Amy Woodgate and Christine Sinclair present MOOCs @ Edinburgh: our approach, experience and outcomes at the MOOCs in Scottish Education event at the University of Strathclyde, hosted by RSC Scotland on 19th March 2014.

1. University of Edinburgh
MOOCs @ Edinburgh
Our approach, experience & outcomes
Amy Woodgate & Christine Sinclair
MOOCs central coordination / EDC academic team

2. www.coursera.org/edinburgh

3. • 6 courses (wave 1) + 8 courses (wave 2)
• Broad subject areas – academic led and short in length (5-7 weeks)
• Fully online, free to take, open resources – CC licenses
• New as MOOCs, not f2f conversion
Academic
proposes new
course idea
Team meeting
with MOOC
support
Begin content
production
Course
live
Courses
end
Courses and the internal process
BoS + CSPC
Course approval
Head of School
approval sought
Confirm
live date
Constant dialogue and review.
Training. Community events.
Sign off video
content
Standardised
content uploaded
Content refresh
for next iteration

4. … Lots of central guidance and resources along the way!

5. Academic course development
• No imposed approach or template
• Encouragement to choose an approach suitable for subject delivery
and which the team were comfortable with
• Encouragement to experiment with platform
Community and transparency
• Talking to peers and asking for feedback
• Development of teams – not individuals
• Sharing practice, good resources found
Recycle, repurpose, reuse
• Use of creative commons as default
• Encouragement to think about resources beyond MOOC space
• Awareness raising of open content
Ensuring quality – how?

6. EDC MOOC
(… a little different from the rest!)
•Design challenged the mainstream
•No videos – learner developed content
•Encouraged learners to explore other platforms
Running in parallel to an online MSc Digital Education module:
E-learning and Digital Cultures
•Similar topics – different content
•Different levels – MSc = PG, MOOC = UG-level
•Interesting explicit connection explored – students on the MSc
course to interact with MOOC, e.g. forum discussions

7. • xMOOC
• Instructivist
• Guru Professors
• Content then Quiz
• cMOOC
• Constructivist
• Connectivist
• Networking
Competing Designs

8. Beyond x and c
1. MOOCs are multiple - cMOOC/xMOOC binary no longer holds
2. MOOC pedagogy is not embedded in MOOC platform
3. The teacher persists in the MOOC
Adapted from Bayne & Ross 2014
Bayne, S., & Ross, J. (2014) The pedagogy of the Massive Open Online
Course: the UK view: Higher Education Academy.

9. How we did it
• Long lead in
• Open access films
…and readings
• Blogs & social media
• Google hangouts
• Image competition
• Digital artefact
assignment
Twitter feed
Blog feed

10. Films and Readings

11. Digital Artefacts

12. Team – not gurus
• Sharing blogging, monitoring,
leading discussions
• Hangouts proved popular
• Joined by 8 CTAs in 2nd
run
• More telepresence

13. Data analysis

14. Course
Sign-up > Active
First week > Total
Active
Last week > Total
Active
Sign-up > SoA Active > SoA
AI Planning 001 57% 69% 4% 2% 4%
AI Planning 002 52% 49% 12% 2% 4%
Astrobiology 001 45% 89% 18% 17% 37%
Astrobiology 002 57% 54% 24% 12% 21%
Critical Thinking
001
40% 66% 5% 8% 20%
Critical Thinking
002
49% 39% 22% 6% 11%
EDC 001 55% 79% 5% 4% 8%
EDC 002 50% 35% 8% 2% 3%
Equine Nutrition
001
81% 79% 30% 36% 44%
Equine Nutrition
002
65% 59% 32% … …
Intro to
Philosophy 001
47% 73% 20% 8% 18%
Intro to
Philosophy 002
59% 38% 11% 6% 11%
Intro to
Philosophy 003
64% 37% … … …
Higgs Boson 001 58% 83% … … …
Totals 52% 60% 14% 8% 15%

15. What sorts of questions might we ask ourselves about those who enrol
and those who study our MOOCS?
1. Where do they come from?
2. How old are they?
3. What is their background, for example educationally?
4. Why do they wish to study MOOCs in general and specific MOOCs in
particular?
5. How do these features correlate with performance/engagement on
specific MOOCs?
What limitations do we have in addressing these questions? (eg %
response rates, minorities vs majorities)
How much confidence can we have in our answers? (eg veracity, stability
of response over time)
What actions might our answers lead to? (eg targeting, inducements,
patience)

