7 things about MOOCs & UK HE

Report from the UUK May 2013 event: Open and online learning: Making the most of Moocs and other models.

Bologna University Students by micurs
Bologna University Students by micurs

This Universities UK event was aimed at senior staff in Higher Education (VCs, Pro-VCs, Registrars, Deans, Directors & the like). The delegates were mixed. I’d say around 50 UK HEIs were represented, by some of the above, but also a decent number of learning technology folk.  The presenters included 4 VCs & the Universities Minister, David Willetts.

1) A significant moment?

The UUK published MOOCs: Higher education’s digital moment? to coincide with the event and several of the speakers referred to the 2012 growth of MOOCs as a Napster moment or Amazon moment for HE (ie game-changing). This comes hot-on-the-heels of the IPPR / Pearson report An avalanche is coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead which talks of ‘disruption’ & the ‘unbundling’ of HE. It’s sensible to question the motives behind some of the rhetoric, but at the event, there seemed to be acceptance that significant change is underway.

2) To MOOC or not to MOOC… that is not the question

I think the day’s central question was not whether to MOOC, but how to respond to MOOCs & the changes they may bring. What’s your institution’s strategy going to be to deal with the changes ahead?

  • Will you look to optimise the campus experience by embracing digital & increasing quality contact time (Don Nutbeam, VC, University of Southampton)?
  • Will you develop a broad portfolio of on-campus/off-campus/no-campus offerings (Jeff Hayward, VP Knowledge Management & CIO, University of Edinburgh)?
  • And of course, will you offer MOOCs? If yes, then is ‘which courses?’ a strategic decision or whoever fancies it?

3) Reasons to MOOC

Martin Bean (VC, Open University) suggested a number of reasons an institution might want to engage with MOOCs:

  • Profile raising
  • Student recruitment
  • Expanding impact
  • Stimulating innovation (see 4)
  • Revenue

The University of Edinburgh, the only HEI to have already delivered a MOOC on one of the big US platforms describe their objectives as: gaining outreach to new audiences; experimentation with online delivery methods at large scale; reinforcing our position as a leader in the use of educational technology in HE. More on this & lots of statistics in their report published earlier this week: MOOCs @ Edinburgh 2013: Report #1

4) Teaching Innovation

While there has been wide criticism of the pedagogical quality of the new MOOCs, Wendy Purcell (VC, Plymouth University) suggested that digital developments are putting teaching upfront & central. She sees an opportunity for a positive repositioning of the value of teaching and development of new pedagogies. Sian Bayne (Associate Dean, University of Edinburgh), the only speaker to have taught a MOOC, commented that her Edinburgh Digital Cultures MOOC had offered a space for pedagogical innovation and that teaching it was invigorating.

5) Partners

The world of MOOCs is full of partners. Universities are partnering with delivery & marketing platforms such as Coursera & Udacity. Companies such as Pearson are partnering with them to proctor in-person exams (eg find a test centre for your edX MOOC). The sponsors of the UUK event were Academic Partnerships & 2U. Slightly different services, but both working with universities to develop & deliver online courses. David Willetts hopes that MOOC & industry partnerships will develop & potentially help with the UK skills gap (such as computer science).

6) Future (Learn)

Futurelearn is the under-development UK MOOC platform owned by the OU. It includes 20 university partners as well as the British Library, the British Council and the British Museum.

I was really looking forward to hearing more about Futurelearn with both Martin Bean & the launch CEO, Simon Nelson speaking. We didn’t learn much. Despite their claim that ‘this is not simply re-purposing existing content’ we heard little about building on the OU’s experience of learner support or delivering ‘teacher presence’; a challenge that speakers from Edinburgh & 2U had highlighted. Nor did we learn anything about the new platform. However, Stephen Jackson from QAA, did appear to confirm that FutureLearn will offer proctored exams.

7) Future (Unknown)

Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun has predicted that within 10-years job applicants will be touting Udacity degrees. Emma Leech (Director of Marketing & Recruitment, University of Nottingham) reminded us that Thrun’s claims go further; he has suggested that in 50 years there will be only 10 institutions in the world delivering higher education and Udacity has a shot at being one of them.

