E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

In de tweede week van Augustus nam ik deel aan de Learning with MOOCs workshop op de campus van MIT. Deze workshop is georganiseerd door Stanford en MIT en werd gesponsord door de Hewlett Foundation.

Het doel van de workshop was om alle verschillende soorten mensen die zich met MOOCs bezig houden bij elkaar te krijgen. Dus onderzoekers, beleidsmakers,  docenten en ondersteuners. Dat is goed gelukt, ondanks het wat vreemde uitnodigingsbeleid. De workshop was alleen open voor de mensen die iets ingestuurd hadden voor de Call for Papers. Dit stond dan nog los ervan of je paper was geaccepteerd. Totaal waren er zo’n 250 mensen, waarvan de meerderheid uit de VS.

Heel duidelijk had de organisatie gekozen voor een aantal keynotes die de kennisachterstand bij veel MOOC-ers kon vergroten op het gebied van (online) onderwijs, open onderwijs, onderzoek op het gebied van onderwijs. Hoewel sommige keynotes erg veel tekstuele slides hadden, waren het uitstekend gekozen sprekers.

Er waren voor mij vijf punten die ik uit deze workshop heb gehaald.

Ten eerste dat we de technologie van MOOCs nu redelijk goed op orde hebben en het nu tijd is om alle aandacht te richten op te begrijpen hoe we het best de lerenden kunnen ondersteunen in deze omgevingen. Hierbij moeten we vooral gebruik maken van alle beschikbare onderwijsonderzoeken die al vele jaren beschikbaar zijn. Een van de sprekers zei dit als volgt: “There is no L in MOOC, but there should be”. Belangrijk punt hierbij is dat het niet gaat om het vervangen van de docent, maar hoe we beter gebruik van technologie kunnen maken.

Het tweede punt is dat we van de MOOCs een volledige open cirkel moeten maken: open content, open platform, open data en open models voor analyseren van data. EdX is op dit punt goed op weg. Binnenkort wordt het nog eenvoudiger om een MOOC (en haar content) te voorzien van een open licentie. Deze uitbreiding is ontwikkeld door YES!Delft start-up Feedback Fruits.

Het derde punt is dat om te komen tot een topkwaliteit MOOC je een multi-disciplinair team nodig hebt met inhoudsdeskundige, onderwijskundigen, toetsexperts, multimediaspecialisten en onderzoekers.

Het vierde punt is dat we het gebied van onderzoek de vraag moeten omdraaien. Dus niet welke vragen kunnen we beantwoorden met deze data, maar welke data hebben wij nodig om onze vragen te beantwoorden. Of zoals Justin Reich van HarvardX zei van “Fishing in the Exhaust” naar  “Design Research in the Core”.  Hij gebruikt hierbij ook deze quote om de huidige situatie aan te geven: “We are lost, but we are making great time”.

Het vijfde punt is dat wij als TU Delft een goede keuze hebben gemaakt met het opzetten van de Extension School en de integratie van het ontwikkelen van MOOCs, Online & Blended onderwijs. Hierbij maken wij ook gebruik multidisciplaire teams voor de support en zitten de onderzoekers dicht  hierop.

Tijdens de workshop was er ook voldoende gelegenheid om de banden met andere instellingen aan te halen en kennis en expertise uit te wisselen.

Alle presentaties van de workshop staan (binenkort) online op de website http://www.moocworkshop.org/information/program/. Daarnaast vind je veel informatie op de twitterhashtag #LWMOOCs.

Dit artikel verscheen eerder op Scienceguide.

Andere artikelen over deze conferentie:

• Columbia University
• 8 myths about MOOCs

This week I'm attending the Learning with MOOCs: A practitioner's workshop in Cambridge (MA, USA). The website describes this workshop as:

This workshop plans to bring together the educators, technologists, researchers, learning scientists, entrepreneurs, and funders of MOOCs to share their innovations, discuss the impact on education and to answer questions such as: How to best support students to learn in an online environment? How can MOOCs be successfully integrated with the traditional classroom experience? For which students and in what contexts are these courses most effective? What can we learn from the rich data streams generated by these platforms? How do we structure the learning activities to produce data streams that better support research?

Because not everyone can attend the conference, the conference is (partly) live streamed via MIT Webcast (time zone is US East Coast). Interesting is that it brings people together from all the different platforms.

For me it is also a good opportunity to catch up with the people at EdX and meet some friends from MIT. And we have some nice summer weather :-)

This year edX gave researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) data on the second-by-second viewing habits of more than 100,000 learners perusing more than 6.9 million video sessions.

