Influence of employer support for professional development on MOOCs enrolment and completion: Results from a cross-course survey

Although the potential of open education and MOOCs for professional development is usually recognized, it has not yet been explored extensively. How far employers support non-formal learning is still an open question. This paper presents the findings of a survey-based study which focuses on the influence of employer support for (general) professional development on employees’ use of MOOCs. Findings show that employers are usually unaware that their employees are participating in MOOCs. In addition, employer support for general professional development is positively associated with employees completing MOOCs and obtaining certificates for them. However, the relationship between employer support and MOOC enrollment is less clear: workers who have more support from their employers tend to enroll in either a low or a high number of MOOCs. Finally, the promotion of a minimum of ICT skills by employers is shown to be an effective way of encouraging employee participation in the open education ecosystem.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Comunidades de aprendizaje multiculturales en entornos de formación online

Para el alcance del objetivo general de investigación se plantea la selección MOOCs de diversas universidades cuyas temáticas abarquen distintas áreas de conocimiento con la finalidad de incluir en el estudio a distintas comunidades de aprendizaje y los factores que intervienen en estos. Siguiendo los planteamientos de la Guía Ética para la Investigación Educativa (Asociación Británica de Investigación Educativa, 2019) será necesario contar con el apoyo y consentimiento tanto de los participantes como de las universidades que ofertan los MOOCs

D2.1 Analysis of existing MOOC platforms and services

The main objective of this task is to analyze features and services of MOOC platforms that are used in ECO and, secondly, in other commonly used MOOC platforms. This task takes into account the functionality that is required by the different pilots from two viewpoints: technological and pedagogical aspects. Firstly, to ensure this objective, this task performed a state-of-the-art review, mainly research papers and all annotated scientific literature. Secondly, we elaborate a Competitive Analysis Checklist for MOOC platforms. An approach based on technological and pedagogical items is suggested to define specific dimensions for this task. This Checklist will be a useful tool for evaluating MOOC platforms. Thirdly, five of the ECO platforms have been evaluated by using the authoring and delivery environment to check for the availability of features that are essential for the implementation of the pedagogical model as described in D2.1. It became clear that these platforms are not very suitable for the pedagogical model. Finally, a Guide for the Effective Creation of MOOCs has been drawn up indicating to assist course designers to compare the functionality, features, pedagogical and instructional advantages so they can choose the most suitable one for their areas of interest and needs.Part of the work carried out has been funded with support from the European Commission, under the ICT Policy Support Programme, as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) in the ECO project under grant agreement n° 21127

“Clinical Supervision with Confidence”: Exploring the potential of MOOCs for faculty development

Background: Postgraduate medical trainees require named clinical supervisors. Given the time pressures and difficulties of geographical access, there is a need to identify appropriate solutions for faculty development. We developed and launched a clinical supervision MOOC (FutureLearn platform) in March 2015. Objective: To assess the potential of the clinical supervision MOOC for faculty development. Methods: Quantitative data was obtained from FutureLearn course analytics and course surveys; qualitative data was obtained from learner feedback within the MOOC. Results: Learners (1,938) from over 75 countries signed up for the MOOC. Of the 899 individuals who began the course, 334 (37.2%) completed. Learners were highly satisfied with the course design and delivery, and enjoyed the opportunities for interprofessional and social learning. Conclusions: MOOCs have great potential for faculty development without geographical boundaries

Building universities’ intrapreneurial capabilities in the digital era: the role and impacts of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have received a lot of attention over the last few years. Although the technological/pedagogical aspects of MOOCs have been well articulated in the literature, empirical evidence substantiating MOOCs' role in university outcomes is scarce. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the relationships among (a) ordinary capabilities that are necessary to achieve the university's core strategies (i.e., teaching quality, research quality, and administrative quality); (b) intrapreneurial capabilities that are necessary to accomplish the university's entrepreneurial strategy (i.e., MOOC orientation by assuming risks, sensing opportunities, and transforming routines to become more innovative and proactive); and (c) the expected university outcomes from these strategies (i.e., prestige in teaching/research, attraction of local/international students, and diversification in the income structure). Based on an analysis of 145 universities around the world, the results show that MOOC-based intrapreneurial capabilities play a direct role in the achievement of university outcomes, as well as an indirect role, by mediating the positive effect of the university's ordinary capabilities on the university's outcomes. These findings contribute to the current understanding in entrepreneurship and strategic management debates about the antecedents/consequences of intrapreneurial capabilities. A provoking discussion and implications for theory, practice, and policymakers emerge from this study

