In his recent JISC blog, David Kernohan asks: ‘Why bother paying inflated fees to attend university? …What if you could get it all for free, online?’ Of course, it is tongue in cheek, because as my title above suggests, you don’t get something for nothing.
And that brings me to our recent decision in the University of Edinburgh to join our colleagues in North America and offer our own MOOCs – or massive open online courses – through the Coursera consortium.
It has been a very busy few weeks. After taking the in principle decision, there has been a tsunami of sorting the legals (you might be surprised at how much of this there is when you place your courses with another organisation, even if those courses are free!); choosing the MOOCs to develop; making sure we have enough capacity for shooting a lot of short videos in a tight timeframe; informing senior colleagues and University Court; organising publicity and responses to queries – at times it has felt over-whelming.
I must acknowledge here my academic colleagues for their enthusiastic response to our search for suitable MOOCs, and my real indebtedness to two of my staff, Sarah Gormley and Amy Woodgate, who have worked tirelessly on the big stuff and on the details.
So, why did we decide to ‘go MOOC’? My colleagues and I have been watching MOOC developments since their earliest days, aware that they offer interesting opportunities to explore new ‘educational spaces’ in which the scale goes way beyond large on-campus classes, and where assessment has to be thought about differently.
Of course, much of what we are designing is based upon experience with technology for on-campus courses and for our expanding range of fully online taught Masters programmes, and technology in our open LLL/CPD courses, but nevertheless it does have different dimensions. Over the years JISC has helped enormously, with our participation and learning from others through programmes in pedagogy, learner experience, open content etc – its easy to forget that, because so much knowledge just becomes internalised.
For me, MOOCs sit as part of current thinking in open educational practices (OER, OCW, OERu, connectivism etc) – ways to flex and bend the constraints that much of our traditional HE formats impose on us, and on our learners. Currently, we are exploring some of this in an EC project OERtest, especially routes to offer credit for OER/OCW/MOOC-based learning. Out of the MOOCs we expect to learn about different course designs, to reach learners from a much wider base than normal, and of course, there is reputational value for us too.
So, the preparedness was there – the big decisions were How?, With partners or solo?, and When (early adoptor or mainstream)? An invitation to join Coursera, extended by Daphne Koller to our Vice Chancellor Tim O’Shea (Chair of JISC Board) whilst he was on study leave in California, gave us the opportunity to answer all those questions, and we decided after some brief but intense reflection that now was the time and with peers in the US was the route.
This meant that we didn’t need to build our own infrastructure but could concentrate on the pedagogy and course construction.
We shall offer our courses *as a university* rather than from individual academic staff working without our support or formal involvement. We will quality assure all our courses to ensure appropriate quality. They will be short (5 weeks in the first instance) as we feel these learners may find sustained study at a distance hard going (as do those on taught online courses), and we will also stick to first year undergraduate level.
What did it cost, and is it sustainable? As with all online courses, the costs are front-loaded but even more so for MOOCs of this type, where the delivery cost (especially teaching) is low. We will spend effort and money on all our courses to get them to the right quality. We didn’t find that we had most of what we needed to hand to ‘re-arrange the pieces’ to form MOOCs, so we are going back to the design stage and creating new where necessary. One example is video lectures; we do have lots of 50 min video lectures but they really are not what we want to offer – we want shorter, focused segments with associated study and assessment. Ditto for assessment. So, it isn’t cheap for the typical university course to ‘go MOOC’. On the other hand, no knowledge is free and as we wish to explore this space, we feel the return will be worthwhile to us, and to those who take our MOOCs.
How will we sustain it? The model is to share with Coursera of the modest charge for the ‘certificates of completion’, and we will use that income to pay for our support for learners, offered in the light-touch form that these types of MOOC use. It should break even!
And for the future? I am cautious as to where the ‘MOOC movement’ will go. Some of the wilder speculation about ‘free online degrees’ and the ‘end of HE as we know it’ doesn’t help serious debate. Currently we know little about MOOC learners, about how to design and deliver successfully in a range of subjects, and most importantly at a range of levels (eg final year undergrad). Is the experience helpful to learners, and do they get value from their certificates of completion? Much more research is needed, and perhaps JISC might find this a useful area in which to support the UK HE community.