In a paper published this spring, the CSAIL team outlined some key findings on what online learners want from videos. These include:

• Brevity (viewers generally tune out after six minutes)
• Informality, with professors seated at a desk, not standing behind a podium
• Lively visuals rather than static PowerPoint slides
• Fast talkers (professors seen as the most engaging spoke at 254 words per minute)
• More pauses, so viewers can soak in complex diagrams
• Web-friendly lessons (existing videos broken into shorter chunks are less effective than ones crafted for online audiences)

The researcher created their own tool based on these research finding: LectureScape. LectureScape uses data on viewing behavior to present MOOC videos in a way that’s more intuitive, dynamic, and effective:

• A timeline shows which parts other users have most frequently watched
• An interactive transcript lets users enter keywords to find relevant segments
• A mechanism automatically creates word clouds and summaries of individual sections, as well as the whole presentation
• Content from popular slides automatically appears in the following slide, as users will likely want to refer back to that information

Interesting is that some of the features in LectureScape are similar to the tool of Feedback Fruits.

Download paper (PDF)

This month there were quiet some interesting articles that are interesting to read. Here a selection (in random order):

• 5 Things Researchers Have Discovered About MOOCs
  In December 2013 a group of academics gathered during a Texas snowstorm and began the second phase of a discussion about massive open online courses. They were not terribly impressed by the hype the courses had received in the popular media, and they had set out to create a better body of literature about MOOCs—albeit a less sensational one.
  
  
• Monetizing MOOCs – When Is it Right to Switch to Self-Serving Classes?
  this blog post explores why someone might want to pay for a MOOC. What can a student expect of a MOOC and is it really worth the time and/or money?
  
  
• Can MOOCs lure international students to U.S. colleges and universities?
  Some online education advocates argue that MOOCs can lure international students to colleges and universities in the U.S. The University of Pennsylvania has developed a MOOC precisely for this purpose: a course titled “Applying to U.S. Universities.” And the State Department has woven online courses into its international education agenda, with the hope that MOOC-driven outreach programs will entice foreign students to study in the U.S.
  
  
• Online learning at research-intensive universities needs a strategic approach
  Online learning has the potential to change teaching and learning at European universities profoundly. Recent trends have greatly accelerated the development of and investment in online learning, at research-intensive universities in particular.
  
  
• ICDE: Ten useful reports on MOOCs and online education
  This digest of reports and papers published over the past year is provided to support the ongoing debate on MOOCs, Open Educational Resources and online education. A brief summary of the contents, dates of publication and extent are given.
  
  
• The Supply and Demand of MOOCs Infographic
  MOOCs offer a flexible and free way to learn ICT skills, which are in high demand by employers. This infographic shows some of the key findings from a study published by the MOOCs for Web Talent Network.
  
  
• Dissertation Roling Moe: The Evolution & Impact of the Massive Open Online Course
  This dissertation attempts to pinpoint the MOOC as a phenomenon and said phenomenon within how society views/ed education in 2014.
  
  
• Coursera shifts focus from 'impact on learners' to 'reach of universities'
  Levin is signifying a change at Coursera, and he is not just a new CEO to manage the same business.
  
  
• Christensen's Disruptive Innovation after the Lepore Critique
  Must innovation disrupt everything so that society might have new and better things?
  
  
• Corporate learning redefined. Prepare for a revolution
  It’s a new age for learning & development. Online content, MOOCs, collaboration tools, and social media now fuel a training model where employees own their skills and experts share knowledge freely.
  
  
• 8 Things You Should Know About MOOCs
  Before Harvard and MIT released data last month on their first 16 edX MOOCs, we already knew a few things: Millions of people register for massive open online courses, though far fewer receive certificates of completion. Most MOOC participants already have a college degree, even those outside the United States. But there was a lot we didn't know, especially about who took different types of MOOCs and how much of the course content they viewed. This information may be valuable to those looking to design and lead successful MOOCs. Here's what we've learned from this first data release covering more than half a million students.
  
  
• MOOCs Won't Replace Business Schools — They'll Diversify Them
  Over the past few years, business school administrators — like other university officials — have been losing sleep over Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs), worrying that these low-cost digital alternatives will cannibalize their business model.
  
  
• 11 Differences between a MOOC and an Online Course
  "A MOOC is a non-defined pedagogical format to organize learning /teaching/training on a specific topic in an informal, online, and collaborative way."

The Open Education Consortium has become a member of edX, providing opportunities for our members to transform their existing OER and OCW into openly licensed MOOCs under the Open Education Consortium’s shingle on edX.

In the newsletter we have added some additional information:

Why Open MOOCs?

• We heard from many members that they would like to try MOOCs, but haven’t had the opportunity, or don’t know where to start.
• This provides us the opportunity to leverage existing OER and bring in the benefits of interaction and data collection offered by the edX platform.
• We can build a diverse array of Open MOOCs that combine open content and open enrollment
• The OEC OpenMOOC Committee recognized the benefit of having the exposure and audience of edX, which uses an open-source platform. 

