Glenn Kleiman, Executive Director
Mary Ann Wolf, Director of Digital Learning Initiatives,
Friday Institute for Educational Innovation
NC State University
CoSN Conference
Washington, C.D. March 20, 2014

Why MOOCs for Educators?
• So many changes
• Curriculum standards, student assessments, digital literacies, data system, teacher evaluation systems, technologies, fiscal constraints…
• Large education workforce
• 3.8+ million teachers, 250,000+ administrators, teaching almost
50 million students.
• Changing workforce
• 16% teacher turnover per year (about half changing schools, half leaving teaching)
• Drives a need for large-scale, widely accessible, costeffective PD

Principles of Effective PD
• Deepens subject matter knowledge, understanding of learning, and appreciation of students’ needs.
• Centers around critical professional activities
• Builds on problems of practice that lead to reflection and professional discourse
• Provides educators with opportunities to learn in the ways they will be expected to teach
• Is personalized to meet individual needs
• Cultivates a culture of collegiality
• Is ongoing, intensive and woven into professional work.

The Big Question
• Can MOOC-like approaches be adapted to:
• Address educators’ PD needs?
• Follow the principles of effective PD?
• Provide scalable, accessible and effective PD?

Four MOOC-Ed Design Principles

Self Directed Learning

Peer Supported Learning

Case studies and Authentic Projects

Enable Integration into Blended Learning Programs

An Overview of the Digital Learning Transition
MOOC-Ed
Offered through a collaboration of:

Goals for Participants
1.
Understand the impact of technology and the global information age on both what students need to learn and how learning can take place.
2. Learn about best practices and lessons learned from schools and districts that have digital learning transitions well underway.
3. Develop a set of goals for digital learning for your own school or district.
4. Learn the elements of a successful digital learning transition and effective strategies for addressing each element.
5. Learn about processes and tools that help support planning, implementing and evaluating a digital learning transition.
6. Develop an action plan to meet your school or district digital learning transition goals.
7. Contribute to the learning of others who participate in the course.

Two Parts of the DLT MOOC-Ed
• Part I: Where Are We Heading? Goals for the Digital
Learning Transition:
• Envisioning the future of schools
• Changing the culture of teaching and learning
• Digital learning transitions in some exemplary schools & districts.
• Part II: How Do We Get There? Planning for a Digital
Learning Transition
• Addressing the planning cycle and elements of successful initiatives (see next slide)

DLT MOOC-Ed Units
1. Envisioning Schools in the Year 2020
2. Changing the Culture of Teaching and Learning
3. Digital Learning Transitions: Goals & Challenges
4. Wrap up of Part I
5. Teaching and Professional Learning
6. Planning for Selected DLT Elements
7. Leading a Successful Digital Learning Initiative
8. Wrap Up and Next Steps

MOOC-Ed Design Elements

Other MOOC-Eds
• Current
• Coaching Digital Learning: Cultivating a Culture of Change
• World Class Teaching (with Institute of Emerging Issues)
• In development
• Supporting Common Core State Standards in Mathematics
Series
• Supporting Students’ Development of Disciplinary Literacy

Additional Design Elements for Other MOOC-Eds
• Clinical interviews with students
• Classroom-based projects
• Analyses of students’ work
• Developing a personal plan
• Connecting with other educators
• Professional practice tips
• Twitter chats

A cloud-based platform of course management, asynchronous discussion, survey, multimedia, and collaborative tools
• Google Course Builder
• Google App Engine
• Vanilla Forums
• Vimeo
• Survey Gizmo
• Google Hangouts
• Google Documents & Spreadsheets
• Google, Course Builder, Vimeo and other analytics

MOOC-Ed Data Sources
• Pre-registration survey: demographics, roles, goals.
• Overall web analytics: visitors, visits, visit duration, pages viewed.
• Detailed “click logs” of each user’s access to each unit
• Discussion forum views, discussions started and comments
• Discussion content for various forms of discourse analyses
• Projects submitted and peer reviews
• Vimeo site analytics: total views and average times by video
• Crowdsourcing of resources
• Course surveys
• Open-ended responses from participants

Some Things We’ve Learned So Far

Educators are Interested in MOOC-Eds
4,456 registered in two DLT MOOC-Eds, from all 50 states

and more than 80 other countries

Educators in a Variety of Roles
Instructional technology
Classroom teaching
School or district administration
Other education profession
Curriculum and Instruction
Professional development
Technology infrastructure, operations, finance
Student
1249
729
709
566
564
336
275
28
28%
16%
16%
13%
13%
8%
6%
1%

From a Variety of Types of Schools
• Public non-charter schools or districts (66%)
• Private schools (15%)
• Public charter schools (5%)
• Not employed by a school or district (14%)

DLT Participants
• 61% female, 39% male
• Average of 15.9 years of experience, with a range of 0 to
48 years
• 66% listed a master’s degree as their highest degree earned
• 11% reported having doctoral degrees.
*Data from 2 nd DLT MOOC-Ed

Participants Goals Vary (up to 3 goals each)
Prepare to lead change in my school or district
Understand the potential of digital learning
Learn about best practices for DLT transitions
Plan more effective professional development
Become a better coach or mentor for other teachers
Understand the benefits and risks of technology
44.0%
40.5%
37.6%
30.1%
20.8%
17.7%
Improve my own classroom teaching
Experience a MOOC
16.0%
15.1%
Engage my community in supporting digital learning 14.8%
Connect with other educators who lead DLT initiatives 14.6%
Learn about K-12 infrastructures and devices 13.8%
Organize and inform the work of our local team 12.7%

