Activity | Tony Burke

Tony Burke started the topic Activity 0.2: Small group reflection in the forum Higher education (general) 10 years, 7 months ago

For this activity we are asked to participate in a period of reflection and discussion over two or three days to arrive at a a shared view of:


What can we tell about the range of experiences and preferences among ocTEL participants?
What challenges does this present for the course?
In what ways is a MOOC like this one well or poorly suited to these challenges?

Here’s my thoughts:

Firstly, I am amazed at the diversity of participants on the course. I have only had experience of one other MOOC (Carpe Diem) which only finished a couple of weeks ago, but almost everyone on that course was involved in higher education. Here there seems to be a much wider mix from HE and from further education, the private sector, consultants and others. Whilst the activity map suggests a heavy concentration in the UK (as I suppose might be expected from a course run from the UK) there are participants from all across the globe, even within this group.

I would suggest that one of the challenges which such diversity presents is the difficulty in identifying a focus for the course. Everyone may be expecting to get something different out of the course, and it is inevitable to that some will end up being disappointed. Furthermore, it must be quite a challenge for the course designers to provide a framework, when there are so many different expectations.

Of course the flip side of this is that the diversity brings a wealth of different perspectives and I think this is one of the huge benefits of online courses. Just when you thought you had a really clear understanding of a particular issue, along comes someone from a completely different culture or context, and makes you think about something with a fresh perspective. Brilliant!



- jswann replied 10 years, 7 months ago
 
 You’re right, I think, about the difficulty of designing a course to meet such a diversity of expectations, but this approach does shift the responsibility for learning firmly towards the student. Heutagogy in action! Personally I’m looking forward to learning from the perspectives of others.
 
 Does anyone know how many have enrolled on this course so far? I may be missing something but I don’t yet have a picture of who’s here. Would be interested to know more.
 
 This is my fourth MOOC, all at the cMOOC end of the spectrum. I certainly felt pretty alienated during my first one in 2010. Little was done to facilitate dialogue. It was left up to us and try as I might I didn’t get any response to any of my postings. In both the last one I did, edcmooc, and this one there is a great deal more effort on this front. I wonder how intensive these few weeks are going to be for our facilitators. I get the impression that allowing for such a diversity of ways of communicating creates an enormous amount of work.
 
 I like the design though. I’m finding it pretty easy to find my way around. The only downside for me is that being on the other side of the planet means that synchronous things like webinars and the resulting Twitter conversations happen in the middle of my night, when I’m not at my sharpest! Am I missing out? I don’t know. Checking in first thing in the morning seems to work, even if I’m behind the ball in some of the faster conversations
- inna.kochetkova replied 10 years, 7 months ago
 
 I don’t teach on MOOC or online, yet face the same diversity of students. Each year 25 onsite and 25 Distance learning 1st year PhD students are joining our PG Dip in research methods: from engineering, accountancy, development studies, health, edication, social policy, management etc.etc. More than half of the group are international students. The only thing that unites then is that they have started on a PhD. In the usual module evaluation questionnaires (very few of them complete these online questionnaires actually, which make me wonder how helpful is it to use online format) someone always comments ‘there was nothing usuful for them in the module’ and others choose neutral ‘somewhat’ option. By default, because their needs are so different, I am wondering if it would be ever possible to get excellent feedback?!