MOOCs: The phenomenon.

Introduction:

Distance education and technology are intrinsically linked. Although distance education has been a part education for a number of decades, with the emergence of new technology, the concept of distance education is forever changing. Gone are the days, where distance education was delivered in a small classroom with your course material arriving by post and with a teacher available via landline to support you should you have any questions. Today, students can engage with course material, tutors, teachers and each other, from anywhere in the world, by simply having access to a computer and the internet. Through the introduction of computer assisted learning (CAL), distance education and instructional delivery has become more efficient and effective. In more recent years, the education sector and in particular the university sector, have seen the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs, are online courses that allow individuals free access and unobstructed participation to any course of their choice. Additionally, whilst the traditional modes of teaching such as videos, lectures and course material are provided, there is also an interactive platform for students to engage with their peers (Srikanth 2017). MOOCs provide an opportunity to teach interesting and engaging content to new groups of learners. This new phenomenon has made learning available to a vast range of people, and has been described by some as an educational innovation.

Source: University of Cape Town

Annotation One:

Zheng, S. Rosson, N. Smith, P & Carroll, J (2015). ‘Understanding Student Motivation, Behaviors, and Perceptions in MOOCs. in CSCW ’15 Proceedings of the 18^th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Work and Social Computing. Vancouver. 14-18 March, viewed 21 May https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2675217

The intention of Zheng et.al (2015) research is to understand students’ motivations, behaviours and perceptions of MOOCs in regards to student retention and attrition rates. Although much research has been conducted in this field, the authors identify that there has been very limited studies surrounding how universities might satisfy students’ needs and reduce the high dropout rates. The intended audience for this study are universities, and in particular their distance education and administration staff.

This study was conducted in North America at one of the large north-eastern universities (name has been excluded). To recruit participants, the authors used a snowballing technique, employed through their social media pipes and personal friendship networks. This technique provided 18 participants, which included undergraduate students, master’s students, PhD candidates, parents of high school students, retirees and employees. 

Participants were engaged in one-on-one semi-structured interviews with the researchers which lasted 35 minutes to 2 hours. Participants were firstly interviewed about their general MOOCs experience and then more specifically about their motivations for joining and continuing (or not) with a course. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and annotated. In analysing the data, the researchers undertook a grounded theory approach. As a qualitative method, grounded theory allowed the researchers to discover any emerging patterns in the data (Glaser 2015). Four broad types of motivations for joining MOOCs were identified:

1. Fulfilling current needs
2. Preparing for the future
3. Satisfying curiosity
4. Connecting with people

Amongst these four motivations were also a vast amount of sub categories which emerged during the interviews, including different ways in which the students participated in MOOCs and their learning patterns. Learning patterns included:

1. Studying MOOCs as a regular school class – participants followed a ‘class’ schedule, where they would commit one day a week to their studies
2. Modularised Resources – these participants did not complete the course and simply selected what was relevant or interesting to them
3. Edutainment – participants engaged with the content during their ‘entertainment’ breaks (i.e. Eating breakfast, working out’), essentially students were replacing their YouTube entertainment with MOOCs lectures and videos

As with all research there are limitations to this study. It is suggested that the sampling technique used to gather participants may have produced a biased sample and that not all age groups were represented in this data set. Despite the limitations, this study provides a clear representation of the motivations behind people engaging in MOOCs courses and also how universities can utilise this data to enhance the student experience, which has the potential to increase retention numbers.

Source: India Education

Annotation Two:

Li, N., Verma, H., Skevi, A., Zufferey, G., Blom, J., & Dillenborg, P. (2014). ‘Watching MOOCs together: investigating collocated MOOC study groups’. Distance Education. 35(2). 217-233.

This article is an exploratory longitudinal study conducted by researchers at a university in Switzerland. The study was commissioned by the ProDoc NSF Grant project (National Science Foundation), and investigated how co-located study groups watch and study MOOC videos together. This study specifically targets teaching staff, and so is describing the pedagogical implications of flipped classroom teaching, as well as distance education programs for developing classrooms where digital infrastructure is limited. As such the target audience for this study are teaching staff at universities, who are in the position of administering MOOCs courses or distance education.

