Title: How to make a MOOC on your own terms instead of the platform's?
Course: Digivisio DEMO: Planning and creating a MOOC > Section: Creating a MOOC in a virtual learning environment

The virtual learning platforms often feels more like shackles than a sandbox where you can freely create your course. This juxtaposition is highlighted in MOOCs, as the course is built for online use only: in xMOOCs, personal interaction is not necessarily always a particular goal, and in cMOOCs, you should be able to create smooth interaction in the virtual learning environment.

Freeing yourself from the shackles of the platform takes a bit of imagination, and this section also provides good ways of enriching your MOOC in very simple ways that actually have little or nothing to do with the platform. However, the aims of creating a MOOC also include reflecting the teacher’s personal way of producing pedagogical content and responding to different learners’ needs. See below for examples to help you implement your MOOC better based on your personal starting points.

Learning analytics

Reference: Society of Learning Analytics Research -youtube channel

Let’s start with learning analytics. Learning analytics refers to the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data produced by learning events. This data can be used to monitor learners’ progress in learning, the difficulties they encounter in it and, for example, the results produced by different learning methods on your course.

The simplest way of accessing learning analytics is by asking the learners for mid-course feedback and continuous feedback between assignments. Feedback can also be disguised as a discussion or self-assessment – the main thing is that you get your hands on the data. The feedback may be tied to submitting an assignment, it can be part of test questions, or it can be a separate section following each module. Some platforms also enable direct follow-up of learning analytics, for example by monitoring the attempts learners make at completing assignments, the time they spend on assignments, or their progress as stacked sections open up. You can collect the data in whatever way you find best and directly from learners, for example using ready-made forms that learners fill in or in other similar ways.

When you focus on learning analytics, you can see what works in your MOOC and in which areas learners need support, or how you could improve the course in terms of learning. Many types of analytics data can be collected, and especially at the beginning, it is not worth collecting all kinds of feedback, or feedback on everything - you should focus on either things that you know by experience that learners tend to find difficult, or in which you are confident regarding the pedagogical implementation. There are many types of learning analytics, which is why you should choose a data collection method that best supports you in achieving your goals. See below for subtypes of learning analytics:

Behavioural analytics: Track learners’ activity on the virtual learning environment, including site usage, number of completed assignments and responses, and retry counts. Behavioural analytics can be used to identify learners’ strengths, weaknesses and learning trends.

Performance analytics: Monitor learners’ performance relating to assessments and assignments. This may include analysing grades, task submission schedules, and other performance-related data. Performance analytics helps you understand the success factors of learning and provides information on development areas.

Learning technique analytics: Monitor and observe learners’ learning techniques and their results. You will get to know how learners learn on your course and how you can support different learners and learning techniques in your MOOC.

Interaction analytics: Monitor learners’ interaction with each other, the teacher, and the learning material. Interaction analytics helps you identify learners’ problem areas and ways of developing interaction to support learning.

Attainment analytics: Track learners’ progress and efforts to achieve attainments during the course. This works very well together with gamification. Set clear goals for the learners to underpin analytics and fine-tune them to support learning. Analysing attainments and goals helps teachers to understand learners’ level of motivation and to provide additional support if necessary.

Predictive analytics: Use historical data and predictive models to anticipate learners’ future performance and needs. This helps teachers identify risk groups and provide preventive support when needed. At best, these data are the optimal development tool as they are an aggregate of all other data.

Example:
As an example of using performance and behavioural analytics can be cited the module and assignment structure of A Basic Understanding of Blockchain 2 ECTS course of Oulu Business School. In this course, each lesson is always followed by a short test in which the learners must achieve at least 75% of correct answers to pass. By observing the number of passes in these tests, we have been able to see which topics are the most difficult for learners to understand. By collecting feedback, we have also managed to find out which sections learners find the most interesting.

If the learners prefer, they can also listen to the entire course content. We predicted that text-based material might not support the learning of all learner types, and we were right. We also collected data on audio file use, and approx. 60% of those who passed the course used these files. We additionally collected data on how the different other learning aids selected for the course, including joint refresher sessions and Block the guide dog who is always present on the course, affect learners’ motivation and success. We found that the refresher materials were really useful, and the presence of and interaction with Block was appreciated by approx. 80% of the learners who passed the course.

