MOOC as a Learning Environment and its Educational Values

1. MOOC as a Learning Environment and its Educational Values Abeer Watted and Miri Barak abeerw@tx.technion.ac.il bmiriam@tx.technion.ac.il

2. Lecture Outline • Brief Background • MOOC survey • Conclusions

3. What is a MOOC? • A web-based course designed to support a large number of participants. • Recent development in the area of online distance education • Providing free,credit-less and accessiblehigh-quality education to the masses (Pappano, 2012; Cormier & Siemens, 2010).

4. Who participate in MOOCs? http://moocmoocher.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/ihts-addendum-some-answers-to-who-studies-a-mooc/

5. Level of Education http://moocmoocher.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/ihts-addendum-some-answers-to-who-studies-a-mooc/

6. The different MOOC platforms http://www.diygenius.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-moocs/

7. Massive Open Online Courses 110 http://www.online-phd-programs.org/mooc/

8. Subject Distribution https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-12-22-moocs-in-2013-breaking-down-the-numbers

9. What Does a MOOC consist of? • Short lecture videos • Learning tasks for individually or group work. • Quizzes • Peer-graded assignments • Discussion forums

10. MOOC Survey • 49 gifted undergraduate students who study at Al-Qasemi college. • Selected a MOOC according to their preferences • Participated in three weeks study • Answered quizzes, Posted responses in forums, Communication with others • Provided an evaluation

11. Methods and Instruments • The qualitative methodology was used in this study (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003). • An online survey. • Semi-structured interviews. • Both tools were administered at the end of the activity and were used to establish data triangulation (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003).

12. Educational goals • 58 educational goals were indicated • Between two to three goals per MOOC.

13. Course structure and Teaching methods • MOOCs span between 5 -15 weeks • Two to eleven lecture videos each weak. • 81% of the lectures span 8 to 20 minutes • 71% integrated quiz questions • 76% included power point presentations • The lecturer used visualizations  and animations

14. Course structure and Teaching methods • In all the MOOCs, many forums were administrated. • They were divided by subjects • In 71% of the courses the lecturer was very active in the forums •  All the analyzed MOOCs displayed recommended sources for reading such as Wikibooks. • Only one MOOC included e-book.

15. Course Requirements • Quizzes included: weekly quizzes, integrated quiz in the lecturer videos, mid-term exams, final exams, homework assignments. • Peer graded assignments included : final Project and reflection • 48 assignments were pointed out, (2-3) assignments per MOOC

16. The role of the lecturer in the MOOC • All the lecturers in the analyzed MOOCs provided oral presentations of the learning materials. • The lecturers' roles included: • Answering questions • solving problems • sending messages to encourage students to participate in forums • leading the students to recommended sources for reading • sending e-mails and announcements related to the course

17. Students' views about the educational values of MOOCs • 96% will recommend MOOCs to their friend . • 90% will repeat this experience. • More than 88% were contributed  from the MOOCs. • Only six students asserted that they were not contributed from the courses  

18. Students competencies • Linguistic competence in English "It was great, the course was rich, I think my good English helped me to understand the new subjects, and to communicate with other people from different countries in the world." • Prior knowledge in the subject matter I took a MOOC in biology about viruses; biology was the subject which I chose to study in high school, this helped me to understand the subject matter and encouraged me to study other MOOCs in the same discipline” • Broad-mindedness "Learning via MOOC gave me an opportunity to meet different people from different religions and cultures. This made me think in a different way… sometimes religion makes us afraid somehow to ask sensitive questions, but the group helped me... they taught me that in order to be a special person, you have to make special deeds. Furthermore; people from different backgrounds, brought with them new ideas that we could share. This enabled us to develop more valuable outcomes." • Self-regulation and self-efficacy • Communication skills

19. The Effective MOOC • Clarity of explanations "The course was designed in high quality, the videos were attractive; you can watch them as many times as you want. The presentations were very obvious and clear. Although it was in English, it was very simple and clear” • Visualization of abstract concepts: "The course was very organized and the videos were rich, the lecturer wrote many rules of physics on the board, he used many 3D visualizations, pictures, and animations in order to make us feel like astronauts". • Support and communication: "Learning via MOOC was a worthwhile experience. At the beginning, it was very difficult for me to understand some issues, but when I participated in the forums, peers helped me quite a lot… they answered my questions and also directed me to some books. By the way, we also had a Facebook group in which we discussed some issues related to the course materials" • Variety of assignments: "I think the evaluation tools were fair, they included diverse assignments, which included some challenges. That's what I like about them and the grading percentage was divided carefully."

20. Conclusions • MOOCs have a great potential to change the learning strategies and environments in higher education. • Students' learning competencies and course design features are important factors in determining the educational values of a MOOC. • The results of this study may enhance students' continuity in MOOCs and may help educators develop constructivist MOOCs.