All 54 participants in this study were recruited from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne’s engineering department, with 12 groups forming (4-5 students) organically and one group formed by the researchers. Students were subjected to various forms of data collection, including semi-structured interviews; pre and post questionnaires; and video recorded experimental sessions – which included discussion amongst their study groups. Each week the groups were asked to watch the MOOCs videos (lectures) together in a controlled setting, after completing the viewing students were asked to complete the online quizzes collaboratively. The results from this experiment detailed that participants reported a high level of satisfaction with the study group way of learning. Participants also voiced positive opinions around their motivations to learn and watch MOOCs videos in a study group, which supported their increase understanding of the content as opposed to studying individually. Interestingly, one participant described watching MOOCs videos and their discussion post viewing with a study group as the equivalent to asking the Professor questions in the middle of a lecture – this provided an essential platform for students to clarify and experience peer to peer learning.

A noted limitation to this study is the absence of measuring the learning outcomes of the participants. Although the authors clearly state their focus at the beginning of the study and note that their focus is not on the learning outcomes of the students, for educational institutions to encourage MOOCs participants to engage in study groups, an increase in learning outcomes needs to be present. Similarly, as this was not a comparison study between groups and individuals, there cannot be a conclusive value of group versus individual learning in relation to MOOCs. What this study does provide, is a platform for future research. For universities and MOOCs providers it identifies that there is a high level of student satisfaction when studying in a group and may encourage universities to provide this option to future MOOCs enrolments.

Annotation Three:

Liyanagunawardena, T., Adams, A., & Williams, S. (2013). ‘MOOCs: A systematic Study of the Published Literature 2008-2012 ’. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. 14(3). 203-227.

This article is a quantitative systematic literature review of the published MOOCs literature from 2008-2012. It reviews forty-five peer reviewed papers as identified through journals, database searchers, and internet sources. This article categorises the literature into eight different themes:

1. Introductory
2. Case studies
3. Educational theory
4. Technology
5. Participant focussed
6. Provider focussed
7. Other

As this article looks at MOOCs literature over four years, it is a useful source for current and future MOOCs providers. The authors provide an in-depth analysis of a vast array of literature, with the aim of providing an understanding of developing research areas, methods applied in research and topics lacking published research. By offering the reader a myriad of different topics associated with distance education and MOOCs, it provides a good foundation for all things MOOCs.

The method chosen for data collection was a systematic literature review. This method reviews literature through a highly systematic and rigorous process, with a particular focus on the methods used to find the literature, what search strategies were used and where and how the search was undertaken (Griffith University 2017). Specific search terms such as MOOCs and Massively Open Online Courses were used initially to collect data. Secondly, the same terms where used to search databases such as ProQuest, JSTOR, ERIC and ISI Web of Knowledge and finally a general ‘Google’ search using these terms was conducted. Literature was classified quantitatively (classifying the papers according to date, year published and type of publication) and qualitatively (classifying the papers using open coded content analysis – identifying themes and future research directions). 

Source: Carnegie Mellon University

From the literature review, Liyanagunawardena et. al concluded that a significant amount of literature exists on the learners perspective (this is also evident in the articles above), but there is limited research surrounding the facilitators’ experience and practices. The research also highlighted that much of the data gathered in previous studies was from publicly available data (i.e. Twitter, blogs and public forums). Liyanagunawardena et. al suggests that the ethical implications of using data from social media sites and similar sources need to be considered in future research. Another limitation to the literature discussed in this paper was the demographic. Most of the literature was from Europe and North America, with very few individuals from Asia, Africa and Australasia represented.

This article is one of the few research pieces which provide an extensive literature review of MOOCs over a substantial period. For MOOCs providers, it offers a solid foundation and background into MOOCs, offers some future research options and provides the reader with an insight into the MOOCs phenomenon.

Annotation Four:

Porter, S (2015). ‘The Economics of MOOCs: a sustainable future? ’. The Bottom Line. 28(2). 52-62.

Porter’s article was issued in the Bottom Line journal, which publishes economic and financial works relating to trading information, information economics and the business of information in relation to micro-economies, education research and marketers (Emerald Publishing 2018). The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the current and predicted business model of MOOCs, whilst discussing the key challenges and issues from both a financial and MOOCs provider perspective. As such, this article is relevant to current and future MOOCs providers and their finance/executive staff.

