Universities have been keen to explore innovative technologies to reach wider audiences and share some of their teaching and research globally. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are an example, having open enrolments and generally offering free access to course materials. These initiatives contribute to broadening of traditional forms of dissemination and support a wider learning community. Investigating how other educators see such opportunities including the possible reuse of these open courses in their own teaching spaces offers insights to how MOOCs initiatives and university outreach efforts are being valued. Educators might be asking their on-campus students to participate partially or fully in a MOOC and then they may supplement this online learning experience with classroom activities. As MOOCs are designed to function as standalone courses, how another educator incorporates a MOOC with their face-to-face course design to develop a blended learning experience involves further design and pedagogical choices. This approach is often referred to as “wrapping a MOOC”. The research sites of this study are cases where educators have been wrapping MOOCs that were created as part of the UCT MOOCs Project. We have engaged with educators involved in wrapping MOOCs, both outside the university and within the university through strategies such as informal courses or meetups. The intention of the research is to characterise the different forms of wrapping and their purposes. The research will draw on this characterisation and relate it to open practices and learning design that informed the course development. This analysis helps question some original MOOC design assumptions and identifies what could be changed to support wrapping, especially with regards to course structures and their features.
Presented at HELTASA 2017, 21-24 November, Durban, South Africa
http://www.ched.uct.ac.za/perspectives-south-african-mooc-takers-understanding-transitions-and-out-learning-and-work
1. Wrapped MOOCs:
What is being valued and reused?
Andrew Deacon, Tasneem Jaffer, Jeff Jawitz, Janet Small and Sukaina Walji
Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching
University of Cape Town
Presented at HELTASA 2017, 21-24 November, Durban, South Africa
2. Outline
• MOOCs at a residential university
• Wrapping MOOCs
• On-campus cases
• Off-campus cases
• Researching online moves
3. MOOCs occupy “in between” spaces
‘third spaces’ which are neither formal nor informal but draw on both the skills of
formal learning and the informal identities that have a kind of authenticity
(Farrow, 2014)
Traditional formal
courses
MOOCs
Informal learning
from books, web, …
High engagement,
but only reaching
small numbers
Lower engagement, but
reaching large numbers
https://philosopher1978.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/liveblog-catherine-cronin-keynote-at-altc-altc2014/
4. ‘Writing Your World’ MOOC launch
Max Price, 18 September 2017
… resources [need to be] accessible to a much
wider audience of people who will never be able to
come to UCT … or to university or to be able to give
up the time to study full-time - we need to be
exploring alternatives if we're going to create that
access and if we're going to ensure that many
more people benefit from higher education. …
5. Becoming a changemaker:
Introduction to Social
Innovation
Climate Change Mitigation in
Developing Countries
Julia Scientific
Programming
Understanding Clinical
Research: Behind the
Statistics
Education for All:
Disability, Diversity and
Inclusion
Medicine and the Arts:
Humanising Healthcare
What is a Mind?
Extinctions: Past and
Present
Writing your world
Organ Donation: From
Death to Life
On FutureLearn On Coursera
6. e.g. most degree programmes
e.g. flip class
Wrapped
Wrapped
Wrapped
Off-campus
Wrapped
7. Goals of UCT’s MOOC Project
• To showcase the teaching and research excellence of UCT
• To give exposure to African content and knowledge
• To profile key postgraduate programmes and research areas aligned
with the university’s strategic goals
• To support students in academic transitions
• To make UCT’s knowledge resources globally accessible
• To develop models and expertise in online learning that could be
deployed in mainstream degree programmes
8. Highlights
• 170,000 people have enrolled
• Average 16.4% of enrolments from Africa (5% platform avg)
• Largest enrolment to date is ‘What is a Mind?’ - over 46,000 people
• Highest certificates achieved is ‘Understanding Clinical Research’,
with over 1,500
• Coursera’s Learn-Act-Impact campaign features two UCT courses –
‘Introduction to Social Innovation’ and ‘Mitigating Climate Change’
• Continuous Professional Development (CPD) points for healthcare
practitioners taking ‘Organ Donation: From Death to Life’
9. UCT courses on ‘Top 50’ list:
• Understanding Clinical Research
• What is a Mind?
• Extinctions: Past and Present
Perceived value
https://www.class-central.com
11. Wrapping and blended learning
• Pedagogically wrapping MOOCs with some form of facilitation
• Example: As preparation for a seminar
• Example: As study group meetup
• Using a MOOC in a blended learning context
• Examples: Changing role of lectures, seminars or assessments
• An indicator of a MOOC’s value
• Example: Opportunity to reuse and repurpose
12. On-campus wrapping
Own wrapping Others wrapping
On-campus • flipped classroom
• replace teaching
• textbook-like resource
• prerequisite
• textbook resource in course
• required for essay assignment
UCT MOOC
examples
• Example 1: ‘Medicine and the Arts’,
‘Writing your World’
• Example 2: ‘What is a Mind?’
