This book provides an updated look at issues that comprise the online learning experience creation process. As online learning evolves, the lines and distinctions between various classifications of courses have blurred and often vanished. Classic elements of instructional design remain relevant at the same time that newer concepts of learning experience are growing in importance. However, problematic issues new and old still have to be addressed. This handbook explores many of these topics for new and experienced designers alike, whether creating traditional online courses, open learning experiences, or anything in between.
A Call for OER: MOOC Design
As MOOCs continue to evolve through business strategies, design teams are lacking formal and informal spaces to share best practices for MOOC design. Why are design teams not communicating their process, analysis, design and lessons learned?
Typically, I enroll in at least one MOOC per year to get inspired about asynchronous, distance learning design. Not only does it provide me with an opportunity to be in the student seat, but it also exposes me to a community of knowledge and fresh perspectives. Also, it affords me a chance to see what types of technologies and design elements are used to deliver information and motivate students to completion. I can honestly say that I have taken 6 MOOCs since 2013 and successfully completed 5 of them. Recently, I have taken a MOOC with a two friends to study the effectiveness of MOOCs as a model for professional development. We have shared many reflective discussions about the MOOC, but one thought that keeps circling around my brain is the absence of openness in MOOC design.
Based on my experiences, academic articles and my scope as an instructional designer, I have compiled a list of MOOC design recommendations.
- Know Your Audience.
- Cast a large net to understand who your prospective learners and their needs, motivations, and interests.
- For example, if your target audience is PreK-12 educators, would you launch a MOOC in the summer?
- Conduct a Needs Assessment.
- Survey prospective learners to meet learning gaps.
- Determine if your course will be teacher-centered or learner-centered.
- For example, is the course author guiding content design because they are a super-star in the field? Will people enroll in this course only because the course author is highly regarded in the field?
- Utilize Data to Drive Course Design.
- Establish a relationship with an Instructional Designer or Design Team.
- Develop learning objectives supporting the needs and expectations of prospective learners.
- Design assessment on learner’s needs and interests.
- Peer Review activities are very constructive for demonstrating knowledge and authentic application.
- Quizzes and Summative Assessments are well suited for competency-based learning outcomes.
- Academic literature supports problem- and project-based learning in MOOCs
- Social learning opportunities within the learning platform to support collective-knowledge and communication.
- Incorporate design elements including high-quality and professionally developed resources.
- Videos are extremely common in MOOCs and require thoughtful production to keep learners engaged.
- Design for diversity.
- Include rubrics to ease grading expectations and to guide peer-to-peer activities.
- Determine the length of the course and anticipated hours of learning per lesson/week.
- Assess the quality of the learning design and student outcomes through an iterative design process.
- Monitor and gather social media activity, learning platform analytics, video and media data, and assessment data.
- Offer a mid- and/or end- of course survey.
- Engage in Human Interactions.
- Utilize Social Media platforms, especially blogs, Twitter and Facebook groups.
- It creates content development, community, sharing, and helps to ensure that learning is more than a one-time event.
- Show visible support through personalized course announcements and discussion forums from the course instructor and/or TAs.
- Utilize Social Media platforms, especially blogs, Twitter and Facebook groups.
- Share and Evolve as a Community.
- Keep the communication flowing to the learning community through social media platforms and end of course email announcements.
- Share course findings for other MOOC design teams, the OER community, and academic literature.
Have you designed a MOOC or enrolled in a MOOC that made you reflect on the design? What are some best practices or recommendations for MOOC design to share for the greater good? I look forward to hearing from you!
Design Reflections on #OpenEdMOOC
I can’t help but be critical of the #OpenEdMOOC, Introduction to Open Education, hosted by edX. With as much excitement that was generated by the Open Community prior to the start of the MOOC, I feel that we were let down by Week 3 of the course. Here’s a recap of my critique by week…
- Week 1: Why Open Matters.
- We started off with a BANG! and excitement was in the air, or least for me it was. Our Twitter hashtag was very active, learners were posting in course discussion forums who they are and why they are interested in participating and we were individually blogging about our niche in the Open community. Here’s what I shared at the end of the week, Applying OER to Design.
