When Content is Cheaper than Chips

What happens to credit?

Image courtesy of artemisphoto, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Network of Practice lunchtime presentation Friday 4th October 2013Mary Karpel

“There are two basic options the way I see it: fundamentally change the way higher education is delivered, or resign ourselves to never having enough of it”

MOOCs and Open Education

A tangled relationship

cMOOCs: the connectivist MOOC. Based on a connectivism theory of learning with networks developed informally;

xMOOCs: the content-based MOOC which follows a more behaviourist approach.

Emphasise connected, collaborative learning and courses are built around a group of like-minded ‘individuals’ who are relatively free from institutional constraints. Provides a platform to explore new pedagogies beyond traditional classroom settings and, as such, tend to exist on the radical fringe of HE.

An instructional model, essentially an extension of the pedagogical models practised within the institutions themselves, which is arguably dominated by the “drill and grill” instructional methods with video presentations, short quizzes and testing

profit and non-profit

MOOCs

Coursera is an education company that partners with the top universities and organizations in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Our technology enables our partners to teach millions of students rather than hundreds

Open Education Alliance

Private company owned by the OU created December 2012UK’s first provider of MOOCs.Currently 26 partners and course providers: UK and international universities and cultural institutions including the British Library, British Museum and British Council.

Initiative For Profit Free to Access Certification Fee Institutional Credits

Coursera √ √ √ √ x

Udacity √ √ √ √ x

edX x √ √ x

P2PU x √ x x

KEY

X Not a feature√ Feature Present√X Features partially present

Differences between initiatives

Open?

Cable Green, global education director of Creative Commons

“Free is free, but open is free plus legal rights to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the resources”

Open Education Resource University

a virtual collaboration of like-minded institutions committed to creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal

academic credit.

Coordinate assessment and credentialising services on a cost recovery basis for participating education institutions to ensure credible qualifications and corresponding course articulation among anchor partners.

UKOER programme

2009 -10 Jisc and the HE Academy commenced the first, pilot phase, of the UKOER programme. Funded by HEFCE it explored issues associated with OER release. More than 80 UK universities were involved.2010-2011 phase 2 began to explore the discovery and use of open educational resources, specifically by academics.2011-2012 final phase, turned its attention to the use of OER approaches in the pursuit of particular strategic, policy and societal goals.

POERUP aims to study the end-user–producer communities behind OER initiatives. By comparing in-depth European case-studies to selected non-European ones we will refine and elaborate recommendations to formulate a set of action points that can be applied to ensuring the realisation of successful, lively and sustainable OER communities.

• Building and linking communities of open practice

• MOOCs and open courses• Academic practice, development

and pedagogy• Open policy, research, scholarship

and access• Students as users and co-creators

The hard bit though will be how the institutions provide the assessment to enable students to get an accredited degree, and whether such a degree or qualification will be accepted by national accreditation or degree assessment boards. Tony Bates

Many job descriptions include a requirement like “BA or BS in EE/CS/CE or equivalent experience.” We want to create a collection of badges that a top employer, like Google, will publicly recognize as “equivalent experience.” This goes straight for �the jugular, demonstrating that badges are a viable alternative to formal university education.

David Wiley

a new online standard to recognize and verify learning

"learning looks very different today than traditionally imagined. Legitimate and interest-driven learning is occurring through a multitude of channels outside of formal education, and yet much of that learning does not "count" in today's world. There is no real way to demonstrate that learning and transfer it across contexts or use it for real results,“

Mozilla's Erin Knight

it does require every badge to provide authentication for the organization issuing the badge and for the user receiving it, as well as a link to the criteria needed to earn it and the evidence of the learner meeting that criteria

A Disaggregated Future for HE?

Can we expect to see higher education institutions making difficult choices around focusing on developing truly world-class expertise in one or two of their functions and outsourcing the others?

A fully accredited university that offers no courses whatsoever; instead, it has chosen to focus on assessing learning and awarding degrees. It refers students to partner institutions when they need to take a formal course or to access library collections before taking their exams.

University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first non-profit, tuition-free, degree-granting online academic institution dedicated to opening access to higher education globally for all qualified individuals, despite financial, geographic or societal constraints.

Founded in 2009 to date, more than 1500 students from 137 countries have been admitted.

“Credit does not appear to be a major motivation for learners who have chosen MOOCs so far; however, there are clear signs that this will change.

“The burning issues for MOOCs are the exploration of a viable business model and the accreditation of MOOC learning.”

“For the time being, discussion of the models for assessing learning, which would be essential to credentialed outcomes, is not highly developed. However, some new potential methods, specific to MOOC technology, are starting to emerge.”

September 2013A survey of MOOC and ODL literature which aims to capture the state of knowledge and opinion about MOOCs and ODL, how they are evolving, and to identify issues that are important, whether consensual or controversial.

Title: MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher EducationAuthors: Li Yuan (CETIS), Stephen Powell (CETIS)Date: March 2013URI: http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2013/667Text

David Wiley and John Hilton IIIBrigham Young University, USANovember – 2009Openness, Dynamic Specialization, and the Disaggregated Future of Higher EducationThe International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning Vol 10 no 5

BIS Research Paper No 130https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/240193/13-1173-maturing-of-the-mooc.pdf