By analysing these data, we can invest in producing better material for learners for the difficult areas and come up with new course implementations, focusing on producing content around a topic area that interests learners. Ultimately, none of these ideas would have required anything more than a bundle of paper or a simple Forms form embedded in the web.

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Interactivity

Emotional connection with the learning material has a particular impact on promoting learning, and this connection is created through interaction. Interactivity is a great way to feed active learning and reduce the learner’s passive attitude towards the teaching materials, teachers, and other learners. At its simplest, interaction may consist of discussion assignments, short interactive pre-recorded demonstrations, automatic feedback or, for example, taking joint notes during a MOOC. And with careful preparation, the last-mentioned works in both xMOOCs and cMOOCs.

Interaction also involves interacting with materials. Guiding learners to actively interact with the material enhances the engram, facilitates the planning of exercises, and improves learning. The learner also engages better with interactive material than with a passive ‘stack of papers’. Interactive learning material can, for example, be produced by means of interactive videos (in the simplest form, the video contains an assignment, or the video provides direct step-by-step guidance in completing an assignment). In addition, you can use H5P tools to create interactive content, such as an interactive book or a short interactive demonstration. Another good way is to create material that directly contains quizzes or questions related to the topic. Even a minor element of interactive activation, for example, one that involves searching for information, results in interaction with the material – the threshold for starting is low and, in practice, places no requirements on the platform.

When considering interaction in a MOOC course, think about how you would like to interact with other course participants and teachers yourself. See below for ways and examples of producing interaction and emotional connection to learning.

Demonstrations: Provide online demonstrations, such as videos or click-and-choose content for learners to use in the course. You can create VR or AR experiences where, for example, learners can explore lab environments or historical events. Some handy ways of doing this are using H5P tools or the  ThingLink software.

Interactive videos: Produce videos where, while watching, the learner completes assignments or answers questions to move on. You can also produce videos that provide guidance for completing the next assignment and give feedback on the learner's performance based on their answer.

Quizzes: Create regular quizzes that encourage learners to engage actively and think critically..

Collaborative documents and file sharing: Enable learners to work synchronously on the same document or together in a group, for example using Google Docs or Teams.

Discussion forum: Create an active discussion forum where learners can exchange their thoughts and ideas about course topics.

Simulations and scenarios: Use simulations to help learners understand complex concepts and processes visually and interactively. Give learners scenarios that reflect real-life situations to consider and work on as part of course assignments. To read more about scenario-based learning, visit Mediamaisterin skenaariopohjaisen verkkokoulutuksen ohjeista. (in Finnish)

Gamification: For example, you can create a scoring system, achievements and prizes that motivate learners to progress on the course and attain the goals. Gamification is an excellent way to encourage emotional engagement with the material and use learning analytics as part of interaction. To hear experts who use it as a learning tool talking about gamification, its different forms and its benefits, listen to  Rob Alvarezin Professor Game podcast episodes.

Example:

While the course given as an example is not actually a MOOC, to a great extent it works along the lines of an xMOOC. Every year, Oulu Business School teaches new students to use O365 software as part of a course in study planning. The entire course is based on two principles: 1) guided by pre-made videos and automatic feedback, the learner completes a variety of short lessons, and 2) the learner collects experience points during the course and, halfway through the course, is able to choose the kind of lessons and assignments they would like to complete to collect their points. While completing assignments, the learner interacts with step-by-step videos and strives to complete the assignments with their help.

In practice, each short video is followed by an assignment, and after submitting each assignment, the learner receives automatic feedback depending on their performance and an opportunity to try again immediately. The interactive cycle of assignment-feedback-progress supports the performance, which is why learners often complete even longer lesson modules at once. A large section is always followed by a specified self-assessment and feedback section, in which the learner reflects on what the most significant part was for them, considers how they will use the skills they learned in the section in the future, and answers other relevant questions.

In other words, interaction in learning is supported simultaneously by means of demonstration videos, interactive videos, automatic feedback, gamification, and quizzes. All of this can be done on almost any platform.

Diverse media and content

We have already talked about multiple types of media and content in the section on visualisation, but it is good to also look at it from the perspective of creating a MOOC based on your personal prerequisites and independently from the platform. By producing many types of media, you can choose the ways that suit you best to teach certain content and activate learners by means of the media, regardless of the platform. In cMOOCs, you can also guide learners to produce their own media in cooperation with other learners.

