Open Educational Resources - ODL

"While education has been both open and online, the sizeable enrolment numbers associated with massive open online courses (MOOCs) are somewhat unprecedented. In order to gauge the significance of education at scale, this article analyses specific examples of massive participation derived from E-learning and Digital Cultures, a MOOC from the University of Edinburgh in partnership with Coursera. Student-created content, user statistics, and survey data are illustrated to examine the experiences and repercussions of engaging with educational activity where participants number in the tens of thousands. This activity is shown to mirror established instructionist or constructivist approaches to pedagogy. However, rather than working with "massiveness," these positions are suggested to oppose large participant numbers. Concluding remarks propose an irreducible diversity of participation, rather than a generalised categorisation of "student," and call for future considerations of the MOOC to move beyond individualism and self-interest."

"Research suggests that massive open online course (MOOC) students prefer to study in groups, and that social facilitation within the study groups may render the learning of difficult concepts a pleasing experience. We report on a longitudinal study that investigates how co-located study groups watch and study MOOC videos together. The study was conducted with on-campus flipped classroom students. Our subjects reported an overall high satisfaction with the study group style. The research reveals that students like to stay synchronized in the group while watching MOOC videos. However, they have to find a balance between synchronization, video interaction, and the amount of conversation. Watching MOOCs on a shared display addresses the need of synchronicity, and the distribution of control can increase the video interactivities."

"This article presents an empirical study of an open educational course in an online peer-to-peer university (P2PU). P2PU is a nonprofit organization offering free educational opportunities. Focus is on how peers are part of creating course content in a Web 2.0 environment. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have evolved into two different pedagogical directions: content-based xMOOCs and connectivist cMOOCs. cMOOCs emphasizing learning in networks developed informally, where learners are part of creating course content, resemble P2PU`s vision. We investigated processes of interaction in co-creation of tasks in an open educational course and what opportunities and challenges emerge. We employed template analysis for coding data. We report two different processes of interaction between users and organizers: problem identification and co-creation of tasks. This study contributes to understanding a new model of teaching and learning through scrutinizing participation in an open educational course and explores implications for the learning experience."

"Massive open online courses (MOOCs) represent a potentially exciting opportunity to use technology to realise many of the long-promised benefits of universal higher education. While there are many positive aspects to the MOOCs on offer and in development, there are also significant ethical concerns arising from various initiatives. These include the academic duties of care and integrity, commercial exploitation of learners, as well as research ethics concerns arising from the analytical and other work being done by academics and institutions. These issues are explored and a set of heuristics for individuals and institutions provided as a starting point for ethical analysis of MOOCs and associated activities."

"This study examined participants' learning experiences in the context of a six-week massive open online course (MOOC) in journalism with five thousand students from 137 countries. Three research questions were asked: (1) Who are the students and why are they enrolled in this MOOC?, (2) How much time have the students spent in taking this MOOC and have they completed all the assignments?, and, (3) What have they learned and what aspects of this MOOC do the students find most helpful? Four hundred and nine students responded to a survey and forty-four responded to interview questions. The main findings showed 84% of the participants were working professionals and only 28.9% were from a journalism background. Of those who did not complete the course, lack of time was the top reason. Most participants reported a positive learning experience, but lack of feedback and/or poor quality were reported as negative experiences. The discussion forum was the least liked aspect of the course."

"This study examined participants' learning experiences in the context of a six-week massive open online course (MOOC) in journalism with five thousand students from 137 countries. Three research questions were asked: (1) Who are the students and why are they enrolled in this MOOC?, (2) How much time have the students spent in taking this MOOC and have they completed all the assignments?, and, (3) What have they learned and what aspects of this MOOC do the students find most helpful? Four hundred and nine students responded to a survey and forty-four responded to interview questions. The main findings showed 84% of the participants were working professionals and only 28.9% were from a journalism background. Of those who did not complete the course, lack of time was the top reason. Most participants reported a positive learning experience, but lack of feedback and/or poor quality were reported as negative experiences. The discussion forum was the least liked aspect of the course."

"Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have generated enthusiasm, excitement, and hype worldwide and recently increasing skepticism. They are being broadly discussed in the major news media (and to a smaller extent in academic circles). Rapidly increasing numbers of MOOC providers, MOOC courses and articles, discussion groups, and blogs discussing MOOCs are indicators of the involvement of many stakeholders. Most of these analyses and developments are based on economic perspectives (such as scalability, productivity, and being free) and technology perspectives (including platforms supporting large number of students in online environments, enrichment components such as forums, peer-to-peer learning support, and automatic grading). Few contributions analyze MOOCs from a learning science perspective and put them into a larger context with other approaches to learning and education. This commentary explores challenges derived from the perspective to conceptualize MOOCs as being one component in a rich landscape of learning."

"The current discourse surrounding Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is powerful. Despite their rapid and widespread deployment, research has yet to confirm or refute some of the bold claims rationalizing the popularity and efficacy of these large-scale virtual learning environments. Also, MOOCs' reputed disruptive, game-changing potential for education remains unsubstantiated. A sober counterbalance is needed, in particular, via attending to students' everyday accounts of the complex realities of learning in these massive online courses. This article reports on an exploratory, phenomenological study of the xMOOC learning experience. Our interest was not the xMOOC experience of students in general, but in its singular, lived particularities. What we discovered was a unique and intimate tutorial sphere that seemed to develop for some xMOOC students in the context of the video lectures, an experience sometimes marked by a sense of fandom surround."

