MOOC Reflections

My goal is to offer a MOOC in the fall.  To that end, I recently signed up as a student in several MOOCs.  As most of you know, a MOOC is a massive open online class course.  Many are free, although they may include a certificate for the participate upon completion, usually with a fee.  MOOCs cover a variety of subjects and include both formal and informal education.  The two I experienced were in the areas of biology and science education.  I was extremely excited about the biology MOOC since it was highly promoted, featured a world-class instructor from an ivy league university, and had the endorsement and support of a professional teachers organization.  I was expecting a challenging curriculum, an engaging online experience and the use of state-of-the-art online teaching instruction.  So, I guess 1 out of 3 isn’t bad, right?  What I got was a traditional lecture/quiz/homework format put online.  The lectures varied in length from 8 to nearly 20 minutes.  There were an average of 6-8 videos per unit each week. Each video included an assessment exercise afterward.  In most cases the assessment related to the video, but there were several times that the question asked was not in the featured lecture, but was actually in the next one in the sequence.  Each week included a problem set that sometimes was not related to the information.  I got good at finding answers with an internet search or using YouTube, much the same way some of our students do, most likely.  The most disappointing aspect of that MOOC was it did not utilize best practices in online teaching and learning.  I acknowledge it is more challenging to present deep scientific content in an online environment, but it can be done by chunking the information into smaller bits and presenting the bits in a logical manner.  Assessments related to the video lectures need to be relevant and tied to the information.  Simply taking a traditional lecture course and putting it online for the masses is not an effective model of a MOOC.
The science pedagogy course is much more along the lines of an effective online model.  It too uses video lectures, but they are succinct.  They employ a flipped classroom strategy called FIZZ (https://www.fi.ncsu.edu/project/fizz/).  The online discussions relate specifically to the content, which is chunked in effective segments.  In addition to the video lectures and online discussions, the instructor is making himself available through weekly live chats utilizing Twitter and a Chatzy chat room.  I would suspect it’s a function of the infrastructure of the capabilities of the host site, but the MOOC uses multiple sites for the course.  Participants login into one site, then are redirected to Google Chat for discussions, and Twitter and/or Chatzy for live interaction.  I know that no system is perfect, but that navigation bit may too much for some participants.  For example, this forces participants to create a Google account, which some may not have.  On one hand it’s good exposure to the Google suite of online tools, on the other, it may be more than students are willing to do.
So, takeaways for me as I think about doing a MOOC:  1.  Don’t resort to traditional lecture/quiz/problem set/exam format.  Use what’s known about best practices in online teaching and learning.  Live by the adage If it can’t be done as good as or better online, then don’t do it.
2.  Use as few interfaces as possible.  It’s best if the entire course is self-contained in one site.
3.  I like the notion of “live” chats.  That makes the instructor more real for the participants.
4.  Make expectations reasonable.  Don’t overburden participants with busy work…which is an old school traditional instructional approach.
5.  Be professional.  Your classroom is now the world and people are looking.
6.  Have fun and know that you will make mistakes.  The key is to not make the same ones twice.