“It’s bigger on the inside than on the outside.” This is a
now iconic line spoken by numerous characters on many episodes of Dr. Who when
they first encounter the inside of the Tardis- a police phone box that serves
as the Dr.’s time machine/ship. Recently, I could relate to that sentiment as I
participated in my first Coursera MOOC through the University of Edinburgh,
what looked small on the outside suddenly opened up into something beyond my
imagination.
Less than a year ago I had never heard of a Massive Open
Online Course or MOOC. I knew about innovative delivery systems, I did my DMin
through a hybrid/online format and I found it perfect for me at that time. I
enjoyed working from home, at whatever time I wanted; but with the structure of
weekly assignments and readings to keep me on track. Our major professor was somewhat
engaged with us as students, we interacted with him weekly for an hour; however
the majority of my learning came from interacting with the course materials and
with the twenty other students in my doctoral cohort. It was these peers who
taught me as much or more than the instructor. I learned later that the course
was designed in a constructivist educational philosophy. As our major professor
used to say, his role was to “organize learning.”
Last September I was reading Fast Company magazine and came across this article about Coursera,
one of the top three platforms for MOOC’s (Udacity and EdX being the other
two). I had just accepted a new job at
Tabor College’s Wichita campus to design an innovative online MA program and I
thought it might be useful research to take a MOOC to gain firsthand experience.
I signed up with Coursera and looked around at the course offerings to find a class
that might be useful.
I found the course E-learning and Digital Culture (EDC) from
the University of Edinburgh and signed up. I was intrigued by the title and the
content. I thought this could be a course that would assist me as I sought to
learn more about E-learning in my own new context. The description explained
the learning goals for the course, “Those goals might include: gaining new
perspectives on e-learning; experiencing a MOOC; networking with some of the
fascinating people from all over the world who are signed up; experimenting
with digital and visual ways of representing academic knowledge; and exploring
the connections between education, learning and digital cultures.”
About two months before the course began I received an email
from the EDCMOOC team welcoming and inviting me to join a variety of social
media tools since much of the course would be conducted on these platforms. I
already had a blog, Facebook and Google+ accounts (although I never touched G+),
so I signed up for Twitter and began exploring that new platform.
In mid December I discovered a student-run Facebook group
who had been active for over a month. I joined and began to make connections
with some of the thousands of students who were to make up EDCMOOC. The Facebook
group created connections as well as formed groups to encourage and read each other’s
blogs. Many students began posting on their blogs about their pre-course
learning and linking that to FB. In January, weeks before the course even
started students were generating so much original content it as difficult to
keep up with all the posts.
By the time the course began there were over 43,000 students
enrolled. It was a five-week course set up around two major themes: weeks 1-2)
Utopian/Distopian views of the future; weeks 3-4) What does it mean to be
Human? The fifth week was focused on preparing and posting a digital artifact
(more on that later).
The main form of content provision was through a “film
festival” and readings. The films were chosen to address the theme for the week
and were linked from the course website from YouTube or Vimeo. The readings
were academic articles that were freely available on the web. The instructors
worked hard to provide content that all could access, not only those with
access to academic libraries. The level of the articles according to one of the
professors, was first-year undergrad.
In many ways, the content provided by the instructors
created a jumping off point for the students to discuss and explore a wide
variety of issues connected to the themes. Students were encouraged, but not
assessed, to interact on the weekly themes through a variety of methods,
twitter, blogging, discussion threads on FB and G+, as well as interaction on
the Coursera course site. One area for improvement are the forums on the
Coursera site. They were difficult to navigate and find relevant posts, it soon
became apparent to many of the students that posting there was a waste of time
and many navigated to other social media formats for meaningful interaction. During
these first couple of weeks I experienced what many of my fellow students did
as well- extreme overwhelming feelings as it became impossible to keep up with the
content generated by 43,000 individuals. Because the course was global,
students were creating and curating information around the clock, there was
always something new to read or watch. It appeared that many students dropped
in the first couple weeks due to the overwhelming feelings created by the flood
of student-generated content.
It was during this time, around week three that I discovered
Felicia Sullivan’s VoiceThread. VoiceThread is an online discussion forum that
records asynchronous discussion in a verbal, rather than written form. I had
observed VoiceThread in Moodle training but had only seen a sample “thread,” I
hadn’t been able to participate. Since one of my learning goals for the MOOC was
to find new tools and technologies, I jumped into the VoiceThread and
discovered a small group community that provided a personal and human touch to
the ‘noise’ of the course. I was able to make connections with a small group
that was helpful and encouraging through the rest of the course.
The personal benefits
of the EDCMOOC were:
I was able to continue developing my Personal Learning
Network (PLN). I also realized that I had people in a PLN who weren’t being
tapped. I have since reached out to some in my DMin cohort for ideas and
advice.
I was able to learn about a wide variety of e-learning tools
through my peers. In addition, the creation of a digital artifact, which was
our final assessment, gave me permission and space to try out a number of tools,
which I will use and promote in future classroom settings. I was also reinvigorated
to discover the academic potential of social media like G+ and Twitter and plan
on continuing to use these tools in the future.
I appreciated the global nature of the course and the
interactions with other educators from around the world. I was energized by the
cross-pollenization that occurred. I was also impressed by the high level of
collaboration and cooperation I observed and experienced during EDCMOOC. People
were willing to help and offer feedback in many ways.
I learned the difference between cMOOC’s and xMOOC’s- the
first “constructivist” in philosophy and presentation and the second more
traditional format with lectures and quizzes.
I can see MOOC’s serving in a wide variety of ways in the
future. Some scholars and politicians are saying it’s the end of higher education,
others say it’s a new tool that can be used to flatten education and make it
more accessible to a global world. I lean to the latter. I think MOOC’s can
supplement existing courses, provide professional development and provide
content for students working independently, or along with a local faculty
member.
Some are afraid that big business will take over Higher
Education. Others are concerned that MOOC’s will cheapen degrees. This debate
will continue, for now I think they can provide an excellent supplement to
existing programs and personal networking.
Because MOOC’s are global, they are bigger on the inside…
