started strong but dropped out or reduced their activity, it brings back quite a few people.
  • Facilitators have power, whether they are aware of that or not. Facilitators shape the MOOCs direction by ignoring certain discussions or giving attention to others. 
  • Because the community aspect of the MOOC is so important, Chris recommends we favor a social platform over a content-centric platform like a traditional LMS.
  • Inge also gave some advice on dealing with 'the dark side' of the community, eg when a handful of people start flaming, use inappropriate language, disrespect the MOOC terms, self-advertising, spamming, etc. Her method is threefold : first a personal warning, then a public one in the forums, and if that doesn't help a ban.
  • And community can be face-to-face too. A lot of MOOCs encourage people to set up meetups in their town or local starbucks to discuss the course or do assignments together.

10- Scaling and allocating resources

That brings us to the next topic: MOOCs need to be scalable by design. On the technology side, that means you probably should not rely on your own IT as you may become the victim of your own success. Most MOOC platforms run on reliable cloud technology such as Amazon services and/or make use of scalable providers such as YouTube for their video. So in order to keep your friends at the IT department (you need them to get your new computer faster :-) ) try to leverage dedicated MOOC platforms or scalable cloud services. For our MOOC we have looked at Coursera, EdX, Canvas, Google Apps, Oxwall, Moodle, YouTube, etc.  Inge also argues that every MOOC should be mobile and use mobile technologies, mainly because of its scale and to allow access to everyone. Hans and others have suggested making the materials available in multiple formats (downloads, apps, slides, ...) to accommodate the wide variety of devices people will use around the world to access the MOOC. It's a bBest practice is to put content up there in as many ways as possible.

On the resources side it means you do not have enough people or time to deal with participants individually. You HAVE to rely on peer interactions if only because of the scale. That leads to peer reviews for example. But as indicated above, having facilitators active in the forums does help to shape and energize the community a lot.

11- Track

Let's spend a word on impact and tracking. Since all interaction with the MOOC is digital, it is easy to track the number of views of videos, the links clicked, the number of forum posts (maybe even to a network analysis on interactions in the forum), etc. Most platforms or cloud services offer easy tracking tools, or you can use free services like Google Analytics.
But here is the caveat: you need to compare apples to apples. Let's take the whole drop-out debate for example. If you compare the dropout rate of a MOOC with that of a regular class, you'll be flabbergasted. But you are comparing apples to oranges. The whole point of a MOOC is that people can come in and out for what they need and only that. Or they can sample what the course is about. Be realistic about that. As more MOOC research is done, we'll get a baseline of MOOC data to compare with. MOOCs are about network learning, so instead of tracking eyeballs, maybe it is better to track the interaction and knowledge creation that goes on. Also, we got advice to start with a survey to ask people what they wanted to get out of the MOOC and use that as an evaluation base. One researcher suggests to evaluate MOOCs based on the Success Case Method.

12- When the student is ready, the MOOC will appear

What is the impact of a MOOC on participants? The biggest return is for the people "who's time it is" to have the course, for example because they have an immediate need in their work or life. It is close to the saying "when the student is ready, the master will appear".


13- Humble

My personal conclusion from our discovery phase for LeaderMOOC and getting the kind advice and expertise of so many people is this one: be humble. In a MOOC we set up the topics, steer discussions via the content we provide and the forum facilitation, but it is the participants who decide if they'll stick around, what they'll need out of the MOOC, and where they'll go with their peers. The structure and topics are set up by the MOOC organisers, but always leave room for people to form clusters around their common interests and do their own meetups and create their own new learning.

When you think a MOOC is about you (your institution, your star professor, your star course), you'll derail or fail altogether. For example, there was a MOOC that went on without its professor. Now, that's a sobering fact!




For further reading
There are sooooo many articles on MOOCs but here are a few that stood out for me:



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