Progettazione di un percorso di formazione professionale basato su Open Badge

Nell’era digitale, le istituzioni di istruzione e formazione professionale (IFP) sono emerse come ambienti di sviluppo trasformativi e flessibili; di conseguenza, è importante sviluppare opportunità di apprendimento professionale digitale che devono soddisfare i requisiti del mercato del lavoro europeo. Sono state condotte ricerche in merito a tali opportunità al fine di trovare nuovi strumenti per pianificare e condurre studi sul continuo sviluppo professionale e per raggiungere e mantenere le competenze versatili richieste nelle carriere di questi tempi. Questo studio mira a colmare un vuoto di ricerca riguardante lo sviluppo professionale avanzato basato sulle competenze, indagando il processo di apprendimento digitale aperto basato su badge nel contesto della formazione professionale. La domanda di ricerca considera come i badge digitali aperti strutturano il processo di apprendimento nel continuo sviluppo professionale delle nuove professioni pre e in servizio. La ricerca si è posta con l’obiettivo di esplorare le diverse idee, opinioni ed esperienze circa l’utilizzo di un sistema di badging all’interno di percorsi formativi professionali. Attraverso questo percorso si è sviluppata una comprensione profonda dei concetti e delle opportunità per il design di nuove pratiche educative. La domanda di ricerca ha esplorato il design di un percorso digitale di formazione professionale basato sull’applicazione delle logiche del gioco e di un sistema di micro-credentials. Ciò che è stato portato in evidenza è l’introduzione di cambiamenti necessari sia ai sistemi di erogazione, le piattaforme di e-learning, sia a quelli di gestione e pianificazione delle attività formative on line (gli LMS, Learning Management System) sia, infine al modo con cui vengono progettati e realizzati i corsi. La semplice sovrapposizione, come plug in, dei badge nelle piattaforme di e-learning, senza un adeguato progetto di cambiamento radicale del modo di fare formazione digitale, non produrrà i risultati sperati. La domanda generale di ricerca dello studio è la seguente: quali sono le best practice per il design di un percorso di formazione professionale basato open badge? L’entità dell’apprendimento digitale aperto basato su badge comprende materiali di apprendimento, criteri di badge, badge didattici, impalcature e supporto a tutti i corsisti. Questo studio offre approfondimenti sulla struttura del processo e la progettazione a più livelli per l’applicazione dell’approccio basato sulla Design based Research e badge digitali aperti e nello sviluppo professionale.In the digital age, vocational education and training (VET) institutions emerged as transformative and flexible development environments; consequently, it is important to develop digital professional learning opportunities which must meet the requirements of the European labor market. The research has been conducted into these opportunities, in order to find new tools for planning and conducting continuing professional development studies and for achieving and maintaining the versatile skills required in careers these days. This study aims to fill a research gap regarding advanced skills-based professional development by investigating the open badge-based digital learning process in the context of vocational training. The research question considers how open digital badges structure the learning process in the continuous professional development of new pre and in-service professions. The research was aimed to explore different ideas, opinions and experiences regarding the use of a badging system within professional training courses. Through this route we have developed an understanding wave of concepts and opportunities for the design of new educational practices. The research question explored the design of a digital vocational training course based on the application of the logic of the game and a system of micro-credentials. What has been highlighted is the introduction of necessary changes both to the delivery systems, the e-learning platforms, and to those for the management and planning of online training activities (the LMS, Learning Management System) and, finally, to the way in which the courses are designed and implemented. The simple overlapping, as a plug-in, of badges in e-learning platforms, without an adequate project of radical change in the way of doing digital training, will not produce the desired results. The firm's general research question is: “What are the best practices for designing an open badge- based career path” ? The entity of digital learning based on open badge includes learning materials, badge criteria, educational badge, scaffolding and support to all the participants . This study provides insights into the structure of the process and planning at various levels for the 'application of ' approach based on Design Research based and digital badge open and professional development

MOOCs and the Expansion of Open Knowledge

La aparicion de los MOOC ( massive open on-line course ) ha supuesto un impacto en el ambito educativo, especialmente en el universitario, debido, entre otras cosas, a la posibilidad de acceso a los mismos a distancia, al numero ilimitado de usuarios que se pueden matricular y, en muchos casos, a que son gratuitos. Bajo la tematica de los MOOC y el contenido abierto, la presente monografia ha sido escrita por tres profesores universitarios, Esteban Vazquez Cano [profesor y doctor de la Facultad de Educacion de la Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED)], Eloy Lopez Meneses (profesor y doctor del Departamento de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Pablo de Olavide) y Jose Luis Sanchez-Serrano Sarasola (profesor de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, tambien de la Universidad Pablo de Olavide). El libro, escrito en ingles, se divide en cuatro capitulos principales, acompanados de una declaracion de intenciones, una introduccion, una conclusion, una bibliografia y un anexo

Research, Literacy, and Communication Education: New Challenges Facing Disinformation

The information that comes through digital media and social networks is increasing. This potential access to almost infinite information makes it difficult to select relevant content with a good understanding. It is therefore necessary to generate research that thoroughly analyses the phenomenon of communication and information in the digital age. For this reason, this monograph presents different research studies that highlight the need for greater media literacy and education in order to prevent the existence and dissemination of fake news. Citizens must know how to deal with disinformation and be able to detect the source of bad intentions behind information. Therefore, people need to be aware of the new communication challenges in order to determine what is important, which media they can trust, and where information has been misused or manipulated. In conclusion, society must be prepared to face new challenges related to misinformation. An educated and digitally literate society will be able to face these problems and be prepared to face the new communication challenges, including interaction with social networks, new audiences, new media, fake news, etc