Porter highlights the success of Sandford University and in particular Sebastian Thurn, who began to explore using the online medium to reach a global audience. He initially engaged 160,000 people in a MOOCs program and went on to access venture capital and set up Udacity - one of the top three MOOCs platforms. Porter also investigates MOOCs as a business model. In 2012, the New York times coined it ‘the year of the MOOCs’, and since then numbers in MOOCs programs have rapidly increased, with a current estimation of 81 million people enrolled in MOOCs courses (Shah 2017). Porter focuses on the top three companies (Udacity, Coursera and EdX) and discusses the funding model behind them, the current innovations by the companies, the “freemium” model and the predictions for future MOOCs business models in relation to “what we know”.

                                            
Source: DIYGenius

For both institutions and MOOCs providers, this article offers a wealth of information relating to the economic and financial model of MOOCs. Porter’s insights into the future of MOOCs and the likely future business models associated with MOOCs is of great value to higher education institutions which are seeking to invest in MOOCs. This article also acts as a tool to inform decision-making by managers at universities and touches on the future of MOOCs.   Unlike other articles in this blog post, this research is not concerned with the user or the delivery method; it purely seeks to understand the current and predicted economic and financial perspective of MOOCs. This article provides a good overview of the economic literature surrounding MOOCs, whereas previous literature discusses MOOCs from an educational standpoint as opposed to a financial.

Reference List

Audsley, A., Fernando, K., Maxson, B., Robinson, B., & Varney, K. (2013). ‘An examination of Coursera as an information environment: Does Coursera fulfil its mission to provide open education to all?. The Serials Librarian. 65(2). 136-166.

Barnes, C. (2013). ‘MOOCs: The challenges for Academic Librarians’. Australian Academic and Research Libraries. 44(3). 163-175.

Davis, H., Dickens, K., Urrutia, M,. Vera, M., & White, S. (2014). ‘MOOCs for Universities and Learners An analysis of motivating factors’. At 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education. 01 - 03 Apr 2014.

Emerald Publishing. (2018). About Emerald. Retrieved from http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/about/index.htm

Fox, R. (2016). MOOC Impact beyond innovation. In C. Ng, R. Fox & M. Nakano (Ed.), Reforming Learning and Teaching in Asia-Pacific Universities. Pp.159-172.

Glaser, B. (2015). ‘What Grounded Theory is…A Critically Reflective Conversation Among Scholars’. Organizational Research Methods. 18(4). 581-599.

Griffith University. (2017). What is a systematic literature review?. Retrieved from  https://libraryguides.griffith.edu.au/systematic-literature-reviews-for-education

Li, N., Verma, H., Skevi, A., Zufferey, G., Blom, J., & Dillenborg, P. (2014). ‘Watching MOOCs together: investigating collocated MOOC study groups’. Distance Education. 35(2). 217-233.

Liyanagunawardena, T., Adams, A., & Williams, S. (2013). ‘MOOCs: A systematic Study of the Published Literature 2008-2012 ’. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. 14(3). 203-227.

Porter, S. (2015). ‘The Economics of MOOCs: a sustainable future? ’. The Bottom Line. 28(2). 52-62.

Shah, D. (2017). By the Numbers: MOOCs in 2017. Retrieved from https://www.class-central.com/report/mooc-stats-2017/

Srikanth, M. (2017, April 12). The Advantages and Disadvantages of MOOCs for Learning [Web log message]. Retrieved from https://www.infoprolearning.com/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-moocs-massive-open-online-courses-for-learning/

Zheng, S. Rosson, N. Smith, P & Carroll, J (2015). ‘Understanding Student Motivation, Behaviors, and Perceptions in MOOCs. in CSCW ’15 Proceedings of the 18^th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Work and Social Computing. Vancouver. 14-18 March. viewed 21 May https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2675217

Images

‘MOOCs’. https://uctlanguagecentre.com/blog/learning-english-online-moocs/

‘Word Cloud’. http://www.indiaeducation.net/online-education/all-about-moocs-massive-open-online-courses-india-abroad.html

‘Timeline of MOOCs development’. http://amt-lab.org/blog/2015/11/arts-education-in-moocs

‘MOOCs Providers’. https://www.diygenius.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-moocs/