SPOCs and MOOCs

Description

I attended a conference in 2013 and first heard about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). As they began to gain traction, I enrolled on a couple as a student. This gave me an excellent overview of the premise and instructional approaches of MOOCs. This included collaborative learning, asynchronous communication, flexible learning, informal assessment, multimedia content, digital badging and applied practice (Deng et al., 2019; Navarro Ortega & Pilar Munuera Gómez, 2019; Robab et al., 2019; Drake et al., 2015). From this experience, I felt able to start applying these pedagogies to my practice at Hull.

In collaboration with Mike Ewen from the Teaching Enhancement Academy, my first foray into this form of teaching was The Digital Researcher (DigiResHull). We framed this course as a Small Private Online Course (SPOC). This is pedagogically influenced by MOOCs, but is delivered at a smaller scale and is only accessible to a closed community – in this case, University of Hull staff and students. The first implementation of The Digital Research had an uptake of over 150 sign-ups with 51 completions. This represented 100s of hours of engagement with the course, demonstrated through both assessment and statistics within the course platform. A completion rate of a third was impressive for this kind of course. This course has been delivered to four cohorts and has approached 200 completions.

With the success of DigiResHull, Mike and I collaborated on the delivery of two other courses based on the same model. The second course was The Digital Teacher (DigiTeachHull), which has also been delivered four times. The third course to use this format is Digital Skills (DigiSkillsHull), which ran for the first time in September 2021. Between these courses, we have over 500 completions and hundreds and hundreds of hours of activity. Mike and I have presented individually and collaboratively on our experience with these courses (see evidence below).

Following my experience in delivering SPOCs at the University of Hull, I was appointed to help deliver the University of Hull’s first public MOOC on FutureLearn, University Preparation Course: Getting Ready for Success at University. This course is three weeks long, and I was actively involved in designing and planning the whole course with the rest of the team. I personally delivered all of the content for week two, which focused on the skills required for university study. I wrote all the copy, designed or chose the images, created the videos and typeset all my content into FutureLearn. This was a fantastic experience, and the course has had 3,000 enrollments over 5 runs.

I have since pitched, designed, developed and launched Being a Digital Researcher: Digital Skills for Effective Research. I am the Lead Educator for this MOOC, which has over 600 enrollments. For this MOOC, I created all my own images and video content.

Evidence

SPOCS: DigiHull

Statement of support: Mike Ewen, Head of the Teaching Excellence Academy, University of Hull:
Lee’s role in developing the DigiHull courses was vital. His ability to combine an understanding of how digital technologies can be applied with a broad approach to learning design ensured the courses were well-structured, meaningful and impactful. We have had over 900 enrolments across the programmes and received positive feedback throughout. Much of this can be attributed to Lee’s knowledgeable and enthusiastic contributions. We have seen evidence of impact across the campus, especially around using Canvas and related technologies. 

Statement of support: Paul Chin, Head of Teaching and Learning, University of Bath (former manager)
Lee also developed a highly successful Research SPOC with an expected initial audience of c.30 students but which attracted over 100 participants in the first course, including around 30 staff. Due to its popularity, Lee had to repeat the course. Lee’s commitment to student support is unquestionable, and he has always developed resources and guidance to improve their learning experience. As well as student support, Lee has positively influenced colleagues through various training and awareness-raising opportunities.

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Feedback from DigiResHull Survey

The first three DigiResHull cohorts were surveyed to ascertain longer-term impact. With 46 respondents, the survey provided good insight into how participants utilised their learning.

Here are some of the open-text comments from the DigiResHull Survey

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MOOCs: FutureLearn

Statement of support: Mike Ewen, Head of the Teaching Excellence Academy, University of Hull:
Lee has contributed to two of the university’s MOOC programmes. The role he undertook varied across the courses. Lee was central in leading the development of our Being a Digital Researcher course, continuing his work across the University. For the University Preparation course, Lee was a key team member, especially in skills and digital competency development.  

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University Preparation Course: Getting Ready for Success at University

The following feedback is from week 2, where I lead the content and technology

Impact on student learning

Comments from students also show the course helped them reflect and identify development opportunities:

Being a Digital Researcher: Digital Skills for Effective Research

Being a Digital Researcher: Digital Skills for Effective Research has over 600 sign-ups and is my first public MOOC as Lead Educator. The course is targeted to help develop digital skills that PGRs and academics need to ensure their research is efficient, impactful, and accessible, no matter their field.

Feedback: David Ojah, (FutureLearn student)
This is not the first course I did on this subject, but it is certainly one of the Best! I appreciate the time and effort expended, excellent work, I’ve learned so much. I thank you.

Feedback: George Manyika (FutureLearn student)
I am half way through my Master of Laws mini thesis and this course has opened my eyes on ways to improve my work , especially research wise and how to utilise other platforms and applications i took for granted.