Key points for participation

• Participating institutions and organizations must be OEC members.
• Any MOOC developed must be developed from existing open content (available under Creative Commons licenses). This is not an opportunity to develop a MOOC from scratch. However, members can add to the open content to make it more MOOC-friendly, such as adding video, assessments, additional resources, etc.
• MOOCs will appear on the edX site under our “shingle” (OECx). They will be listed as being offered by the authoring institution, and all credit for content goes to the authoring institution. 
• All content must be openly licensed and marked with the applicable license. The content must also appear in a repository where it can be accessed – in other words, content will not be downloadable from the edX site, but rather it will be viewed on edX and available as open content from the authoring institutions through links posted on edX.
• There is no cost to members to participate, though members have to devote resources to developing and facilitating the courses. 
•  We are doing a pilot with 6 universities to offer courses this coming fall (Sept – Nov). The pilot courses will be in business or environmental/health disciplines.  The pilot will allow us to develop best practice guides and a better understanding of what it takes to create MOOCs from existing open content. Universities for the pilot phase have already been identified.
• Following the pilot, there will be opportunities for more members to participate with courses in any discipline.

I think this is a great opportunity for all Consortium members.Not a member yet? Join today via our website.
This also strengthen the position of EdX in the truly open education world. I will be the board liason to the OpenMOOC Committee.

MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a set of investments intended to explore the potential of MOOCs to extend access to postsecondary credentials through more personalized, more affordable pathways.

28 projects were selected last year and now their reports are available. On the website www.moocresearch.com/reports you find all reports.

Last week I hosted a little conference at Delft University of Technology. For the first time, the EdX Conference was hosted outside the Boston Area. It was hosted in the beautiful building of our library. It was quite some work to organise it, but it was a great success according to all participants.

It is always exciting to see that the plan you set out works out even better then expected. Thanks to my great team of TU Delft Event Solutions (Anneke, Ginny, Natascha and Marie Louise), thanks to all the speakers of the parallel sessions, thanks to George Siemens for delivering a thought-provoking keynote and off course thanks to all the people who participated in the discussions.

Blogs and articles about the conference:

• ScienceGuide interview with Anant Agarwal
• Inside HigherEd blog of Joshua Kim about the conference
• Inside HigherEd blog of Joshua Kim about the keynote of George Siemens
• ScienceGuide article in Dutch

On my Facebook I placed a selection of photos to give an impression.

The last couple of weeks I haven't been blogging and tweeting as much as people are used to see from me. The reason for this, is that I'm extremely busy with setting up the Delft Extension School and also organising the EdX Conference FutureEDU.

For the first time this conference for all EdX Consortium members and partners will be outside of the Boston area and it happens to be at my university. So for me the job to organise together with our office for event solutions.

Next week 200 participants will arrive in Delft to participate in an interesting programme about MOOC, online education, future developments and transformation of campus education.

We have participants from 50 institutions from 17 countries from all around the world (except Latin America). About 50 people are from Europe (excluding TU Delft): Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switserland and the UK.

On Thursday the Dutch Minister of Education, Jet Bussemaker, will open the conference. The closing keynote on Friday will be delivered by George Siemens. In between we have many interesting presentations, panel discussions, round tables and time to talk with collegues from around the world.

I'm really looking forward to meet everyone in Delft. It will be a great conference in a beautiful building.

There are already multiple classifications of types of MOOCs. The most known are xMOOCs versus cMOOCs. Personally I think that this is too simple. Gráinne Conole from University of Leicester describes MOOCs by using twelve dimensions. In addition, she uses the classification schema to describe five MOOCs. According to Conole this classification can be used for the design and evaluation of MOOCs as well.

 More information on her blog.

At the Coursera Partner Conference they announced that the revenue of the Signature Track already exceeded the $ 4 million. This has been achieved through their Coursera certificate track, which, at $30-$100 per course, has seen an average 1.2% conversion rate double up to the current average of 2.4%. With the signature track they can guarentee that you are the person that completed the course. They create a kind of fingerprint of you, based on biometric typing, webcam photo, and photo ID.

If you look at the costs of MOOCs the production costs vary widely. If we take an average of $ 50,000. It would take 500 students to cover the costs. With the current conversion, you need at least 20,834 students. According to Katy Jordan the average is aroudn 20,000. I think this number is to high. As Wilfed Rubens (in Dutch) is saying this can only be the case for English MOOCs of top professors. The number of MOOCs offered is currently increasing faster than the number of students registering for them. We also see this in our own DelftX MOOCs.

So this single revenue model  is not enough. We are doing pilots which focus on different aspects of cost reduction and other revenue streams.

Low-cost production
At TU Delft we are doing an experiment with a 'low-cost mooc'. This means that we have provided the professor with a camera and some TAs to assist him. The rest is all done by them. This model only works for creative and tech-savvy professors. Want to see the result? The course starts this week and you can still register.

Re-use of content
Another option is to use the content not only for the MOOC, but also for campus education. We will do this with our Solar Energy MOOC, which will start in September.

Funnel
Another approach is that we try to persuade students after the MOOC to start with (online) paid course or programme. This is part of our Delft Extension School.
So we are using the MOOCs as marketing tool of our online courses.

These different pilots should lead to a sustainable business model. As public university we don't have to make a profit, but it does have to cover the costs.