I can see openings where MOOCs might find a useful place in HE – enabling those in less privileged HE settings to access courses in subjects that they cannot take, individuals with weak formal qualifications who might demonstrate competences at advanced levels as part of portfolios for recognition of prior learning, as a more formal way to learn for those ‘just interested in that subject’, and for teachers in universities to pick up new ideas as to how to teach and learn online.
MOOCs won’t suit everyone, any more than on-campus courses or distance education suits everyone but extending the menu of choices is valuable. They may not be suitable for all subjects.
I am sure the next few months up to launch of our courses and then through first delivery will be fun, and also hard work. I am really looking forward to it, and I must continue to resist the temptation to keep checking how many thousands of people have registered interest 
Thank you for sharing publicly this insight into the decision-making process… so many have wondered what, aside from positive press and certification income, universities find appealing about offering a MOOC. This helps.
Thanks for this blog posting. I would echo Sarah Frank Bristow’s comment above: It’s useful to see the how idea developed within your institution, and how you went about meeting the challenges.
I’ve just signed up for Edinburgh’s E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC course which begins in January and I am looking forward to it enormously.
Anna – we’ll look forward to seeing you on the ‘E-learning and Digital Cultures’ MOOC next January – thanks for signing up.
Readers of Jeff’s post might also be interested in our complementary article in the ALT newsletter which sets out our reasons for wanting to teach a MOOC, from the academic course team perspective.
http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/2012/08/mooc-pedagogy-the-challenges-of-developing-for-coursera/
Nice post. You raise some interesting pontis. With regard the benefits for HEIs of early adoption; I note that most MOOCS seem to be run by individuals remarkably free of institutional involvement apart from the small number of course members registering for accreditation. It seems to be very much a grass roots initiative. I do agree that visionary HEIs could seek some competitive advantage in being an early MOOC adopter but a) how many such organisations are there? and b) would that change the nature of the MOOC by the very nature of being institutionalised?Of course the real reason I commented was to contribute to you getting ten responses so that you’ll run your own MOOC. Of course it would have to be in teacher education unless you have other, hidden, talents that I’m not aware of from a brief perusal of your interesting blog.Mark@marksmithers
What an amazing tool the Internet is. I have also just signed up for Edinburgh’s E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC course and look forward to learing from and working with Sian and Anna.
I decided to do this tonight to discover what a MOOC course would offer me and how it interfaces with traditional education after reading this post. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/07/30/essay-whether-online-education-will-make-professors-obsolete
I think this subject is going to be getting very hot.
I look forward to the start of the course.
I’ve been very intrigued by the concpet for a while, probably because I’m too cheap to pay for anything and was attracted by the notion of free I did sign-up for one of Dave and George’s first MOOC about three years ago, after hearing about it on EdTechTalk. I was impressed with the organization of the course and quickly learned (and now apply daily) that it’s because even the slightest room for misinterpretation about any detail will quickly lead to a multitude of emails asking for clarification. I didn’t stay in the course very long, due to other pressures on my time, which leads to my only other observation from a student’s perspective: when you pay for something, you (obviously) have a higher investment into that experience and are more likely to take it seriously. For me, since it was free and so massive that no one would notice me just silently ignoring the course, I lacked some of the motivation those other pressures may have given me to stay in the course. I suspect the drop-out rate of a MOOC is much higher than a more traditional course.
The drop out rates from Coursera MOOCs are very, very high. Did anyone ever consider what damage could accrue from the comments made by those dropping out do the brand image of the originating University? Take a Coursera class from the University and have a bad experience…Suppose 20,000 enroll and 80% (easily) drop out. That means 16,000 highly motivated, globally networked individuals have something that the MIGHT say bad about the University. In a world where “going viral” is common, what damage occurs the the campus students and the alumni as their diploma is not reduced in value. More? See
http://oregonhibbs.com/2012/11/14/global-conference-hibbs-prepared-remarks/
hey Jenny thanks for the input. i’m still miullng my way through the implications of Deleuze’s commentary for Connectivism and social media, but as i read it, there’s a distinction being made in that devolution of control. One is a disciplinary society founded on institutions. The other is a control society (thus using the word differently from Martin when he talks about the control involved in traditional institutional research) wherein the institutions break down and a more digital model of constant modulation which involves buying into practices so, not the same people, or the same epistemology/ontology. but, i’m still working my way to some vague grasp of it. looking forward to further conversations.
