2012 was declared 'The Year of the MOOC' by the New York Times; the expectation was that MOOCs would have a disruptive impact on traditional higher education by offering the same learning experience but at zero cost. The last three years have found that conventional colleges continue to thrive and fees continue to escalate so maybe there wasn't such a revolution, after all. Many would argue that, whatever their merits, MOOCs do not, and cannot, offer the same education as found in conventional colleges or universities.
The first difference is the obvious one of social milieu. Students studying on-campus are part of a social group where the same cannot be said of MOOC students. While online learners may participate in forum discussions this is far from the same experience as students might have in face to face seminars or discussions with a tutor. Moreover, student life is more than just study; social development is a large part of the general learning experience in a traditional college environment. For many students this will be their first time living independently from home and family. College gives a fairly sheltered introduction to the 'real world' largely free from family and work responsibilities and moving in circles made up, in the main, of people of a similar age. Lastly, being part of a cohort moving through a course gives a sense of impetus and encouragement. Students are less likely to drop out of courses if they feel part of a group with a responsibility to that group. Clearly the social experience is very different for students on campus and those taking part in MOOCs.
In a similar vein, there is a big difference in the people enrolling in conventional courses and MOOCs. Students to the former need to go through a competitive application and admissions process and to meet specific prerequisites. By contrast, MOOCs are, by definition, open access; there are no mandatory prerequisites and anyone can join simply by clicking a link. A consequence of this is that while college students will all have broadly similar educational background, MOOC students will range from those with little or no experience of higher education, or the subject matter, to those already holding higher degrees. This makes for a very different experience in discussions where those with prior knowledge may come to dominate whereas in a conventional situation all learners would be on a more level playing field. Students in MOOCs will also come from very different social and cultural backgrounds. A MOOC may have students from all continents, ranging from school age to those in retirement, from every possible cultural, linguistic and political background. While this may make MOOCs discussions more interesting and challenging, this is still a big difference from the relatively homogeneous student body found in most in 'normal' universities.
Possibly the biggest difference between MOOCs and conventional study is in the nature and quality of learning activities. Students in a normal college course would expect to participate in a number of different learning activities such as lectures, seminars, and tutorials, practical work such as lab, workshop or studio sessions, and written work such as essays and exams. MOOC students have a far narrower range of opportunities. Video lectures replace live lectures but without the ability to interact with the instructor in real time. Quizzes form the majority of assessment, where in a college course they would typically be a relatively small part. Written work, where undertaken, is much shorter and peer-assessed rather than getting feedback from a qualified assessor. Finally, the quality of assessment in MOOCs and conventional courses is radically different. For a student in a normal college situation, assessments are typically a once only opportunity. You sit a quiz or an exam, get your grade and move on. For MOOC students the situation is almost always far more generous. Almost all courses allow assessments to be repeated a number of times, some an unlimited number, and most give detailed feedback on which answers were wrong each time. This means that those who make the effort to record their answers each time are almost guaranteed a perfect score. MOOC students undertake a narrower range of activities, face less rigorous assessment and have little opportunity to complete substantial written work.
Some of the differences between MOOCs and conventional courses are positive; the wider and more diverse mix of students can make for a stimulating discussion and the expertise and knowledge of some peers can provide superb support. However, MOOC students tend to miss out on the social aspects of both formal and informal learning and the learning activities open to them do not match those of students in more typical college situations. While MOOCs may offer great opportunities to learn they cannot be directly equated with courses undertaken in conventional colleges or universities. Where MOOCs must really shape up if they are to be taken seriously is in the rigour of their assessment. While I don't want to appear over modest, the fact that I've achieved 100% in so many courses says more about the standard of assessment than my inherent ability.
Saturday 20 February 2016
Monday 8 February 2016
Open2Study: Resting or Comatose?
I have written before about Open2Study (or O2S as I'll refer to it) so I'll confine the introduction to a very few words. O2S is an Australian MOOC platform, owned by Open Universities Australia (OUA). It offers a range of mainly introductory 4-week courses to a very tightly controlled format making it an ideal first stop for new MOOC learners.
