Bringing development opportunities to the masses 

MOOCs use several distinctive instructional design approaches to deliver content:

1. Collaborative learning – group discussions, peer assessment and experience sharing are all encouraged. This also reduces the facilitation burden for course leads.
2. Asynchronous communication – discussion boards, comment threads and messaging systems designed to support participation at any time within a week. This maximised accessibility for learners with other responsibilities. 
3. Flexible learning – building upon asynchronous communication, flexible learning encourages anytime, anywhere learning. The only limit is often the run period of a course, with students encouraged to undertake weekly activities. 
4. (In)formal assessment – with multiple-choice quizzes, peer feedback and group discussions, assessment is often informal. Many platforms, however, now offer the opportunity for paid certification often delivered after passing a formal assessment or a specified level of engagement.  
5. Multimedia – video, audio and images are strongly encouraged. While text is important, MOOCs are designed to be accessible, so often frown upon complicated language and approaches. 
6. Digital badging and reward – offers participants the opportunity to gain recognition for their work. Summative recognition is often available with a minor fee for non-credit bearing courses. Some platforms allow degree programme delivery, though often at equitable cost to a campus-based education. 
7. Applied practice – allows participants to use what they learn. MOOCs are often a form of CPD for professionals, or an opportunity to ‘upskill’ or switch tracks for those that need it. We often see students using MOOCs to gain higher education experience before their studies.
8. Supportive of diverse learners – even before the regulations made it a requirement, MOOCs were often very accessible forms of learning. They also allow an equal footing for communication, not preferring those who are confident to speak up in a live conversation. 
   
   Based on: Bates & Bates (2015), Chauhan (2014),  Deng et al. (2019) Drake et al. (2015), Fox (2013) Guo et al. (2013),  Liyanagunawardena et al. (2013) Ortega (2018) & Saadatdoost  (2019) 

MOOCs: Juggling on a tightrope

It is first important to note that facilitating a MOOC requires access to a lot of resources and an appropriate platform. That was not realistic when I first started out exploring this form of teaching. I remember being particularly overwhelmed with the ‘massive’ aspect of such courses as it really does mean massive. Indeed, some of the largest MOOCs have seen thousands of concurrent users. Openness can also be an issue. In being open, you are developing a resource for everyone. This is not a priority when you are employed to support students in a particular setting – and can get problematic when you are licensing institutional content for all to see. In the end, I need not have worried. MOOCs have seen many iterations, and one that I fell upon was the SPOC – the Small Private Online Course which does exactly what it says on the tin. Just as @mathplourde argues, every bit of the MOOC is negotiable, including the size and the target audience. My first SPOC took many of the design and learning approaches from the MOOC, but delivered them on a smaller scale and within a closed (or private) system. On this basis, I worked on delivering my first SPOC at the University of Hull. 

First experiences of delivering MOOC content

It was 2018 that I launched the first run of DigiResHull, alongside my colleagues Mike Ewen and Stuart Bentley. The course was designed to help researchers engage with new digital technologies for research promotion and dissemination. Over the years, the course evolved to include more content, especially during the pandemic when we added additional focus on conducting research online. The course team also evolved, with Kirstyn Radford replacing Stuart when he left the institution. Furthermore, one of the students from the first DigiResHull run, Dr Jane Wray, also came onto the team to support subsequent runs. This brought valuable insight into the course development and, with Jane’s connections, helped us expand to new audiences. Since this small start, DigiResHull has engaged over 500 students and staff, with over 200 completing the course. I was proud to be able to share our learning at ALDinHE Conference 2019 via by paper: Developing postgraduate academic identities and digital skills through SPOCs.

As our first SPOC, DigiResHull helped us develop other courses using this same approach. We launched DigiTeachHull in the pandemic to support our staff with the lurch to online teaching. This course was led by our Teaching Excellence Academy, with strong input form the University Library as originators of the format. This course quickly outpaced the success of DigiResHull, and really supported the University in making the pivot to online. 

Continuing to build on this success, we have also recently developed DigiSkillsHull, a new SPOC designed to help develop staff digital literacies, based around the Jisc Building Digital Capability service and Microsoft 365. This was our first course also targeted to support professional services staff. While uptake has been much slower, it receives excellent feedback, and we are continuing to develop it. This leaves us with three courses as part of our DigiHull line up:

Developing for a MOOC Platform 

It wasn’t until the run-up to Christmas 2020 that I first had the opportunity to contribute to a MOOC proper. The University of Hull was launching a partnership with FutureLearn, and our first course was designed to help students make the transition to higher education. This three-week course was titled University Preparation Course: Getting Ready for Success at University, and I was brought onto the team to cover the second week: ‘Skills for success’. 

