School of Systems Engineering
Are MOOCs providing the
European workforce with
necessary web skills?
Dr. Tharindu Liyanagunawardena
April 9, 2015
© University of Reading 2008
www.reading.ac.uk
MOOCs for Web Talent Report
• Should MOOCs mimic University courses or offer
practical training?
– theory is necessary for practical training
– Begin Programming: build your first mobile game on
FutureLearn
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW-I3-q5FnQ
– Offering practical training in MOOCs is difficult
• Various hardware/ software combinations
• Range of skill levels
• There will be people who would not like your course!
Liyanagunawardena,TR., Lundqvist.KO. & Williams, SA.
(2015). Who are with us: MOOC learners on a FutureLearn
course, British Journal of Educational Technology – Special
issue on MOOCs (forthcoming)
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Business Models
• Universities cannot sustain offering MOOCs for free
– Require content updates (especially in Computer Science)
– Facilitation, staff time
• Will HAVE TO look into self sustain
• Small Private Online Courses?
• Content for free and charging for additional services?
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Quality of MOOCs
• Quality of Learning Experience will vary widely on
individual factors
• Quality of Learning materials/facilitation can be assured
with correct measures
• At University of Reading – Working Group on Quality
Assurance and Enhancement for Open Online Courses
(OOCs)
• This brings layered QA for University of Reading MOOCs
• School level – teaching materials
• MOOC team – coherence of materials and UoR feel
• University level– oversight of all UoR MOOCs
• FutureLearn
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Instructional Quality
• Margaryan, A., Bianco, M., & Littlejohn, A. (2014) Instructional
quality of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Computers &
Education, 80, pp.77 - 83
• 76 MOOCs
– 50 xMOOCs, 26 cMOOCs
• Assessed the instructional design quality of MOOCs
– using key criteria based upon First Principles of Instruction
» Problem Centred, Activation, Demonstration, Application,
Integration
• Range of score 0-72 (0 none of the principles reflected, 72 all
reflected)
• MOOCs overall 0–28 points (median 9; mode 6; StD 5.93)
• xMOOCs range 3–25 points (median 8; mode 6; StD 4.46)
• cMOOCs range 0–28 (median 11; mode 9; StD 7.24).
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Expectations
• MOOCs work well
– Digital literacy, self directed learning
• For Programming MOOCs
– Additionally perseverance
“I spent a week (A WEEK!) beating my head against my desk
trying to figure out why the ball wouldn't deflect off of my
smiley face. Then, tonight, I finally realized that my collision
detection was only happening if mBallSpeedY > 0, meaning
that if the ball wasn't going down, nothing was ever going to
happen. After changing that, and making a few other
adjustments, I feel like a new man ready to take on the world!”
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Thank you
Dr. Tharindu R. Liyanagunawardena t.r.liyanagunawardena@reading.ac.uk
http://oer15.oerconf.org
Call for abstracts open: deadline 24th Nov
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