- We learned foundational knowledge of OER and enjoyed an informal, casually-staged interview of the course instructors, David Wiley and George Siemens.
- After viewing the course content, we were dropped off into supportive and relevant external content, including a few odd videos (something about a large cookie and a screencast with a distracting desktop background of what looked like planet Mars) from other OER evangelists.
- Though I was engaged with the content, I was easily distracted by the looseness and the misalignment of the resources. A summary, instructor commentary or simple instructions on how this curated work was collected, vetted, and aligned to the lesson outcomes would have gone a long way. For example, there is an external content page with a video and the following text written at the bottom of the screen, “I discuss the importance of openness and the role it plays in knowledge, communication and learning.” Who is “I” and why should I watch his screencast?
- By the end of the lesson, we received a course announcement encouraging us to share our blogs and summarizing course content to prepare us for the next lesson.
- Week 2: Copyright, the Public Domain and the Commons
- With the announcement generating me to remain engaged and motivated in the course, I watched the next set of informal, casually-staged interview about the dystopian, copyright regime. It was quite interesting and I enjoyed David’s and George’s perspectives.
- Realizing that the course structure would include interviews followed by a series of loosely aligned resources, I began to skim and select the most meaningful resources to my interest and practice.
- Since I didn’t pay for the course, I remained active by blogging end of lesson reflections, Stewards of Sharing, and joining the conversation on Twitter.
- Week 3: The 5R’s, CC, and Open Licensing
- I almost missed this lesson! We failed to receive additional course announcements from the instructors for the remainder of the course. This was pretty concerning. How are learners to stay engaged in the MOOC (which is already hard considering its a MOOC) when it appears that no one is facilitating or engaging the dialogue? Did I have a different experience because I didn’t pay for the full version of the course?
- Same interview style, same clothing, and same room to deliver content. However, the 5R’s is where David Wiley really shines. Again I was engaged with the content, but the design of this course began to weigh on me. Anyway, I still took some time to reflect and post in my blog, Awareness of the aaRRRRRgh’s.
- Also, there was some weird coding and formatting issues in the course LMS. I’m not sure if there was course update or if there were issues with my access. Either way, it was hard to navigate Wiley’s keynote address video.
- Week 4: Creating, Finding, and Using OERs
- At this point, we were mid-way through the course. According to the syllabus, we were to have a metacognitive reflection on processes and engage in OER evangelism on our campus’. Even though I did both, I’m not sure we had enough course substance to begin advocating for OER. It’s challenging to go from foundational knowledge building to articulating practice in 2-3 weeks.
- Same interview style, same clothing, and same room to deliver content. Maybe mix it up and put in a green screen?
- The most value I had in this lesson was reading other’s blogs and resources, specifically on “Open Pedagogy”. I began to rely on the Open community to keep me motivated to complete the course.
- Week 5: Research on OER Impact and Effectiveness
- Blah, blah, blah.
- So, this lesson I took the least amount of notes.
- I stopped watching the videos. Instead, I read the transcripts.
- Change your clothes! Change the background of your interviews! Maybe go to the bar and talk about OER research design over a few beers…This is a crazy 6-week long, marathon interview!
- Did the instructors forget about this course? No reminder or check-in announcements?
- Hello, is anyone out there?
- Week 6: The Next Battle for Openness: Data, Algorithms and Competency Mapping
- By the end of the course we were to create a OER-module with only OER resources. While I took this course, I have been working on 2 course revisions. I revised an entire course with OER resources, but I’m not sure that I was able to do that from taking this MOOC. Of course, I learned the value of OER, but to go from foundational knowledge to articulation to practice within 6-weeks is a bit of a stretch with the materials and resources presented, especially if you are new to OER.
- Lesson 6 talks about the future of OER in terms of big data, and the course ends there. Where do we go from here? It seems that lesson 6 is a huge topic, and not specifically aligned to the course outcomes. Hmmmm. I love learning analytics and data, to discuss a mash-up of OER and data was a dream come true… maybe a new MOOC?
