Designing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
As a research-led, civically engaged University offering world-class teaching we have decided to
develop a series of massive open online courses. MOOCs aim to make quality education freely
available to anyone with an internet connection throughout the world.
As MOOCs are such a new form of provision for the University, the design process should be
undertaken by a steering group rather than be the sole responsibility of the Lead Educator. You
should seek input from appropriate professional services colleagues (e.g. Learning and Teaching
Development Managers, Faculty Librarian, Learning and Teaching Technology Team, Outreach and
Access Team). Course ideas and structures will be subject to the approval of the MOOCs Operational
Group. In order to get an appreciation for the format, we recommend that colleagues undertake a
MOOC as a learner before embarking on teaching a MOOC (www.futurelearn.com).
In common with traditional learning and teaching, it is important to begin designing your MOOC
curriculum as a learning journey; a series of learning experiences which together result in learners
learning what you intend them to learn.
Think about your learners
Having a particular kind of learner in mind while writing a course can help you to provide a consistent voice
and pitch the level correctly. It should be borne in mind however that learners will have a wide range of
previous learning experiences and a range of expertise in any particular topic. When designing the
curriculum, think about learners’ characteristics in terms of where they may be from, level of English,
socio-economic group, race, religion, sexuality, age, level of formal education, level of commitment,
experience with MOOCs etc.
These factors need to be taken into account when orientating learners in terms of technical knowledge,
learner interaction, information literacy, critical thinking, level of content and formative/summative
assessments.
Aims
These should be written from a learner’s perspective. As a learner, why should I join you for this
course?
Think about what level of study you are designing and where it may lead on to.
Intended Learning Outcomes
When learners successfully complete this course, what do you intend that they will have learned?
What will they now be able to do that they couldn’t do previously? Will their attitudes have
changed?
The learning outcome should be preceded by a statement such as: “Learners will be able to…”. It
should then contain a verb referring to the thinking (cognitive) process (i.e. remember, understand,
apply, analyse, evaluate, create) and an object which is the type of knowledge learners should
acquire. Examples of questions can be found at: A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing:
A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Hunter, R. (2009)
www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/RevisedBlooms1.html
Course Plan
This is the course content and should be designed to effectively meet the learning outcomes. It
should be purposeful, lead on to the next level or next step of learning, be up to date and reflect
current research.
Content which is interesting but not necessary should not be included in the core course as it may
well distract and confuse learners – this should be included as additional/extension activity.
Learning and Teaching Methods
This is how learners will interact with the content. The learning and teaching methods for MOOCs
are different to traditional learning and teaching. FutureLearn are in the process of developing more
learning and teaching activities but currently they are limited to videos (5-10 minutes), articles (500800 words), learner discussions, multiple choice quizzes/tests (formative or summative), peer
reviewed short essays and exercise steps. There are many ways to creatively use these step types to
engage learners. Recently used activities include generating a map, creative writing, asking learners
to perform a playful mission, kitchen experiments, participating in Google+ Hangouts On Air and
many more.
Due to the high number of learners MOOCs cannot offer personalised academic support and
guidance for learners.
FutureLearn offer a comprehensive view of the platform functionality in their Content Creation
Guidelines which should be read in conjunction with this document.
Assessment
It has been shown that learners need to receive feedback in order to learn effectively. In traditional
teaching feedback can be provided through tutor, peer or self assessment. This can be summative or
formative. Such feedback illustrates to a learner where their learning has (or hasn’t yet) been
successful.
In contrast, the assessment methods available in MOOCs are very limited, the main form of feedback
is currently multiple choice questions and peer reviewed short essays. Global feedback from a tutor
can be given via email or short video e.g. following completion of a discussion task.
Getting off to a good start: Learner Induction
We should ask ourselves what skills/abilities are we assuming that learners have and are these assumptions
reasonable and communicated to learners? An orientation should be given to learners which outlines:
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How the course works - should learners log in often? Will all learners follow the same path through
the course? Are there core and optional elements? Are learners expected to read and watch
everything? Who will be facilitating the course? What is the timetable? Should we provide a
reminder of the ground rules for how to positively interact online?
