Quality in MOOCs: Surveying the Terrain

The purpose of this review is to identify quality measures and to highlight some of the tensions surrounding notions of quality, as well as the need for new ways of thinking about and approaching quality in MOOCs. It draws on the literature on both MOOCs and quality in education more generally in order to provide a framework for thinking about quality and the different variables and questions that must be considered when conceptualising quality in MOOCs. The review adopts a relativist approach, positioning quality as a measure for a specific purpose. The review draws upon Biggs’s (1993) 3P model to explore notions and dimensions of quality in relation to MOOCs — presage, process and product variables — which correspond to an input–environment–output model. The review brings together literature examining how quality should be interpreted and assessed in MOOCs at a more general and theoretical level, as well as empirical research studies that explore how these ideas about quality can be operationalised, including the measures and instruments that can be employed. What emerges from the literature are the complexities involved in interpreting and measuring quality in MOOCs and the importance of both context and perspective to discussions of quality

Metaversia: a mooc model for higher education

Globalization and economic interdependency of a post-modern society point toward an internationalization mission for the university. However, on a global scale, social, economic, and cultural circumstances have significant effects upon an individual’s ability to show the merit required in higher education. The growing open access movement reveals the early emergence of a meta-university that bring cost-efficiencies to institutions through the shared development of educational materials, which is particularly important to the developing world. But despite the huge success in the dissemination and democratization of knowledge provided by the open access movement, it has attached a severe financial downside, and configures a hamper in educational innovation due to its failure in harnessing Web 2.0 collaborative technologies. In order to find a model that better suits the needs of collaborative teaching and learning in a networked information economy, two approaches are followed in this dissertation. The first consists in the analysis and comparison of the open education ecosystem. On the other approach, based on the previous results, we propose a MOOC model, Metaversia, for a collaborative network that harness the capital exchange potential, and knowledge-building opportunities that rests on the connections between people, enabling citizen's full participation in the actual networked information economy.A globalização e interdependência económica de uma sociedade pós-moderna impelem a universidade para uma missão de internacionalização. Mas à escala global, circunstâncias sociais, económicas e culturais têm implicações significativas sobre a capacidade dos indivíduos em mostrar o mérito exigido no ensino superior. O movimento de acesso livre revela o surgimento precoce de uma meta universidade que traz mais valias do ponto de vista financeiro para as universidades através do desenvolvimento partilhado de materiais educativos. Mas, apesar do enorme sucesso na disseminação e democratização do conhecimento proporcionado pelo movimento de acesso livre, este possui severas desvantagens financeiras e configura um grande passo atrás na inovação pedagógica devido a sua falha no devido aproveitamento das tecnologias colaborativas da Web 2.0. A fim de encontrar um modelo que melhor se adeque às necessidades de ensino e aprendizagem colaborativa numa economia da informação em rede, duas abordagens são seguidas nesta tese. A primeira consiste na análise e comparação do ecossistema educação aberta. Na outra abordagem, com base nos resultados anteriores, propomos um modelo para um MOOC, Metaversia, para uma rede de colaboração que aproveita o potencial de troca de capital, e de construção de conhecimento que existe no relacionamento interpessoal, permitindo uma plena participação dos cidadãos numa economia da informação em rede

MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses)

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free online courses available to anyone who can sign up. MOOCs provide an affordable and flexible way to learn new skills, advance in careers, and provide quality educational experiences to a certain extent. Millions of people around the world use MOOCs for learning and their reasons are various, including career development, career change, college preparation, supplementary learning, lifelong learning, corporate e-Learning and training, and so on

Report on 2nd GO-GN Seminar

This document reports the status of the research for the GO-GN members attending to the second seminar. This seminar took place in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in conjunction with the OCWC Global ConferenceGlobal Open Educational Resources Graduate Networ

Essays on the Design of Inclusive Learning in Massive Open Online Courses, and Implications for Educational Futures

This thesis examines the tensions and contradictions of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a force for more inclusive tertiary education, particularly for adults without a college degree in the United States. Through a multimethodological research approach yielding three discrete papers, presented as chapters, this work seeks to augment and clarify the existing MOOCs literature across conceptual, quantitative, and qualitative domains. The first paper develops a conceptual framework, ‘hegemonic design bias,’ that describes the socio-technical development ecosystem in which MOOCs are embedded. This framework helps account for why MOOCs have yet to serve as a democratising force in education by highlighting the processes and constraints that bias MOOC production toward the already well-educated. The potential economic implications of these developments are also considered. The second paper provides insight into how underrepresented learners are engaging with entry-level MOOCs. The exploration of learning analytic data from an initial sample of more than 260,000 enrolees through cluster analysis and multinomial logistic regression indicates that students without a college degree are more likely to be high-performing learners compared to college-educated students in these courses. Additionally, students from approximated lower socioeconomic backgrounds are no less likely to be successful than students from approximated middle and higher socioeconomic backgrounds in these courses. The third paper provides insight into the opportunities and challenges producers face in building inclusive MOOCs through a qualitative analysis of six semi-structured interviews. The interviews unearthed diverse conceptions of inclusion among producers that reflect a sincere normative commitment to make inclusive MOOCs, though the conceptions were quite distinct and fragmented. Producers were intentional about utilising best-practice pedagogy, as well as innovative program design, to include diverse learners. Innovative technology partners helped create interactive, unique experiences, but this also led to challenges in harmonising the design process and required the considerable influence of intermediary actors. To conclude, I briefly consider the implications of these findings for research, practice, and policy, with particular attention to how the public and social sectors can incentivise improved design of MOOCs with the specific intent of helping adults without college degrees develop human capital in order to remain economically resilient amidst the disruptions of skills-biased technological change.Gates Cambridge Trus

Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience

Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform.

With the rise in access to mobile multimedia devices, educational institutions have exploited the iTunes U platform as an additional channel to provide free educational resources with the aim of profile-raising and breaking down barriers to education. For those prepared to invest in content preparation, it is possible to produce interactive, portable material that can be made available globally. Commentators have questioned both the financial implications for platform-specific content production, and the availability of devices for learners to access it (Osborne, 2012). The Open University (OU) makes its free educational resources available on iTunes U and via its web-based open educational resources (OER) platform, OpenLearn. The OU’s OER on iTunes U reached the 60 million download mark in 2013; its OpenLearn platform boasts 27 million unique visitors since 2006. This paper reports the results of a large-scale study of users of the OU’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. A survey of several thousand users revealed key differences in demographics between those accessing OER via the web and via iTunes U. In addition, the data allowed comparison between three groups: formal learners, informal learners and educators. The study raises questions about whether university-provided OER meet the needs of users and makes recommendations for how content can be modified to suit their needs. As the publishing of OER becomes core to business, we reflect on reasons why understanding users’ motivations and demographics is vital, allowing for needs-led resource provision and content that is adapted to best achieve learner satisfaction, and to deliver institutions’ social mission

MOOCKnowledge: Establishing a large-scale data-collection about participants of European Open Online Courses

While MOOCS have emerged as a new form of open online education around the world,there are still no cross- provider and large-scale data collections that provides reliable information about demographic details of the population of MOOC participants on the one hand, and their motivation, intentions, social context, lifelong learning profile and impact on study success and career development on the other hand. The MOOCKnowledge project is an initiative to establish a large-scale data-collection about participants of European MOOCs. In this paper we describe the motivation behind the project and discuss the research focus. We explain the structure of the survey instrument, report about the data collection process and provide an outlook on potential future developments of the project.JRC.J.3-Information Societ