Exploring the experiences of instructors teaching massive open online courses in tourism and hospitality: a mixed methods approach

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have existed as a disruptive educational phenomenon for nine years. Grounded in the roots of distance education, open education, Open Educational Resources, and OpenCourseWare, MOOCs have now survived various critics and have continued growing globally. Reports about MOOCs in both the press and scholarly publications began to grow significantly in 2013 (Sánchez-Vera, Leon Urrutia, & Davis, 2015; Zancanaro & Domingues, 2017) and, since then, more and more researchers have joined the discussions, developing them to explore various new topics. To contribute to the literature of MOOC studies, this doctoral thesis begins with an in-depth analysis of the background, history, growth, and vision, and proposes a tentative definition of MOOCs. Meanwhile, by conducting bibliometric research to review MOOC studies conducted between 2015 and 2017, this thesis fills in the gap that has existed due to a lack of systematic reviews of MOOC literature since 2015. The results of the bibliometric research summarised the relevant MOOC research into nine categories, including learner focused, commentary and concepts, case reports or evaluations, pedagogy, curriculum and design, course object focused, provider focused, technology, systematic review of literature, and learning analytics and big data. They also suggested a limited amount of provider focused research, which became the research interest and focus of this thesis. In the centre of the Europe, Swiss universities have marched forward in the MOOC movement, together with other over 550 universities (Shah, 2016) around the world. Università della Svizzera italiana (USI; Lugano, Switzerland), a Swiss public university, became a MOOC provider in 2015 and offered the first MOOC in the topic of eTourism: eTourism: Communication Perspectives. This doctoral thesis is closely related to this university-level initiative, which was dedicated to producing the first pilot MOOC at USI. Therefore, the cases chosen by this thesis are positioned in the discipline of tourism and hospitality. The first MOOC with a large audience taught artificial intelligence in 2011 (Zancanaro & Domingues, 2017). Nowadays, MOOCs have broken the barrier of space and time to educate the masses in a wide range of subjects. However, the provision of MOOCs in the subject of tourism and hospitality did not appear until 2013, when two MOOCs from two American universities became available. In the past four years since these MOOCs were launched, the number of tourism and hospitality MOOCs available in the market has remained limited (Tracey, Murphy, & Horton-Tognazzini, 2016). This scarcity contradicts the fact that tourism and hospitality is the field that contributes the most to the employment of the global workforce. Pressing problems, such as high turnover, seasonality, and new global challenges have urged for solutions to quickly training people working in this area to become available (Cantoni, Kalbaska, & Inversini, 2009). A call for more studies about tourism and hospitality MOOCs has emerged. The combined reality of the lack of studies regarding MOOC providers, opportunities for first-hand experience of producing a tourism MOOC in a university, and the deficiency in both the research and practises of tourism and hospitality MOOCs has inspired the direction of this thesis in regard to exploring MOOC instructors’ experiences, using cases in the field of tourism and hospitality. It cumulates six studies, using a mixed methods approach, to tackle the two main research objectives: to investigate at large the tourism and hospitality MOOC provisions between 2008 and 2015 and to report the experiences of Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) when producing the eTourism MOOC. In order, the first two studies in Chapter 3 of this thesis focus on tourism and hospitality MOOCs in general and produce a big picture context for the other four studies in Chapter 4. The first study proposes a conceptual framework through which to describe and analyse the course design of a MOOC and applies it to 18 tourism and hospitality MOOCs produced between 2008 and 2015. The second study then continues to interview six tourism and hospitality MOOC instructors, to describe their experiences and perspectives of teaching MOOCs. After exploring a holistic view of the overall development of MOOCs in tourism and hospitality and gaining a deep understanding of the instructors behind these offerings, this thesis introduces the experiences of one single MOOC provider: Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Chapter 4. It first introduces its overall implementation process (Study 3), and further elaborates three phases of this process: how it selected a suitable MOOC platform at the beginning (Study 4); how it assessed learner engagement in the MOOC (Study 5); and, eventually, how it evaluated the performance of the MOOC (Study 6). This thesis was written mainly from the perspective of eLearning, with the intention of benefiting its community of scholars and practitioners. It has contributed to the literature by developing a framework with which to review MOOCs (in Study 1), the implementation process of producing MOOCs (in Study 2), practical review schema of MOOC platforms (in Study 4), the MOOC Learner Engagement Online Survey (in Study 5), and how to use the Kirkpatrick model to evaluate MOOCs (in Study 6). These conceptual frameworks and experiential tools can benefit future researchers and practitioners. Meanwhile, due to its intimate connection with the field of tourism and hospitality, by directly using its cases, the research outputs of the six studies can also benefit the tourism and hospitality education and training sector as a reference for further action