Emancipating Learning: Journey to MOOC and Beyond -- UIS' Experience

First: A word about Power Pointless! We at the University of Illinois Springfield's Center for Online Learning, Research and Service present many national workshops each year, encouraging attendees to freely share presentation materials online using web-native tools that encourage collaboration and updating. Please share using the URL:

https://sites.google.com/site/openedmooc/

UIS' 2nd MOOC

• Accessible at: https://uis.coursesites.com/
• eduMOOC (Summer 2011) still accessible at: https://sites.google.com/site/edumooc/
  • Overview of eduMOOC availabe at: https://sites.google.com/site/moocmakingicche/edumooc-2011

Marketing Strategy

• University press releases - news outlets, professional organizations
• Social media campaigns - Twitter, Facebook
• The EP MOOC announcements were tied to 150th Anniversary of the EP, the Academy Awards nominations & Black History Month

Course Design

Challenges

• Social constructivism in six-figure classes? (http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-tale-of-two-moocs-coursera-divided-by-pedagogy/)
  • Student centered
  • Grading the work
• Managing hundreds or thousands of students
• Mix of students - post-grads, grads, undergrads, secondary school students in same class
• Teaching 2/3 international - up to 1/3 in other languages (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/05/early-demographic-data-hints-what-type-student-takes-mooc)
  • Cultural differences and translations
  • YouTube Auto-Captions with Translation
  • Google Translate

Strategies

• Test early and often (http://phys.org/news/2013-04-online-varying-attention-note-taking-retention.html)
• Peer evaluation (http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/professors-pedagogy-and-moocs/)
• Robo-grading of short essays (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/education/robo-readers-used-to-grade-test-essays.html)
• Select groups to provide instructor feedback/guidance
• "Meet-ups" (http://edudemic.com/2012/10/mooc-meetup-groups/)
• Social media support
• Volunteer tutors (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/education/harvard-asks-alumni-to-donate-time-to-free-online-course.html?hpw&_r=0)

Course Materials

• Copyright
• Libraries working with vast numbers of students who are not licensed for some journal holdings, use of images
• Flickr Commons - http://www.flickr.com/commons
• Library of Congress - http://www.loc.gov/index.html
• New York Public Library Digital Gallery - http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm
• Digital Public Library of America - http://dp.la/
  • http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2013/04/12/national-digital-public-library-to-launch/

Technologies

• Selected tools & activities need to be highly scalable - Georgia Tech & Coursera MOOC Stumble
• Student support - if a student has a technical issue, who do they call?
• Data analytics tracing progress - structure course for analytics

Blackboard CourseSites

http://uis.coursesites.com

• Free!
• Familiar to our faculty
• Centralized location for all materials
• Centralized tools (including web conferencing with Collaborate)
• Self-registration through multiple accounts
• Integrated data analytics

Blogs

Wordpress or Blogger are our favorites

Twitter

• Select and share a hashtag for your MOOC so other can find it
• Curate a Twitter Lists of the participants - https://support.twitter.com/articles/76460-using-twitter-lists
• Publish Twitter Newspaper - Paper.li - http://paper.li/

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAoogzkDh5wyD0VzVHfIX4uHb6QHTKGPB

Mozilla Open Badges

http://openbadges.org/

UIS' MOOC Making Website: https://sites.google.com/site/moocmakingicche/where-are-we-today

MOOC Planning Checklist

Planning a MOOC:

• Identify intended audience (demographics)
• Identify learning outcomes
• Other objectives (recruitment, publicity, etc.)
• Determine optimum time and time frame
• Consider credit/certifying options
  • Badges (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges)
  • Certificates
  • Credit
• Assess available/needed resources
  • Technologies
    • Learning Management System or Platform
    • Synchronous options
      • Streaming
      • Social media
    • Asynchronous options
      • Recordings
      • Discussion boards
      • Social media
  • Staffing (volunteer and paid)
    • Administrative
    • Facilitators
    • Languages
• Assessments and feedback
  • Formative/summative
  • Grading/assessment options
    • Machine grading
    • Adaptive learning engine
    • Peer assessment rubrics/models
    • Proctoring (webcam or in person)
• Sustaining the MOOC after the end of the scheduled sessions
  • Continuing attention to what has become OCW

Contact information:

Michele Gribbins, Emily Boles,

Ray Schroeder & Carrie Levin

Center for Online Learning, Research and Service

University of Illinois Springfield

One University Plaza

Springfield, IL 62703

http://colrs.uis.edu

217-206-7317