16. NOTES:
Data in the following slides are from Edinburgh’s 6 Coursera MOOCs
(our Futurelearn MOOCs are not yet at this stage)
They are drawn from voluntary entry surveys: the first MOOC
iteration surveys (“1st
Run”, MOOC_name1)were outside the Coursera
platform and the second surveys within it
The same survey questions were posed in the two iterations
Response rates were approx 25% of enrolments at the time of
surveying, pre-MOOC start date

22. 3486 active learners accessing the course
site from Africa IP addresses

23. 646 learners from Africa
completed their enrolled
courses and received an SoA
19% conversion total
15 > 6 learners from Malawi
40% conversion

27. Surprising?

31. Measuring success:
“Drop out rates”, retention and perceptions
• Total sign ups:
620,000 approx.
• Total active users:
320,000
• Total active users week one:
193,000
• Total completed (SoA awarded):
46,600
Wave 1 + 2 courses
Did you get out of the MOOC what you wanted?

32. What did you want to get out of the MOOC?
Flipping more than just the classroom…
Beginning to ask ourselves (and our learners)
• Did you get what you wanted from the experience?
• Did you enjoy the experience?
At least 320,000 new learners engaged
with our content – huge success!!

33. On-campus
• Enriching resource for students, signpost MOOC
• Datasets within learning activities = research
• Repurposing of content, e.g. embedding videos
• Sign-posting to others’ courses
Off-campus
• Courses for credit, e.g. University of Maryland
• Courses within teaching, e.g. Generation Rwanda
• Activity in itself with class, e.g. local Schools
• Translations, e.g. Portuguese and Chinese
• Chinese parallel server scheme
How is content being used and where?

34. VideosVideos
ImagesImages
Handouts /
documents
Handouts /
documents
AudioAudio
LinksLinks
Discussion
Qs
Discussion
Qs
The
experience
The
experience
• Embed
• Recycle/reuse
• Be inspired
• Develop your own
• Use the structure
• Activities and
assessment
• Encourage MOOC use
to enrich understanding
• Sign-post
• Make CC content
• Use as a case study
• Ask students for
feedback to inform own
development
AssessmentsAssessments
Social
Media
Social
Media
All elements of the MOOC can be repurposed in multiple ways

35.  On presidents/SMTs of universities
 On governments/agencies
 On faculty
 On students
 On student funders, incl parents
 On the media
 Varied by region: US∙UK∙Europe∙Oz∙NZ / SE Asia / China / Asia / S & C America
NB: This is very subjective – there are 1000s of universities in the world!!
http://star.arm.ac.uk/
?
What impact have MOOCs had?

36. Enthusiasm for MOOC engagement is (still) high and we are
beginning to see big impact across the institution:
• New applications for fully online MSc programmes, e.g.
MSc Philosophy
• ODL programme teams pushing VLEs and improving
student experience through MOOC lessons
• Getting non-ODL Schools over the online line
• Interdisciplinary courses and collaborations
Building internal capacity – more than just building courses
… Every MOOC gets 90(+)% learner satisfaction – impact is more than these stats.

37. What impact have our MOOCs had…
Over 700k enrollees, 34k certificates distributed
14 courses, 62+ academics, 50+ PhD student TAs,
30 Community TAs involved
3 new textbooks written, journal publications
and book chapters, internal student recruitment
increases, new online MSc development,
international collaborations
… And this is only a snapshot of the measurable impact!

38. Plans for the future?
• Internal
• Even more enriching, embedding, research etc.
• Recognition for engagement, e.g. HEAR transcript
• All content accessible, findable and open to share
• Portfolios of content that work well as a package
• External
• Community outreach post: connection with Schools & Councils,
local community groups and meaningful events, e.g. Science
Festival
• Potential for new courses based on local/national needs
• Referendum, business, computer science etc.

39. Strategic developments
• Community connections
• Students and University connecting with the community through
MOOC+ activities
• Open Access content
• All content will be published openly on open access platforms for
use outwith MOOC space
• Full course available for free to other Educational providers
• Encouraging reuse of content in on-campus courses
• Educational research
• Big data, digital education developments
• Use of data for student projects, e.g. dissertations