Teaching in MOOCs: Unbundling the roles of the educator, a presentation given at the design4learning conference at The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK by Rebecca Ferguson (co-authored with Denise Whitelock) on 26 November 2014.

1. Teaching in MOOCs:
unbundling the roles of the educator
Rebecca Ferguson
Denise Whitelock
Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University, UK
design4learning 2014

2. What are MOOCs?
Massive
thousands may sign up
Open
no payment is required
Online
resources on the Internet
Courses
time-bounded cohorts

3. Launched September 2013
42 partners; 38 universities
Nearly 400,000 course sign-ups
Over 650,000 registered users
30,638 comments in one
discussion
121,965 people
joined a single course
http://firstyear.futurelearn.com/

4. Qualitatively different
approaches to teaching are
associated with
qualitatively different
approaches to learning
Trigwell, Prosser and Waterhouse, 1999
“
”

5. Access for all – supporting
inexperienced learners
Fairness and Nature:
When Worlds Collide
University of Leeds
We have provided a short video to
highlight a few points to help make
your learning experience effective
and enjoyable. The video includes:
Preparing to learn […]
Listening and reflecting […]
Making notes […]
Communicating with others
Educator challenges

6. High levels of engagement
– managing workload
Good Brain,
Bad Brain: Basics
University of Birmingham
Educator challenges
I have been amazed and impressed
by the level of interest and input –
1800 of you have posted at least
one comment. If you posted
something hoping to get a reply but
haven’t then I am sorry, but me and
my four mentors have been doing
our best to monitor what’s going on
in between doing our usual
activities.

7. High levels of engagement
– potentially overwhelming
Introduction to
Forensic Science
University of Strathclyde
You have been actively engaged in
the discussions, which is excellent,
thank you, but with more than
23,000 participants it means that our
responses and comments risk
getting lost. One way to ensure we
keep in touch with all of you is by
sending out our weekly email – like
this one
Educator challenges

8. Data collection
~16,000 words in total

9. exemplar – not part of the dataset

10. Coding categories (14)

11. Coding process
Hello Rebecca. The course is under way –
and I’m delighted that, between you, you’ve
already posted over 5,000 comments
Each week there are a number of activities
that are broken into steps. A step could be a
video, an article, a quiz or a discussion. The
steps are designed to be completed in order,
but you can jump around if you wish.
We're sending yesterday's email again just in
case you didn't receive it. We had a
temporary glitch which has now been fixed
and everything is working fine. Apologies for
any confusion caused.

12. Arts MOOC
Recommender of
resources (blue
segment) is a key role
for educators in these
MOOCs and is the
most-coded category
in four cases

13. Computing MOOC
This was one of two
MOOCs that had
emotional engagement
(brown segment) as one
of the most-coded
categories

14. Drama MOOC
A very different pattern,
with Outliner (green
segment) coded more
than on any other
MOOC. The educator did
not present himself as an
Assessor at any point.

15. Ethics MOOC
Many roles are equally
important in this MOOC
but, unusually,
Outliner is not one of
the most-coded
categories

16. Healthcare MOOC
The three educators
who signed off the
emails consistently
presented themselves
as Course team
members (purple
segment)

17. Marketing MOOC
Although only one
educator signed these
emails, he regularly
presented himself as a
Course team member
(purple segment)

18. Dimensions of engagement
Emotionally engaged aloof
Individual Course team member
Learning Group member
individual guiding group process
• Identifies possibilities for Educators
• Provides a framework for future research