Update 20/05/13 – Thrun under-estimated: Georgia Tech, Udacity and AT&T launch online CompSci Masters aiming for 10,000 students in 3-years

Crystal balls aside, it’s an exciting & challenging time ahead with new players, new partnerships & business models starting to emerge. One thing is clear, whether it’s MOOCs or enhancing campus courses, learning technologies & technologists have a central role to play.

Update 20/05/13 – Presenters’ slides availble on UUK website

All we need is is love

Matt presenting at FOTE10We have the technology. We have the capability… all we need is love is the title of the talk I gave at the Future of Technology in Education 2010 on Friday.

FOTE10 is more technology focussed then many of the events I attend but my talk concentrated on teachers/lecturers and their importance in the successful implementation of educational technologies.  My talk in brief:

We have the technology

The technology is here and continues to arrive and has great potential uses in education.  But teachers don’t fully utilise what we already have and understanding why is necessary to ensure we realise the full benefits of future technologies for education.

Continue reading All we need is love

VL-istically speaking

Yesterday Steve Wheeler raised a two fingered salute to open another chapter in the ongoing VLE-PLE debate  (see VLE vs PLE fight club for an earlier installment).  It’s an excellent post but I’m not wholly convinced.

Firstly, some points that Steve and I probably agree upon:

  • Personal Webs have an important & central role in the future of technology enhanced learning
  • Wherever appropriate teachers should be given freedom to teach with the web technologies of their choosing
  • Students should also be encouraged to use the web technologies of their own choosing to support their learning
  • More focus is needed on the teaching activities and not the tools that enable them

However, unlike Steve, I believe that VLEs (institutionally managed webs for teaching & learning) are here to stay and have an important role in the future:

  1. Not all teachers are tech-savvy ‘edupunks’.  Many are not interested in developing and teaching with their own personal webs.  Some would need considerable support to do so.  This will undoubtedly change over time but for a good while to come many teachers want to be provided with a single, simple, managed & supported platform. Continue reading “VL-istically speaking”

ICTs in Education in the Future?

Yesterday at a staff development session for teachers I asked the following question both within the room and via Twitter, ‘Describe the Future of ICTs in Education… in one word’

Tweet on ICTs in Future

I received several answers in the room and within 10-minutes had 16 from Twitter, which I think impressed the participants! (“Now I get Twitter!”)  All these answers are combined with the ones from my presentation slides in this Wordle.

ICTs in Education in one word

Anything you’d like to add?  It was a very interesting exercise both in terms of how well it worked as a twitter demonstration but also in terms of the answers.

Microsoft Surface

My presentation was followed by a very interesting one by Gordon Rimmer from the education arm of Microsoft.  I may say more about this later but for now a video that took me by suprise as one of the teachers in it is a school friend!  So absolutely must be embedded below!  And also gives me a great excuse to share the Microsoft Surface parody video too!

Staff, Students & Social Web

A report into “the impact on higher education of students’ widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies”, Higher Education in a Web2.0 World was published last week.

Both staff and students, according to the report, are struggling to see how social web technologies can be applied to learning.  It also highlights that face-to-face teaching really matters to students and I’m pretty certain this is true of teachers too!

However, the report suggests that there is a digital divide between students and teaching staff in terms of more general usage of social technologies.  While this is undoubtedly true to a certain extent, there is also a danger of overstating it.  It’s like the digital native – digital immigrant labelling, it just isn’t that simple.  Many students don’t engage with digital technologies and many teachers do.

Anyway, there is a need, as the report indicates, for staff to:

  1. be technically proficient, i.e. capable of using social web technologies
  2. make effective use of these technologies for teaching/learning (effective e-pedagogies)
  3. keep up-to-date with ongoing developments as web-based ‘resources’ continue to grow

The report goes on to suggest that students could help with this.  There is some mileage in this, particularly for 1).  But in terms of e-pedagogies it seems more likely that for a while to come  students will continue to look to teachers for this?

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/65030029/

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