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Scholarship

I have delivered the following conference presentations

Reflection

I love MOOCs as an approach to the delivery of higher education because the principles of large, open courses celebrate the free movement of knowledge, and the broadening of access to higher education is highly appealing. It was something I was keen to use in my own practice, though I realised I was not in the role or place in my career to launch an external MOOC. This did not, however, deter me. Using the learning principles of MOOC courses, I developed something more focused I could run within my institution. I had long run workshops for PG digital skills, and while these were popular, I never felt they were effective learning opportunities. To learn social media for scholarly communication, there needs to be application, and this is hard in a short workshop. I quickly realised the MOOC-style approach had potential. This is how the DigiResHull SPOC was born.

DigiResHull was a runaway success. As shown above, there was excellent feedback and rates of completion. Word quickly spread from participants to other colleagues, and there was a demand for another course run. More importantly, facilitating a SPOC within Canvas pushed the VLE beyond the use of most of our academics. The most significant feedback from academic participants was, “How do I do that with Canvas?”. I quickly realised there was potential to use the SPOC approach to address this question too. Mike’s Team from the Teaching Excellence Academy used my DigiResHull template to build DigiTeachHull. This shows a significant impact from DigiResHull as the pedagogic and technological approach was adopted for other purposes. This again followed through with DigiSkillsHull, a course designed to support university staff in developing their digital literacies.

While my SPOC courses are only available to the University of Hull, they gave me the perfect first-hand experience required for running a MOOC. This experience came when the University sought to engage with FutureLearn to raise its international profile and provide the public with a taster of a University of Hull experience. Given my leadership of the DigiHull SPOC courses, I was invited to participate in constructing the University’s first FutureLearn MOOC. This was an honour and a recognition of my work in this area – but there was also pressure to deliver. I was allocated week 2 of the University Preparation Course: Getting Ready for Success at University and was responsible for writing and developing all of the content (including videos and images – some of which you can see in the screenshots above).

Designing and Delivering the FutureLearn MOOC is one of the most enjoyable projects I have been involved in. Knowing that the content I have worked on is open and available to hundreds of projective students is a fantastic feeling. I also know I am supporting the University in raising its profile. The University Preparation Course has over 3,000 enrollments and has attracted a fair number of paid upgrades (this is commercially sensitive, so I cannot disclose).

Seeing the scale of the audience for this first FutureLearn MOOC, I quickly realised there would be potential to bring DigiResHull to the platform. The Hull-based SPOCs included Twitter activities, and people external to the University often asked to participate. While this was impossible with the Canvas-based SPOC, FutureLearn held this potential. I wrote the business case to develop DigiResHull as a MOOC, and Hull and FutureLearn quickly signed it off.

Building Being a Digital Researcher: Digital Skills for Effective Research was a very different process. My first FutureLearn course was written for the platform – this time, I was bringing across an existing product. As DigiResHull had utilised a lot of Open Source content, I had to produce new content as the licences would not allow commercial use. This was actually a liberating process, as it allowed me to provide an overarching narrative. There was also concern over the restrictions of the FutureLearn platform compared to the freedom of our own VLE; however, I was impressed with the consistency of the final result. The fact the course was proofed and approved by FutureLearn also adds to that consistency and quality. The course has retained a strong number of FutureLearn subscribers, so has been a commercial benefit to the University.

Now I have more experience with this form of delivery, I can’t wait to get involved in another MOOC. The only aspect I would change is the lead time for writing, creating and proofing the content. In all of my projects, the time input has been far beyond my estimations. I am not learning this from experience, and I need to be more realistic in the time taken to deliver these courses.

References

Deng, R., Benckendorff, P. & Gannaway, D. (2019) Progress and new directions for teaching and learning in MOOCs. Computers & Education, 129, 48-60.

Drake, R. J., O’Hara, M. T. & Seeman, E. (2015) Five Principles for MOOC Design: With a Case Study. Journal of Information Technology Education: Innovations in Practice, 14, 125-143.

Navarro Ortega, S. A. & Pilar Munuera Gómez, M. (2019) Accessibility and New Technology MOOC- Disability and Active Aging: Technological Support, Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2018. Cham, 2019//. Springer International Publishing.

Robab, S., Hosein, J., Alex Tze Hiang, S. & Jee Mei, H. (2019) Understanding MOOC Learners: Insights from Participation in Coursera MOOC. International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies (IJWLTT), 14(1), 93-112.

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Revisions for reassessment:
The most significant revision to this page is in the space of evidence. I have included Statements of support from my colleague Mike Ewen to help demonstrate my work in this space. I’ve also been able to draw on survey data to show DigiResHull impact, and have used quotes from students on FutureLearn to show my impact. I’ve better structured some of the existing links to show CPD, scholarship and leadership. I’ve also drawn on one activity to show how it impacted student learning.

I have rewritten the whole reflection to better reflect the journey, and also bring in the reputational aspects of the MOOC.

Since the original assessment, my experience has grown. I’ve become the Lead Educator on a MOOC, and have been able to draw upon learner feedback to demonstrate my competence in this area further.