- If data needs to be open and transparent, I beg to ask, will we see the data on this MOOC? How much effort and energy was created in blog or twitter communication? What were the activity levels generated by students in this MOOC? Did activity levels drop off with the lack of course announcements? What were our most discussed topics? Did we form our own network? Will we continue the conversation?
I would love to hear feedback from the rest of the participants in this MOOC. I realize that MOOC are design challenges within themselves. However, after successfully completing 5 other MOOCs, I feel that this particular course has a lot of opportunity to improve. What do you think?
Awareness of aaRRRRRgh’s
In the recent #OpenEdMOOC we reviewed the “5 R’s” to consider licensing curriculum. And here’s where it gets tricky… its not that educators don’t want to use OERs in their courses, it’s that creators aren’t sure they want to be contributors to OER. There’s serious concern with incentivizing and prioritizing OER adoption at a large, research institutions. Who “owns” the content? The creator or the institution?
For example, in a course development process, the course author (faculty member) will vet and select the course readings required for the course. This is typically a very time-consuming process. Typically, course authors are aware and interested in providing course materials that can be distributed at lower or no additional cost to the student. Anyway, once the author chooses the course materials, I determine:
- How much of the text will be used, is it under the 10-15% rule?
- If course materials be accessed electronically through our library?
- If we need to request copyright permission to embed the content in our course?
Sharing Stewards
In the second lesson of the OpenEdMOOC, the instructors provided a comprehensive overview to the very grey areas of Copyright, the Public Domain and the Commons. Though the course content focuses on US copyright and case studies, we learned that sharing information (legally) is fundamentally different across the world, often by region. One of the points that resonated with me is everything is copyrighted by default, you have to opt out if you want to share. Licensure systems have been created and regulated to ensure that sharing is costly and ineffective, for example Mickey Mouse.
As an instructional designer, we can advocate and consult course authors/instructors about open resources. However, we must be able to work through a process to determine if the material intend to share is copyright protected and if there’s a licence or permission request that covers use. Though there isn’t an official policing governing body to manage material useage, the internet has become a vehicle to copy and share materials at mass proportion. If a creative tangible object goes “viral” and wasn’t distributed appropriately, most likely the internet community will socially regulate. And that’s where “commoning” comes into play. Commoning is the communal practice to develop, steward, sustain and reiterate values to share and distribute materials. Instructional designers can be stewards in this social sharing system by modeling best practices, educating other educators, and creatively enhancing (or customizing) materials for educational use.
Applying OER to Design
What does OER mean to me as an Instructional Designer (ID)? Pretty much everything. I frequently say to my colleagues, “we’re better in numbers”. By the end of the first week of Introduction to Open Education edX MOOC, I feel that I may have found my tribe who embodies that concept. I love communities of practice and actively seek ways to create and support relationships in design. I feel like OER has connected my beliefs on sharing, communicating, using crowdsourcing to improve and critique designs and technology, developing relationships, creating creative resources and ensuring licence compliance.
As an instructional designer, I’m constantly creating, utilizing, and citing media resources to embed in online learning spaces. These online courses are never complete because content is constantly evolving. If education is knowledge transfer, or fundamentally education is sharing, then (as an ID) I’m in a unique position to help deliver the expertise of the course author/SME into an engaging and meaningful design for students to contribute to the field. If design is an iterative process, then collaborating and receiving critique from peers is one way that design could enter the world of OER. In addition, I actively consult faculty on technologies, media and resources to embed in online courses. Once we determine course materials and resources, I work through the copyright, commons and public domain process to determine how to share resources in a course. It can be quite an arduous (and long) process!
I enjoyed the first week of the course and appreciated the large scope to cover all types of education resources (ie. curriculum, pedagogy, code, technology tools, etc.) and not just textbooks. As someone who likes to take knowledge and put it into practice, I’m actively designing a course that will only use OER. Can’t wait to share!