Something Old. Something New:
Supporting Lecture Delivery with Digital Tools.
Expanding Communities of Practice with Social
Media.

In other words:
How can we use new technologies of distribution
and social support to create effective and
pedagogically useful online teaching
environments?

The investigation centers on analysis of the
online learning offered by Harvard University,
Penn State University and MIT

what lessons should we consider when adapting
new technologies to old teaching
methodologies ?
How may these environments change the way
we teach ?

The three study programmesrepresent three
different approaches to online learning:

Lecture based
[CS50: Harvard &EdX]

Community based
[Learning Creative Learning: MIT & P2PU]

Practice based
[Design- Artifacts in Society: Penn State
&Coursera]

Scale ?
• 74 + MOOCs from Universities
• 300+ courses
• 3.5m+ users
• 30% Science, 30% Arts & Humanities, 25%IT
rest – Business & Mathematics
M. Mitchell Waldrop and Nature magazine

MIT: learning creative learning
• Mitch ResnikProgramme leader
• Discursive rather than technical.
• Strong use ofSCRATCH and online remix community
• Very small group onsite - 15 students
• Strong emphasis on social activity and online remix of others work,
• Xxperimental, using commons tools and mixed technologies.
• Using available tools, Google+ Communities, Google Docs, YouTube,
Google Hangouts, Chat
• Andragogyfocused with hi level motivation, low incentive to keep
engaged.
• High technology barriers and mixed results from presentation
• High level of disengagement. Swamped Google+ community.No credits for
online:
• 11 sessions , 5– 8 hours per week
• Not assessed

MIT / P2Pu
• Programme trying to organise sub groups of social activity and discussion
on course work, tryingtospawn micro communities of practice, mooc
• Very experimental approach, participatory activity, side channel extends
chat.Presenters invited to participate in online chat.
• Different approaches to online learning
• Highlights issues of Goal orientation and justification and
motivation, Versus personal discovery and exploration
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrsIICQ1eg8

Learning Creative Learning - Session 5 - Open Learning
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9HM80cv
160&feature=c4-feed

EdX / Harvard CS50
• David J Malan programme leader
• Organised,Excellent onsite resources,
• Clear pedagogy and Internal organisation BEFORE open access and online,
• Clear scope &interfaces, less emphasis on community, community is
physically based on campus, clear courseware through standard
interface, technical proficiency.
• Standard directed delivery lecture , workshop example, project, test etc
• Standard work environment provided – preconfigured linux appliance
• Graded & Assignments/time based
• Time orientated course materials.
• Credits awarded
• 11 weeks structured, 8 hours per week

Coursera/ Penn State
• Karl T Ulrich Programme Leader
• The content delivered via short videos created for the course
• The videos are explanations of ideas, and use artifacts from many
different sources
• The videos are supplemented by readings from free digital textbook
• Each week includes a design challenge focused on a design problem
of.The work for the course is DOING design.
• Centered on sequence of challenges that result in creation of new
artifact.
• Free
• Statement of accomplishment
• No formal credits
• 8 weeks 5-10 hrs per week

• https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/design
/recoded_videos%2F1a.%20What%20is%20De
sign-
sep2012%20%5B3e88bfde%5D%20.webm

These courses are offered by universities that
should be expected to be delivering both first
class content and state of the art technology.

Each programme uses different methods of
dealing with key issues:
scale,
temporality,
support systems
synchronous/asynchronous delivery.

In UK Higher Education we work with a lecture-
oriented pedagogy:
fixed student cohort
fixed academic team
fixed location
specific duration
fixed outcomes and success criteria

Evaluating them it becomes clear that the
balance in effective delivery may lie between
having a clear pedagogic process to indicate
appropriate technology directions and
reflecting on how technology reframes
pedagogic discourse.

These two issues are considered against the
makeup and ongoing needs of UK educational
institutions.

As Andrew Delbanco raises in his recent article.
Education is an industry that has seen almost no
productivity gains in the last hundred years

What lessons and practices can we gain from
these examples as we proceed to design our
own online teaching environments?

MIT P2PU, Coursera and EdX work in the context
of andragogy, the teaching of adults,
This allows for a broader range of academic
approaches, motivations and goals.

these courses incorporate digital tools to
disseminate lecture material in a time-shifted
pattern and use tools to facilitate online
communities of practice.

Motivation is optional

estimates suggest that less than 10% of enrolled
learners complete

What each approach shares is what we have
come to understand about software
development and unfocussed applications of
technology.

Pedagogic process is being challenged by the
beginnings of post-industrialisation of
education, the market place and the
disruptive effects of cheap communications
technologies.

Investigation of Scope is paramount in using
resources effectively
Effective execution costs
UX counts for almost everything

Daniel Buzzo
Senior Lecturer in Creative Technologies
daniel.buzzo@uwe.ac.uk