O2S was launched in March 2013 and I was among the early adopters completing my first course (Teaching Adult Learners) in June. It's initial target was to have 50 courses on line by the end of 2013 and it pretty much achieved this having opened the latest courses for enrolment in late 2013 for a first presentation early in 2014. Early results were promising with a steady, if undramatic, increase in student numbers and an enviably high completion rate; research published on site indicated 30% completion which was some 4-5 times better than other platforms. There are a number of reasons why this rate was so high which I might come back to another time but the short length, introductory level and limited assessment doubtless contributed.
As 2014 progressed I began to have some concerns about the platform and these were shared by a number of other students on the (rather ramshackle) community forums. There were, for example, a number of platform issues which had been raised but remained unresolved months later (and, indeed, are still outstanding over two years later). No new courses were or have been released since the initial roll out of 50 and one of that batch, The Art of Painting and Drawing, was withdrawn under mysterious circumstances. There was no public announcement or explanation of its withdrawal but a staff poster some time later reported that it was for 'quality reasons'. It seemed fine to me when I took it but then I'm no artist!
In the two years that have passed since O2S last released a new course there has been very little evidence of activity. In fact, about the only signs of life seen are sporadic blog postings and the fairly regular appearance of staff posters making consistently reassuring sounds on the community forums. When challenged, they told me that it had always been planned to follow the initial roll out by a period of review--but two years? Moreover, although it might not be apparent to students there was a lot of improvement work going on 'behind the scenes'--but surely after two years we should have seen some results from this work?
What worries me is not only the dearth of new material but also the failure to address very long standing maintenance and functional issues. A couple of examples may help to make this clearer. O2S uses a badge system to encourage students (so-called gamification) but there have been problems with the issuing of some categories of badges since at least summer 2013. There was also a chat facility on the site which was taken off-line 'temporarily', due to performance issues--again over two years ago. On a functional front, the community forums lack a working search function or any way to sort or filter posts. All these problems have been repeatedly acknowledged by O2S staff but there is no obvious movement towards a resolution. While improving the forums or reintroducing the chat facility might conceivably require some substantial effort, fixing a broken badge issuing algorithm seems like the work of an afternoon. Is there really anyone behind the staff usernames on the forums and blog posts?
As with many issues in MOOCs and open education generally, I suspect the answers are down to money. As I mentioned, Open2Study is operated by OUA. Since there has been no attempt at monetization I can only assume that O2S is intended primarily as a promotion tool and lead generator--that is to say, it will raise the profile of the contributing universities and direct more students to their (paid) courses. Looking at the O2S site this certainly seems to be the case. Every course has links for 'further study' which jump straight into OUA course applications and every page has a header bar with links to OUA, OTI (Open Training Institute--also owned by OUA) and e3learning (owned by... well you get the idea). In another indication of poor maintenance, many of the university course links are broken leading either to discontinued courses or simply 404 missing page reports.
So what is going on? 2013 was a busy time for OUA with the launch of O2S being swiftly followed by the acquisition of e3learning (a corporate and compliance trainer) and the launch of OTI (a vocational training provider). I have to wonder whether they were over-ambitious, whether they were in danger of losing focus on their core activity of coordinating enrolment in their constituent universities and whether O2S failed to live up to expectations in terms of producing new students for them. Given that the majority of O2S students are foreign (ie not Australian residents) most will have limited interest in pursuing studies with OUA (even though many courses are offered internationally). Moreover, student numbers have plateaued over the last couple of years with most courses attracting around 500-1500 students per presentation which is tiny compared to the likes of Coursera or edX. Maybe OUA is wondering if the returns justify the cost.
Open2Study serves a niche which is not particularly well-addressed by other sites. It's courses, although technically fairly limited, are easy to access and have a very regular format which, I think, makes it especially attractive to new learners--even if they do subsequently move on to greater challenges elsewhere. It would be a pity to see the site close or drift into stagnation but I'm far from confident in OUA's continued interest in or commitment to the project. To be fair, providing free education to a worldwide audience does not feature in any part of OUA's charter or aims so maybe we shouldn't be too harsh if they choose to 'pull the plug'.
