The benefits for ICT teachers in joining
a MOOC
Dr. Patricia Charlton
Professor Christina Preston
Dr. Sarah Younie
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
The age of the smart machine
“vision came together for me that morning I realized that the
people I had been interviewing were on the edge of a
historical transformation of immense proportions, as
important as that which had been experienced by the
eighteenth and nineteenth century workers. I saw that a
world of sensibilities and expectations was being irretrievably
displaced by a new world, one I did not yet understand”(pg
xiii)) (Zuboff,(1984) )
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
What is a MOOC?
Massive
(It is all relative)
Open
(some more than others)
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Online 24/7
Course
(Redefined)
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Why might they be interesting to us?
MOOCs did not travel alone!
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Big Data
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
“Learning”
Analytics
“The amount of data stored in
educational institutions is
gargantuan, and the new term
for data collection is
Big Data. According to McKinsey
Global Institute, the education
sector ranks as one of the
economy’s top ten in terms of
the amount of data stored.”
https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
What does this mean for ICT?
Educational data sciences
Become a unicorn?
Or perhap reflect on
Zuboff’s Age of the
Smart Machine?
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
- for professionals?
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
So where do we start?
• Building community knowledge together for
teachers by teachers;
• Knowledge is global - International reach;
• Collaborative Professional Learning Experience;
• Diversity – from never used technology in the
classroom to experienced online learning
designers
Designing it together – The Move-It-Online
Challenge
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
A MOOC for collaborative professional
development
http://www.coursesites.com/s/_LDC
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
What was the design behind our
Move-it Online Challenge?
• TEL (technology enhanced learning) as a starting point.
• Open to all
• Authentic learning experience for professionals:
–
–
–
–
Based on their challenges
Focus on designing learning experience for the learners
Thinking about the challenges of moving teaching online
Peer review activities
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Can MOOC platforms support
collaborative learning?
Requirements
What technology can offer
1. A shared task goal
– for the teacher to specify
✓
2. Resources
Weblinks, digital libraries, OER repositories
✓
3. The means to discuss
Online discussion forums
✓
4. Guidance on the process
Study guide: Roles, scripts, worksheets, teacher
role
--
5. The means to construct and
revise
Applications for visual representation design,
user-generated content
X
6. The means to share outputs
Design environment, file exchange, file
management
A modelling environment that gives intrinsic
feedback on the learner’s solution
X
7. The means to test ideas and
solutions to meet the task goal
(Laurillard 2012)
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
X
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Sharing our learning goals
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Sharing learning designs and reviews
“My issue is the space between the technology champions and the C.A.V.Es (Colleagues
Against Virtually Everything) and how you boil down the essence and heurology to
something that enables those who feel overwhelmed with technology and support that
will engage them, and therefore engage their students”
learningdesigner.org
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
How to review a learning design
Change the name of the design by
adding “Review of” at the beginning
As you read through each TLA you can
comment in the Notes section at the
bottom.
To leave feedback overall, Add a new TLA,
make its title ‘Review by [your name]’
You can select ‘Discuss’ for the activity, and
then type in your feedback to note:
1 Test? - is there a ‘Produce’ activity, or
some way the teacher can use to test
whether outcomes are met?
2 Aligned? - are outcome, activities, and
produce activity aligned?
3 Feedback? – is there feedback from the
teacher, other students, or the technology?
4 Technology? - is there good use of
technology?
5 Other?
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
What are the costs and
benefits of going online?
What is CRAM?
A tool to analyse the learning
benefits and teaching costs of
transferring traditional
teaching models online
Why do we need
CRAM?
Because costing in higher
education can be a ‘very
murky business’ (Bishop cited
in Koenig, 2011).
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Widespread misconceptions that
online must be cheaper than faceto-face teaching (Koenig, 2011)
Yet costing studies show that digital
technologies cost more than
traditional methods (Laurillard,
2006)
What happens to the learning
experience when courses go
online?
How can we illuminate the
relationship between learning
experience and costs … to the
learner and to the institution?
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Direct learning
from others
E.g. Learner posts
questions
and gets answers
Knowledge sharing
Learners pass on ideas
and information to others
Vicarious learning
Learner is aware of
learning activity of others
(e.g. notes)
Implicit learning
Learner engages with
others to develop shared
representations.
SOCIAL
LEARNING
Zone of proximal
development
Learner learns through
interaction and conversation
with a more knowledgeable
other
Conversational
learning
Learner engages in
sustained
dialogue with others
Orchestrated
collaboration
Mentor guides a group
towards exploration of
difference or shared
understanding
Shared knowledge
building
Learner develops knowledge
with others through dialogue
and interaction
(Adapted from Russell Beale
Future Learn 2014)
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Initial findings from the Move-itOnline Challenge
• Collaboration and explore with your professional community;
• Technology evolves at a speed, solutions come and go - is your problem
and solution tied to a particular environment;
• Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of the approach
being used;
• What kind of data or models exist about the problem space?
• What solutions have been tried in the past and why do they not work?
Know the landscape
• What to do when you know you are on the right path but few agree?
• Solutions rarely, if ever, sit in isolation
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Conclusions
The global demand for education requires investment in
pedagogic innovation for MOOCs to deliver
The global demand for education requires investment in
TEL-based
pedagogic
innovation
must
pedagogic
innovation
for MOOCs
tosupport
deliver students at
a better than 1:25 staff-student ratio
TEL-based pedagogic innovation must support students at
Teachers
need
tools
to design, test,
a better
thanthe
1:25
staff-student
ratio gather the
evidence of what works, and model benefits and costs
Teachers need the tools to design, test, gather the
Teachers
areofthe
engine
of innovation
– designing,
evidence
what
works,
and model benefits
and costs
testing, sharing their best pedagogic ideas
Teachers are the engine of innovation – designing, testing,
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Conclusion
• Designing learning experiences that use the
advantages of technology for learning is
challenging so resilience and robustness are a
must!
• Be prepared to throw a solution away and start
again. Failure is a prerequisite to success!
• Know what you are designing and why!
• The big data and learning analytics challenge:
Context is everything but you need the right
context!
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Resources and tools
•
•
•
•
•
Learning Designer Tool: learningdesigner.org
CRAM: http://web.lkldev.ioe.ac.uk/cram/index.html
Building Community Knowledge
https://buildingcommunityknowledge.wordpress.com
What the Research Says: Designing a MOOC
https://effectivemethods.wordpress.com
• Coursesites for Move-it-Online resources and
materials: http://www.coursesites.com/s/_LDC
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning
Move-it-Online Challenge
http://creativedigitalsolutions.org
Building Community Knowledge
www.mirandanet.ac.uk
Thought leaders in Digital Learning