5 research outputs found
Design patterns for promoting peer interaction in discussion forums in MOOCs
Design patterns are a way of sharing evidence-based solutions to educational design problems. The design patterns presented in this paper were produced through a series of workshops, which aimed to identify Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) design principles from workshop participants’ experiences of designing, teaching and learning on these courses. MOOCs present a challenge for the existing pedagogy of online learning, particularly as it relates to promoting peer interaction and discussion. MOOC cohort sizes, participation patterns and diversity of learners mean that discussions can remain superficial, become difficult to navigate, or never develop beyond isolated posts. In addition, MOOC platforms may not provide sufficient tools to support moderation. This paper draws on four case studies of designing and teaching on a range of MOOCs presenting seven design narratives relating to the experience in these MOOCs. Evidence presented in the narratives is abstracted in the form of three design patterns created through a collaborative process using techniques similar to those used in collective autoethnography. The patterns: “Special Interest Discussions”, “Celebrity Touch” and “Look and Engage”, draw together shared lessons and present possible solutions to the problem of creating, managing and facilitating meaningful discussion in MOOCs through the careful use of staged learning activities and facilitation strategies
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Working and writing in the presence of a peer in an online space: facilitating submissions to achieve HEA accreditation?
The need to evidence teaching improvements has created an appetite for gaining professional recognition both by individuals increasing their employability by accrediting their practice and from institutions to demonstrate quality teaching by recruiting individuals whose practice has been accredited. In the UK teaching excellence is recognised and accredited by Advance HE through four categories of Fellowships of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and using the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF).
The Open University (OU), the major distance education provider in the UK, runs its own accredited scheme to support staff in teaching and learning support roles to gain HEA fellowship recognition. The scheme is called Applaud (Accrediting & Promoting Professional Learning & Academic Development) and is run fully online using a combination of learning technologies to engage with participants, mentors and reviewers of the scheme. Despite the support currently available to Applaud candidates, some candidates still struggle to complete and submit their applications. To improve the existing support and the rate of completion and successful submissions, the Applaud scheme is trialling several activities in collaboration with most Faculties across the university to create additional ways to support candidates. This presentation will explore a study trialling one novel form of support within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the OU, funded by the FASSTEST scholarship centre.
This new and additional form of support draws on literature addressing the success of academic writing groups (Soraa et al, 2017; Kozar et al, 2015), phone calls with a colleague to aid writing motivation (Myatt et al, 2014), and having a sense of commitment to an accountability partner (Scott et al, 2019). This form of peer support involves pairing interested Applaud candidates seeking the same type of HEA fellowship recognition (AFHEA, FHEA or SFHEA). Participants must be in the same cohort and associated with the Faculty involved in the study. They are offered a brief introductory session on arranging regular brief working sessions (one to two hours) with each other via MS Teams or Skype. These online working sessions follow a structure that adapts writing retreat approaches to committing to short writing sprints (around 20 minutes) in the virtual company of others and discussing progress and difficulties after each sprint. One expected benefit of this form of support has been to provide both the space and support for reflective practice to inform the writing of a fellowship claim.
Our study asks to what extent working and writing with a peer in a shared online space assist timely submission for HEA accreditation. To evaluate this trial, we are collecting feedback from participants on working with a partner and the effectiveness of writing retreat-style structured sessions and writing sprints. This presentation will present this study and discuss some preliminary findings, followed by recommendations for future iterations and applications
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The role of active participation in online synchronous learning
Online synchronous learning has been vital in replacing face-to-face contact during the pandemic. However, in live online sessions there is often a lack of active participation by students; this is perceived negatively by many educators, and by some, though not all, students. In this conference session we present and discuss data from a multi-faculty project at The Open University, UK, to investigate this issue. The aim of our project is to improve the experience for students and for educators.
Live online tutorials are an important part of The Open University teaching strategy - and during the pandemic they replaced all face-to-face tutorials. However, even at The Open University where educators are highly experienced in teaching online, tutorials may be primarily didactic, with limited degrees of interaction. Students may be unwilling to use audio or video channels in online sessions, or indeed to participate actively at all. This means that the educators running these sessions have very limited non-verbal cues to indicate whether students are following or are struggling (Wang et al., 2018).
On starting the project, we believed that there was a need to address two main challenges: designing and running tutorials which have active learning built-in; and encouraging students to participate actively. We collected quantitative and qualitative data via large-scale online surveys of students and of educators across the university, to gain an understanding of their experiences and views. For example, we included questions to explore:
• What value do students and educators place on active participation?
• What might encourage, or inhibit, active participation?
• How do these aspects relate to students’ and educators’ conceptions of learning?
Initial analysis of the survey data has shown that some students do not feel the need to take an active part in tutorials, but they nevertheless feel that they gain value from listening and watching. This is in line with the concept of vicarious learning (Mayes, 2015) where students learn by observing other students’ online interactions. If viewed as the first stage of a learning journey, it also relates to the idea of legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), where newcomers learn initially by observing those who are more experienced. However, in communities of practice theory, there is an assumption that observation will lead on to increasing levels of participatory learning.
Our initial data from the online surveys is being supplemented by in-depth data from online focus groups of students and of educators. In this conference session we will present our survey and focus group data, and we will invite discussion of the issues and findings with participants.
References 
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press.
Mayes, J.T. (2015) Still to learn from vicarious learning. E-Learning and Digital Media Vol. 12(3-4) 361–371.
Wang, Q., Huang, C., and Quek, C. L. (2018) Students’ Perspectives on the Design and Implementation of a Blended Synchronous Learning Environment. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 34(1)