Should learners be encouraged to develop a learning network of people to “follow” within the
platform?
The kinds of activities learners will be taking part in and, importantly, why? What’s in it for them?
Do you have to share your work or is it optional for those who prefer to study alone?
What study skills will be needed or useful (bookmarking resources, note taking, information
literacy)?
The Learning Journey
A MOOC needs to be a mixture of high quality content, engaging activities and meaningful
interactions. Will course activities follow the same pattern each week? Are the activity timings
realistic and do they fit within the overall learning hours of the course? Each week should offer:
Guidance and support (e.g. trailer video, text introductions, taster materials, educator pages,
contents list) - Does the trailer accurately represent the course in terms of level, prior knowledge
requirements, skills level, time commitment, content and learner activities? While we cannot offer
personalised support and guidance, how will learners be guided and supported through each week?
What materials and tools will be used?
Content and experience (e.g. slide presentations, video, images and diagrams, text content, links,
interactive objects) - What topics, themes and learning outcomes will be covered? How will they be
presented and how will learners engage with them?
Communication and collaboration (e.g. question and answers, themed discussions, polls) - How will
learners be encouraged to communicate and collaborate with each other in the platform? What
materials and tools will be used? Will staff be used to support this activity? How will you ensure that
discussions are brought back together rather than fragmenting into ‘too much noise’ (a common
complaint amongst MOOC learners)?
Reflection and demonstration (e.g. reflective note taking, peer assessment, multiple choice
questions) - How will learners reflect on and monitor their progress against their personal aims and
the course outcomes? What is the assessment strategy?
Materials should be offered that are ‘extension’ or ‘additional’ to the core path through the learning
to engage and stretch learners who have more time to devote to the course of who are experts in
the field. Anything that is core should be freely available, on the FutureLearn platform and shouldn’t
be behind a pay wall.
Course Structure
A full FutureLearn MOOC should be 6-10 weeks and mini-MOOC 3-5 weeks. Each week should have a
reasonably consistent number of learning hours (2-6 hours/week).
The structure is:
6-10 Weeks - each consists of:
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1-3 Activity Blocks – A sequence of steps with a clear pedagogic approach. Each
block consists of:
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2-5 Steps (e.g. article, video, quiz, discussion, peer review, exercise etc.)
The plan should reflect the structure of: Weeks – Blocks – Steps which all build together to create a
coherent learning journey.
Communication with Learners
Email communications with learners MUST be restricted to those within the FutureLearn platform –
learners should not be encouraged to contact us via @sheffield.ac.uk or personal email addresses.
This would set up unrealistic expectations, place an unfair obligation on staff at the University and
ultimately be unmanageable.
Communications with learners should be carefully planned – what will be said before the course? At
the beginning and end of each week? At ‘high points’? Post course?
All communications with learners should be positive, encouraging, polite, not infringe copyright and
open up rather than close down interaction. It should guide, encourage participation, offer feedback
and help to promote Sheffield University.
Evaluation
FutureLearn will send out pre- and post- course surveys and we have the option of adding coursespecific questions.
We will have access to in-course data and analytics both during and after the course.
The MOOCs Team will produce a comprehensive Course Evaluation Report once the course has
finished.
Copyright
You have responsibility for identifying material that may be under copyright and notifying the
MOOCs Team so that an assessment can be made if licensing needs to be sought. This is a long and
complicated process so the more notice that you can give the better.
We do not want to unnecessarily limit what teaching materials are available to use in MOOCs. The
campus licensing and ‘fair dealing’ exemptions to copyright law, however, do not apply to MOOCs.
The difference is between using material in a closed educational environment (classroom or on
MOLE) and opening it up free to anyone, anywhere, anytime online.
Materials that have been made freely available by the copyright holder, for example through
Creative Commons licensing or OERs, should be able to be used but they will need to be double
checked.
Anna Symington, November 2014