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Month: February 2013

MOOC: Self-Service Education?

February 18, 2013

As the IT director for Sainsburys pointed out at BETT a couple of weeks ago ‘self-service’ caused a revolution in retail during the 20th century. It allowed for greater choice, efficiency and of course scale. It put the ‘super’ in supermarket in the same way that the web has put the (potential) ‘massive’ into MOOC.

At first glance the current wave of publicity-garnering MOOCs appear to be the equivalent of self-service education. Big out-of-town locations for education with an increasing range of products that you are free to browse at leisure.

Pick a product and pay for accreditation as you pass through the tills…

Lost in the supermarket
CC-NC-ND http://www.flickr.com/photos/sputnik57/3583618864/

This perhaps is a little disingenuous though as there is more effort required than simply putting a course in your basket to gain validation. Automated testing and peer assessment are legitimate ways of assessing levels of knowledge and, if properly designed, increasing understanding. This is the real challenge for MOOCs, as it is for any course; how can we encourage students to think? How do we best mix the ingredients we have available to increase the chances that those engaging with our courses will finish them with *both* increased knowledge and increased understanding? – I hope we can all agree that teaching with a view to increasing understanding is a large part of what higher education institutions are for(?)

I have heard teaching described as ‘what you have to do because there are more of them than there are of you’, it’s inherently about dealing with scale. In this sense many of the pedagogical challenges faced by the designers of MOOCs are the same as those to be found in face-to-face or non-massive courses. The danger though is that xMOOC style self-service education favours those who already equipped with the intellectual and academic techniques required to interrogate a subject. How do we encourage those who don’t have the necessary higher-education ‘literacies’ to wade through swathes of video lectures and online resources? One answer is already hiding in the MOOC format: the ‘event’.

MOOCs generally have a start and finish date which makes them a form of slow-burn event. Even though the web has an always-on, always-connected, constant-flow paradigm it is still largely event driven. We are drawn to specific moments in time which act as way-points in the ceaseless river of information and social noise. MOOCs are useful island in this river with a beginning, middle and end, a simple narrative we can organise around and hopefully contribute to even if we don’t choose to listen to the whole story. The principle of the event can be taken further though as I believe it is highly compelling, especially in an online context. This is what I’m focusing on with the new Oxford Connect format.

Educators and technologists have become adept at putting-the-curriculum-online but we have yet to master the nuances of the live event outside of the lecture theatre. Pi Day Live, the pilot event for Oxford Connect, is designed to be a moment in time where hundreds of participants gather online to take part in collective activity. It will be highly ‘Evented’ (an idea originally attached to ‘virtual worlds’ but which is broadly applicable), encouraging participants to be as Resident as possible for a short period. My hope is that in time this live format will become a valuable way of communicating ideas, concepts and research from Oxford. I envisage this format being used as part of large-scale online courses, incorporating the fellowship of live events to support communities of learners and to act as milestones in a larger pedagogical structure.

Perhaps the live event is what is missing from xMOOCs and the expertise of the connectivists is what’s needed to counter a self-service mentality which disenfranchises those without with the literacies required to go-it-alone in online learning?

 

David White Follow

Head of Digital Education and Academic Practice @UAL. Digital Visitors & Residents guy. Principal Fellow of @AdvanceHE and President of @A_L_T

daveowhite
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ual University of the Arts London @ual ·
29 Mar

To coincide with the launch of the Doctoral School, UAL is funding 7 Postgraduate Research Studentships to commence in the 2023/24 academic year.

Find out more: https://bit.ly/3yOrHT6

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a_l_t ALT - alt.ac.uk @a_l_t ·
20 Mar

We are delighted to announce the full line up for our 2023 ALT Awards judging panel! https://go.alt.ac.uk/judges2023 The Awards will open for submissions in a few weeks, so keep your eye out on #altc for more info!

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marendeepwell Dr Maren Deepwell @marendeepwell ·
16 Mar

I may be biased... but this is THE #edtech event to get involved in this year: Join our Co-Chairs @Lawrie and @santanuvasant and help make this a conference to remember #altc #altc23 - CfP now open https://twitter.com/A_L_T/status/1636335269895913472

ALT - alt.ac.uk @A_L_T

The call for proposals for the ALT Annual Conference 2023 is now open! Looking through the digital lens: 30 years of Leading People, Digital and Culture, 5th - 7th September 2023, The Oculus, University of Warwick, UK. #altc https://go.alt.ac.uk/3Z7yyCd

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opennetlearn OpenNetLearn @opennetlearn ·
6 Mar

Coinciding with #OEWeek23, we start today topic 1 of #ONL231 about #OnlineParticipation and #DigitalLiteracies. We welcome once again @daveowhite as special guest for today's webinar and next week's #TweetChat: https://www.opennetworkedlearning.se/onl231-course-overview/topic-1-online-participation-and-digital-literacies/

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hannahchyde Hannah @hannahchyde ·
2 Mar

A thread of events and opportunities in Digital Education @UAL happening over the next month :

@gashnois @Chri5rowell @daveowhite

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