O2S was launched in March 2013 and I was among the early adopters completing my first course (Teaching Adult Learners) in June. It's initial target was to have 50 courses on line by the end of 2013 and it pretty much achieved this having opened the latest courses for enrolment in late 2013 for a first presentation early in 2014. Early results were promising with a steady, if undramatic, increase in student numbers and an enviably high completion rate; research published on site indicated 30% completion which was some 4-5 times better than other platforms. There are a number of reasons why this rate was so high which I might come back to another time but the short length, introductory level and limited assessment doubtless contributed.
As 2014 progressed I began to have some concerns about the platform and these were shared by a number of other students on the (rather ramshackle) community forums. There were, for example, a number of platform issues which had been raised but remained unresolved months later (and, indeed, are still outstanding over two years later). No new courses were or have been released since the initial roll out of 50 and one of that batch, The Art of Painting and Drawing, was withdrawn under mysterious circumstances. There was no public announcement or explanation of its withdrawal but a staff poster some time later reported that it was for 'quality reasons'. It seemed fine to me when I took it but then I'm no artist!
In the two years that have passed since O2S last released a new course there has been very little evidence of activity. In fact, about the only signs of life seen are sporadic blog postings and the fairly regular appearance of staff posters making consistently reassuring sounds on the community forums. When challenged, they told me that it had always been planned to follow the initial roll out by a period of review--but two years? Moreover, although it might not be apparent to students there was a lot of improvement work going on 'behind the scenes'--but surely after two years we should have seen some results from this work?
What worries me is not only the dearth of new material but also the failure to address very long standing maintenance and functional issues. A couple of examples may help to make this clearer. O2S uses a badge system to encourage students (so-called gamification) but there have been problems with the issuing of some categories of badges since at least summer 2013. There was also a chat facility on the site which was taken off-line 'temporarily', due to performance issues--again over two years ago. On a functional front, the community forums lack a working search function or any way to sort or filter posts. All these problems have been repeatedly acknowledged by O2S staff but there is no obvious movement towards a resolution. While improving the forums or reintroducing the chat facility might conceivably require some substantial effort, fixing a broken badge issuing algorithm seems like the work of an afternoon. Is there really anyone behind the staff usernames on the forums and blog posts?
As with many issues in MOOCs and open education generally, I suspect the answers are down to money. As I mentioned, Open2Study is operated by OUA. Since there has been no attempt at monetization I can only assume that O2S is intended primarily as a promotion tool and lead generator--that is to say, it will raise the profile of the contributing universities and direct more students to their (paid) courses. Looking at the O2S site this certainly seems to be the case. Every course has links for 'further study' which jump straight into OUA course applications and every page has a header bar with links to OUA, OTI (Open Training Institute--also owned by OUA) and e3learning (owned by... well you get the idea). In another indication of poor maintenance, many of the university course links are broken leading either to discontinued courses or simply 404 missing page reports.
So what is going on? 2013 was a busy time for OUA with the launch of O2S being swiftly followed by the acquisition of e3learning (a corporate and compliance trainer) and the launch of OTI (a vocational training provider). I have to wonder whether they were over-ambitious, whether they were in danger of losing focus on their core activity of coordinating enrolment in their constituent universities and whether O2S failed to live up to expectations in terms of producing new students for them. Given that the majority of O2S students are foreign (ie not Australian residents) most will have limited interest in pursuing studies with OUA (even though many courses are offered internationally). Moreover, student numbers have plateaued over the last couple of years with most courses attracting around 500-1500 students per presentation which is tiny compared to the likes of Coursera or edX. Maybe OUA is wondering if the returns justify the cost.
Open2Study serves a niche which is not particularly well-addressed by other sites. It's courses, although technically fairly limited, are easy to access and have a very regular format which, I think, makes it especially attractive to new learners--even if they do subsequently move on to greater challenges elsewhere. It would be a pity to see the site close or drift into stagnation but I'm far from confident in OUA's continued interest in or commitment to the project. To be fair, providing free education to a worldwide audience does not feature in any part of OUA's charter or aims so maybe we shouldn't be too harsh if they choose to 'pull the plug'.
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