Over a frantic couple of weeks I developed textual and media content for this course, covering independent learning; resources and reading; critical thinking and reflection. This was a genuine opportunity to bring some learning development opportunities to a broad audience – while also supporting students with that transition to higher education. I’m also proud of how this course weaves in the University of Hull experience, utilising our competence-based education framework and knowledge-management framework to help frame the course. Five course runs later, hundreds of people have accessed the content – and that feels great! 

This year (2022), I’ve finally had the opportunity to lead on the development of a new MOOC. Taking the success of DigiResHull, I’ve been working on taking this content public and delivering it via the FutureLearn platform. At the start of the year, we had our pitch approved by FutureLearn and I spent a furious couple of months reworking our content into the platform with the support of Mike Ewen. This was a much more significant undertaking than I first thought. I had a fair idea of the work from my experience before, but I didn’t truly comprehend the scale until I started. Yet – it was all worth it when I saw the end result: Being a Digital Researcher: Digital Skills for Effective Research.

Reflections on developing for a MOOC Platform 

Content availability and licencing 

While negotiations with my manager to freely share content in the MOOC way went well (Librarians are usually supportive of sharing and access), I also had to re-write and re-develop significant portions that relied on non-open-source content. For example, significant aspects of DigiResHull took advantage of YouTube videos not produced by us. This was one of the great things about DigiResHull – and something that helped us rapidly put together new iterations of the course. However, as FutureLearn content has to be uploaded in their system, I had to produce lots of new content to replace these. This isn’t a criticism of FutureLearn – keeping everything in-platform makes sense for accessibility (some institutions or places block YouTube) – and the course also won’t break if someone ‘unpublishes’ a video on YouTube. 

Furthermore, MOOC platforms are often based around a self-contained system, with links-out discouraged as users may not return and complete. Here again, I needed to produce lots more content to avoid reliance on external articles. This all took time. Significant portions of time. In hindsight – I was not realistic in determining just how much content needed reviewing. I also benefitted from including some new open access and open-source materials, and from others freely providing content for use on the platform. A big thanks, in particular, to David White who let us use his V&R framework and videos in FutureLearn native. 

Everyone can see it – no pressure

Everything we do, should be our best. However, if we are realistic, a lot of working practice requires a balance between ‘perfect’ and ‘finished’ – implying we would never get anything done if we strived for perfection alone. With high workload, it is important – really important – to acknowledge when something is perfectly good enough. I’ve worked hard to be more realistic about what I need to do to push a project over the finish line. I believe this often scales depending on the context and the audience. For example, a lot of ‘good enough’ work was released in the pandemic – a perfect example of context. There are also many of us that may deliver a ‘less than perfect’ presentation to our immediate team – something we would never do at an international conference. To link this back to the MOOC – this all means something very different when you are developing content for a course that is potentially massive, open and online. I certainly felt the pressure. Developing content for this purpose and scale did cause more pressure for perfection. A MOOC is a showcase of your institution – but in the end, I am very proud this one delivers. 

Developing content for everyone

My original SPOC was designed for staff and PG students at the University of Hull. Knowing your audience is really helpful for content design as I could be fairly confident what knowledge and skills are developed in a PG development programme and staff induction or support. When developing for a MOOC, your audience is much broader. For this reason, I significantly expanded the scope of the content. If anything, the FutureLearn MOOC is about three times the size of the SPOC it is derived from. I felt this was important to provide a more rounded experience and ensure the course was approachable to everyone. This has also seen the course move from a week-long SPOC with a five-hour time commitment, to a fully-fledged three-week-long MOOC with a 12-hour commitment. This has inevitably created more flexibility for completion, but it does take significantly more effort. 

Perfectly Good Enough: Closing thoughts

Thanks for taking time to read my musings. I’m very interested in the MOOC space and how it can be used to support students and staff with their studies and research. While these courses have their flaws, they provide an excellent opportunity for people to develop themselves in a way that is accessible and flexible. I have found it hard, however, to take learning development into this space. It has been easier with the digital and technical aspects that are (in all fairness) abstractable to ‘skills’. This is not the case with the complicated academic literacies that form the base of learning development. It may help us with induction and transition (as our University Preparation Course targets), but beyond this would be a challenging move.

I can’t wait to see your thoughts in the comments or via Twitter to @LeeFallin.

Bio

Lee Fallin works as a learning developer at the University of Hull where he supports students and staff to develop their academic, digital, information and visual literacies. His research interests focus on the intersections between education and geography, inclusive of physical and digital spaces. As a learning developer, he is also interested in researching student learning practices in higher education and how they can be supported.

Lee has published research on the purpose of the academic library and on contemporary issues in learning development. Completing his Doctorate in Education in 2020, he is focused on writing up his findings for broader dissemination and publication.

Lee holds a Bachelor of Arts (hons) in Geography, a PG Cert in eLearning and a Doctorate in Education (EdD). He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Certified Leading Practitioner with the Association of Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE). Lee is also recognised as a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert and is a Microsoft Certified Educator. He is currently working towards recognition with the Association of Learning Technology (ALT).