• Example 3: ‘Organ Donation’
• Example 1: ‘Understanding Clinical Research’
• Example 2: ‘Education for All’
• Example 3: ‘What is a Mind?’
13. Origins: Developed out of an existing
taught Masters course
Wrapped: Used in a flipped classroom
mode in Masters course
15. On-campus wrapping
• as a prerequisite for a course
• in a flipped classroom
• to replace teaching while facilitating tutorials or assessments
• to serve as a textbook-like resource for a taught course
• to provide tutorials or assessments for a taught course
• to replace a course while facilitating with online meetups
• …
16. Off-campus wrapping
Own wrapping Others wrapping
Off-campus • facilitated wrapped class • Facilitated support groups
• Part of a course
• Within a campaign
UCT MOOC
examples
• Example 1: ‘Becoming a changemaker‘
in a community development
programme
• Example 1: ‘Becoming a changemaker‘
• Example 2: ‘What is a Mind?’, ‘Becoming a
changemaker‘
• Example 3: ‘Climate Change Mitigation’,
‘Becoming a changemaker‘
17.
18. Becoming a changemaker: Introduction to social innovation
Wrapped with facilitators classes -
providing access, digital skills and
support to complete MOOC
19. Wrapped courses in library, Cape Town
Facilitated MOOCs
“entrepreneurship in
developing economies”
20. Coursera’s social impact campaigns
Coursera identified courses
addressing the social issues that
threaten stability #LearnActImpact
“Becoming a Changemaker” joined
the Education for Social Impact
Campaign growing awareness of
the UN Sustainable Development
Goals (Leiden University)
21. Off-campus wrapping
• Facilitation or a meetup
• Introducing other topics with facilitation
• Part of advocacy campaigns with networks
• …
22. Survey: Awareness about open licencing
Yes
60%
No
40%
Did the open licencing assist you to
make use of the course material? (N=48)
Not always clear from survey what
people reused
24. Researching changes with teaching online
• Residential universities are innovating online
• Points of view
• MOOC-takers – the learners
• MOOC-makers – the educators
• MOOC-wrappers – the reusers
• MOOC-produces – the developers
• MOOC-stakeholders – the university management
• Data
• Surveys and interviews being conducted
25. • Develop 12 MOOCs (2015-2017)
• Research educators’ open educational practices (2015-2016)
• Research what MOOC-takers value in UCT MOOCs (2017-2019)
Researching the UCT MOOCs Project
26. Stage 2
Deliver
Stage 3
Evaluate
Stage 1
Develop
Via materials
perspective
Legal
openness
Pedagogical
openness
Financial
openness
Open
Educational
Practices
MOOC
design
tools
MOOC
educator
trajectory
MOOC
making
cycle
Via learner
perspective
Via
institutional
perspective
OER adoption’s
influence on
educators’ OEP?
27. Conclusions
• Practices of wrapping MOOCs
• On-campus – innovation in pedagogy and designing flexible learning opportunities
• Off-campus – a place to start and develop new learning opportunities
• What is valued and reused
• Opens up opportunities for educators
• Well designed learning materials with comparatively simple access
• Way to openly share knowledge and showcase teaching
• Residential universities are seeking to innovate online
• Research is lacking to inform changes in modes of teaching
28. Project research
• Deacon, A., Jawitz, J., Small, J., Walji, S. (2017) MOOCs and Transitions: Pathways in and out of learning and
work. Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Conference of the South African Society for Engineering Education.
• Czerniewicz, L, Deacon, A, Glover, M, Walji, S. (2017) MOOC-making and open educational practices, Journal of
Computing in Higher Education.
• Czerniewicz, L., Deacon, A., Walji, S. & Glover, M. (2017). OER in and as MOOCs. In C. A. Hodgkinson-Williams
& P. B. Arinto (Eds) Adoption and Impact of OER in the Global South.
• Czerniewicz, L. Deacon, A., Walji, S. & Glover, M. (2017b). Chapter 10: OER in and as MOOCs. In: C. Hodgkinson-
Williams & P. B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and Impact of OER in the Global South.
• Czerniewicz, L, Glover, M, Deacon, A, Walji, S. (2016) MOOCs, openness and changing educator practices: an
Activity Theory case study. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Networked Learning.
• Walji, S, Deacon, A, Small, J, Czerniewicz, L. (2016) Learning through engagement: MOOCs as an emergent
form of provision. Distance Education, 37(2):208-223.
• Chapman, SA, Goodman, S, Jawitz, J, Deacon, A. (2016) A strategy for monitoring and evaluating massive open
online courses. Evaluation and Program Planning, 57(August):55–63.
• Czerniewicz, L, Deacon, A, Small, J, Walji, S. (2014) Developing world MOOCs: A curriculum view of the MOOC
landscape. Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies, 2(3):122-139.