Most are experienced with online learning
• Almost all experienced in using productivity tools and online networking
• 86% reported some experience with online learning
• 43% reported some experience teaching online
• 25% reported prior experience taking a MOOC
*Data from 2 nd DLT MOOC-Ed

Participation is Active: In two DLT MOOC-Eds
• 45,000+ page views
• 5,000+ hours on course site
• 11,000+ views of course videos
• 1,800 participants in the discussions
• 6,000+ messages posted
• 116,000+ views of postings

• DLT2: 1,791 enrolled
• Participation by unit
1. 907
2. 503
3. 340
4. 224
5. 215
6. 165
7. 129
8. 111

Available Time Spent Per Week is Limited
Hours per unit
1-2
3-4
5-6
7 or more
% participants
30.7%
43.8%
21.9%
3.6%

Schedule Flexibility is Essential
*Data from 2 nd DLT MOOC-Ed

What Does it Mean to Complete a MOOC-Ed?
• 907 actively participated in DLT2
• 139 completed final survey (in weeks 7 or 8)
• 111 participated in the final unit (12.2%)
• CEU Certification, 69 participants (7.6%)
• Ratio of enrollees to completers is increasing across
MOOC-Eds.

Survey results: Goals and Value of DLT2
• 92% made progress on their personal goals
• 90% were engaged in the MOOC-Ed experience
• 93% developed new insights to further digital learning
• 95% feel more motivated for their digital learning transition
• 92% would recommend future DLT courses to colleagues
• Based on DLT2 final survey, n=139

All the Design Elements are Beneficial
MOOC-Ed Component
Introductory Video Presentations
Video Resources
Text Resources
Group Discussion
Expert Panel Videos
Goals & Challenges Project
Feedback from Other Participants
Crowd-sourced Resources
Twitter Chats
Beneficial
85%
91%
95%
85%
91%
86%
80%
81%
28%
Didn’t Use
3%
1%
2%
4%
2%
11%
13%
15%
62%

Voices of Participants
• I found it engaging and "walking the talk" - one could proceed at their own pace and with their own choices, but were put on track with many resources to assist learning.
• I particularly benefited from the case study presentations, which gave lots of insight into the successes and challenges of districts that are ahead of our implementation schedule.
• Creating the plan after seeing how others had done it was a great inspiration

Types of Discussion Postings

Knowledge Construction in Discussions

Voices of Participants
• I loved seeing others from all different locations talking about the same thing - passion for the students, for the schools and for digital learning. Everyone has such great ideas and opinions and to pool them all together like this was amazing.
• Just received all the "tools” at our school to begin a 1:1 program. Although, I am as excited as a kid a
Christmas, I have stayed awake many nights stressing about starting the program. However, the discussion and the many insightful comments that I have read have given me some confidence to dive in and start the transformation at my school.

Participation with a local group was beneficial
“This course helped members of our DLT team see the possibilities and open their minds beyond the traditional 45-minute class periods”
“[The most valuable part was] meeting as a team at my school weekly to create our self-assessment and the discussions we have had around our goals and what we are learning in the
MOOC-Ed .”
55% of participants planned to participate with colleagues:
35% with a school or district planning team
20% with other colleagues in their school or organization
“The most beneficial aspect of this course was actually the F2F conversations informed and occasioned by the
MOOC with the other members of my school team.
”
“I am happy that we took part as a school team, which in turn was part of a greater
District team. It is these group conversations that I found to be most helpful ”

Blended Learning Explorations
• Distinguished Leadership Program in Digital Learning
• As the core of a year-long statewide Principal PD program
• Special Topics Graduate Course: Digital Learning
Transition in K-12 Schools
• A wrap-around to the DLT MOOC, allowing students to engage in the MOOC as part of a graduate course
• World Class Teaching
• As follow up to large-scale workshop

Future Research Questions I
• How can participants best be placed in groups to foster productive discussions? What is the optimal size for discussion groups?
• How can discussions be initiated, facilitated, and connected to resources and activities in order to encourage high levels of engagement and exchanges that involve reflection and co-construction?
• How can we best balance having participants move through the units on a common schedule so they can engage in peer-supported learning with providing flexible scheduling to meet educators’ needs?

Future Research Questions II
• Can we identify characteristics of participants and preferred self-directed paths through the MOOC-Ed?
What types of case studies and projects are most engaging and beneficial for participants?
• What guidance and structures lead to productive peer feedback?
• Can participation be further incentivized by the use of badges or other forms of recognition?
• What impact do MOOC-Eds have on professional knowledge, skills and practices?
• How can MOOC-Eds best be integrated with other professional development activities?

Conclusions
• MOOC-Eds can provide personalized, accessible, effective, scalable PD for motivated professionals
• Our design principles provide a foundation for MOOC-
Eds
• The important question is not Do MOOC-Eds work? but rather:
• How can we optimize the value of MOOC-Eds?
• What professional development needs do they best serve?
• How are they effectively blended with other PD approaches?

Thanks to our Funders
• Hewlett Foundation
• National Science Foundation
• Oak Foundation
• Gates Foundation
• Lenovo
• Google
• NC Department of Public Instruction
• NC Principals and Assistant Principals Association
• Institute for Emerging Issues, NC State University

For More Information
•
• Link from www.mooc-ed.org
• User: guest1@mooc-ed.org
• Password: moocguest
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