The easiest way to do this is simply providing links to your content available outside the platform and only use the platform for distributing the material and testing learners’ competence. However, it is always best to create a well-functioning course in your own personal teaching style. Consider using at least the following media types in your MOOCs.

Videos: Create short tutorial videos on which you illustrate the key topics and concepts of the course. Keep the length of your video to less than six minutes and strive to focus on core content. On the video, you can use interactive questions, give demonstrations of the topic you are teaching, or direct learners to an assignment relevant to the video straight after they have watched it. You can produce the videos either on the platform or outside it. In the latter case, you can base the course on your personal starting points and core competence rather than operating on the platform’s terms.

Articles and studies: Offer learners articles and studies that deepen their understanding of the course topics. You can distribute articles electronically in many different ways, and you should think about what is the best way for you.

Podcasts: Offer learners podcasts that discuss current topics and apply the learning contained in the course to practical situations. You can direct learners to free services, produce podcasts yourself, or ask learners to make a podcast on a topic of their choice.

Animations and cartoons: Use animations and cartoons to illustrate complex concepts and to make learning more entertaining and interesting. Explore free options for producing animations on such platforms as Canva – a little can achieve a lot.

Example:

The Procurement and Supply Chain Management course at Oulu Business School aims to support remote exchanges for international students. The course operates on the cMOOC principle and uses both asynchronous and synchronous study methods. However, the key assignments of this course drawing on versatile media types are a podcast produced by the learners on a topic of their choice and, later on, a lesson that use videos, podcasts, and articles simultaneously. The learners make notes of the videos and podcasts together and answer common questions with the others, as well as respond to multiple-choice questions on the core issues of the articles by themselves. In theory, you could do all this relying on just instructions and a centralised distribution of materials, and the selection of this method was motivated by the preferences of the teacher in charge of pedagogical planning, rather than the opportunities offered by the platform.

You need not be shackled to a single platform!

If necessary, you can always mix different learning platforms in your course. For example, you can create a material bank and automatically corrected assignments in Moodle but move discussions, lessons, self-assessments, and other synchronous or asynchronous elements to Howspace. Use whatever works best – but it is important to make sure you direct learners to the right destinations between the different platforms.

HEI:

The higher education institution assigns the available platforms to the teacher and provides the teacher with pedagogical and digital support, enabling the teacher to draw on their personal professional prerequisites rather than on what the designated platform can provide.

Teacher:

The teacher prepares their materials based on their personal prerequisites and reflects on the kind of interaction, media and learning analytics they wish to use on their course. The teacher turns their pedagogical strengths into content that supports learning and produces competence in learners. The teacher makes the necessary choices and accepts support for adapting their choices to the platform. The teacher is responsible for the types of solutions that are produced for the platform and for providing instructions for learners.

  Tools:

The tools support the planning of studies based on the teacher’s personal prerequisites. The tools allow the teacher to free themselves from the shackles of the platform and enable the use of versatile interaction, materials and learning analytics.

Fill in implementation based on your prerequisites in your pedagogical manuscript. Pay attention to at least the following.

- Are you planning to collect learning analytics data on your course?
- What type of media will you create for your course? Will the learners also create media?
- What kind of material will you produce for the course, and how will you make it more interactive together with the learners?
- Are you planning a synchronous or asynchronous course? An xMOOC or a cMOOC?
- What are your needs and plans for implementing your course?
- What opportunities do different virtual learning platforms offer you?
- Which platform will you use? Could you also use some other platform alongside it?
- Which tools do you intend to use for planning your course, based on your personal prerequisites?

References

Society of Learning Analytics (SoLAR) https://www.solaresearch.org/about/what-is-learning-analytics/

Mediamaisteri: Skenaaripohjoinen verkkokoulutus: Tehokasta oppimista virtuaalisessa ympäristössä. https://www.mediamaisteri.com/blog/skenaariopohjainen-oppiminen?utm_campaign=Blogitiedotteet&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=277516999&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_grgLdwnHlfo7s4XYguCplaPGOCyJJ2HavMZXsAuAifJDTvBAIVeMFRW960ZbsVEoxJCB9x08o0zM5UfGMaml7hr6kdA&utm_content=277516999&utm_source=hs_email (in Finnish)

Professor Game -podcast: Rob Alvarezin Professor Game podcast episodes.