"This article presents an empirical study of an open educational course in an online peer-to-peer university (P2PU). P2PU is a nonprofit organization offering free educational opportunities. Focus is on how peers are part of creating course content in a Web 2.0 environment. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have evolved into two different pedagogical directions: content-based xMOOCs and connectivist cMOOCs. cMOOCs emphasizing learning in networks developed informally, where learners are part of creating course content, resemble P2PU`s vision. We investigated processes of interaction in co-creation of tasks in an open educational course and what opportunities and challenges emerge. We employed template analysis for coding data. We report two different processes of interaction between users and organizers: problem identification and co-creation of tasks. This study contributes to understanding a new model of teaching and learning through scrutinizing participation in an open educational course and explores implications for the learning experience."

"While education has been both open and online, the sizeable enrolment numbers associated with massive open online courses (MOOCs) are somewhat unprecedented. In order to gauge the significance of education at scale, this article analyses specific examples of massive participation derived from E-learning and Digital Cultures, a MOOC from the University of Edinburgh in partnership with Coursera. Student-created content, user statistics, and survey data are illustrated to examine the experiences and repercussions of engaging with educational activity where participants number in the tens of thousands. This activity is shown to mirror established instructionist or constructivist approaches to pedagogy. However, rather than working with "massiveness," these positions are suggested to oppose large participant numbers. Concluding remarks propose an irreducible diversity of participation, rather than a generalised categorisation of "student," and call for future considerations of the MOOC to move beyond individualism and self-interest."

"In Spring 2013 San José State University (SJSU) launched SJSU Plus: three college courses required for most students to graduate, which used massive open online course provider Udacity's platform, attracting over 15,000 students. Retention and success (pass/fail) and online support were tested using an augmented online learning environment (AOLE) on a subset of 213 students; about one-half matriculated. SJSU faculty created the course content, collaborating with Udacity to develop video instruction, quizzes, and interactive elements. Course log-ins and progression data were combined with surveys and focus groups, with students, faculty, support staff, coordinators, and program leaders as subjects. Logit models used contingency table-tested potential success predictors on all students and five subgroups. Student effort was the strongest success indicator, suggesting criticality of early and consistent student engagement. No statistically significant relationships with student characteristics were found. AOLE support effectiveness was compromised with staff time consumed by the least prepared students."

"Massive open online courses (MOOCs) represent a potentially exciting opportunity to use technology to realise many of the long-promised benefits of universal higher education. While there are many positive aspects to the MOOCs on offer and in development, there are also significant ethical concerns arising from various initiatives. These include the academic duties of care and integrity, commercial exploitation of learners, as well as research ethics concerns arising from the analytical and other work being done by academics and institutions. These issues are explored and a set of heuristics for individuals and institutions provided as a starting point for ethical analysis of MOOCs and associated activities."

"Research suggests that massive open online course (MOOC) students prefer to study in groups, and that social facilitation within the study groups may render the learning of difficult concepts a pleasing experience. We report on a longitudinal study that investigates how co-located study groups watch and study MOOC videos together. The study was conducted with on-campus flipped classroom students. Our subjects reported an overall high satisfaction with the study group style. The research reveals that students like to stay synchronized in the group while watching MOOC videos. However, they have to find a balance between synchronization, video interaction, and the amount of conversation. Watching MOOCs on a shared display addresses the need of synchronicity, and the distribution of control can increase the video interactivities. View full text Download full text "

"The techniques used in massive open online courses (MOOCs) are compared with supersizing in the fast food industry. Similarities include the profit motives, marketing techniques, criticisms, industry defences, and evolution of the two controversies. While fast food restaurants strategically increase the size of their meal courses and consumer base, MOOC providers increase the size of their student enrolments and the amounts of online course material they provide for the students to consume. In the two contexts, franchise owners and educational administrators deliver the supersized courses to their customers with apparent disregard for their widening negative effects. Educational institutions are encouraged to consider the ethics of these practices in order to prevent the unmonitored spread of junk education."

"This is a critical examination of the claims that innovations such as massive open online courses (MOOCs) will disrupt the business models of the higher education sector. It describes what business models are, analyses the business model of free MOOCs offered by traditional universities and compares that model to that of paid online courses offered by distance teaching universities. The results of the analysis suggest that, in their present form, MOOCs are unlikely to address the challenge of reaching and assisting students from disadvantaged backgrounds and in developing countries. Nevertheless, MOOCs and the buzz surrounding them do signal a threat to the higher education sector, namely the widening gap between the skills of graduates of the educational system and the societal expectations from them."

"The Linked Data initiative is considered as one of the most effective alternatives for creating global shared information spaces, it has become an interesting approach for discovering and enriching open educational resources data, as well as achieving semantic interoperability and re-use between multiple OER repositories. The notion of Linked Data refers to a set of best practices for publishing, sharing and interconnecting data in RDF format. Educational repositories managers are, in fact, realizing the potential of using Linked Data for describing, discovering, linking and publishing educational data on the Web. This work shows a data architecture based on semantic web technologies that support the inclusion of open educational materials in massive online courses. The authors focus on a type of openness: open of contents as regards alteration i.e. freedom to reuse the material, to combine it with other materials, to adapt, and to share it further under an open license."