Sorry, I missed this post when it first came out and have since written about how to MOOCify a course: http://researchity.net/2012/08/17/how-to-moocify-your-course/. This would have been relevant.
I wonder about the choice of Coursera. Was it mostly marketing and money collection platform? Otherwise, it has relatively little to recommend it.
Also, I’m not sure that shorter videos are necessarily better than longer videos in a MOOC. It’s not the length that’s the problem, it’s the contraint of 50 minutes or so of the timetabled slot. I wouldn’t mind watching/listening to a 104-minute lecture if that’s how long it would take to cover the subject. Or a 13-minute one.
Hi Glen and Apostolos,Sorry for the delayed reply its been a long week. Although the panitteol population is larger, as someone putting a course together, do you not have some sense of who might be interested. Once you have that, finding out what types of things they might need / want could really help with user retention. One of the challenges with MOOCs is the big number that is being tracked is the registrations. I think just as useful are the number of people that are still around after the second week.The challenge, as I see it, is figuring out how to put in enough structure to support conversations without too much structure that stifles it.Cheers,Rebecca
I believe there are affordable ways to provide Help Desks – I call them life boats – open at least 80 hours per week and manned by real human beings. Most of the help they would be asked to provide are routine – even pointing them to the precise FAQ would be pretty simple. I think the “helpers” could be drawn from the University, perhaps given some credits as interns, or some cash, or a combination. Or I think there might be sufficient demand from the students to pay a modes fee to have live help on demand — a few dollars for modest help would go a long way to improve retention rates…the more TLC the better the outcome, we all know that. One has to be as imaginative in the human help that is provided as is done with alll the technology wizardry. See more here
http://oregonhibbs.com/2012/11/14/global-conference-hibbs-prepared-remarks/
Very interesting points raised.. MORE research to be done!
With higher education fees rising I think MOOC’s are the way forward!
AJ,
http://dailysms.com
My concerns with moocs stem from the sustainability aspect. While MIT’s OCW program brought in great numbers it fell short in terms of it’s access limitations. By that I mean that in the MIT model you were not privy to all content and resources but rather an overview version. I believe that in that model it was an instructor driven prospect where the professor in question doled out what was available at his or her discretion. On the question of moocs, where does that leave teachers who have spent years developing their courses and strategies? Are they being payed extra by their parent institutions for this (it is their course design)? Where is that money coming from? In fact, where is any of this money that will be required to make this happen over the long haul coming from? What promises were made to investors? Advertising revenue? This is all opaque at the moment and the danger lies in the touting of societal goodwill for the generation of capital regardless of how it comes about.
I do believe this to be a genuinely philanthropic innovation but at the end of the day everything costs something and I have a hard time believing that established HE will be able to undercut themselves for long.
Interesting comments on MOOCS, especially for the developing world.
I am interested in academic psychiatry, and looking for an online course, and a mentor in this subspecialty of psychiatry.
Wakil
Platforms, like Coursera, that have as their prime motive should be covered by license agreements as strict with compliance standards as getting a license from Rolex or Rolls Royce; have you ever seen how thick those agreements are? And the penalties for shoddy “performance”. My observations of Coursera make me guess that they have a solid plan to turn the number of enrollments and the brand images and the elite nature of the Universities and the “Priceless Value” into a “package” that will bring tons of profit to Coursera’s ventur capital firm – their $20 million wager with a 100 to one shot seems a likely good bet. For them. But how about what an inferior class does to the image of the providing institution? What about student outcomes? Where are the metrics to support providing your brand to them? As to revenue sharing agreements, these are as mystic as a witch’s broom. Where is the revenue is the classes are free? Having said all this I do think there is a relatively good advertising model not far from Google, youtube, etc. At $10 per class net, net cost per student, shouldn’t be hard to find advertisers to cover that cost. But in the end the product must be of very high level, or if I were the Provost at Stanford, Yale, Princeton and Columbia I would be extremely concerned that my alumni might be all over me — in court? — for debasing their diploma…as of course is the case by having courses delivered with lower levels than that demanded from the “regular” campus student.
http://oregonhibbs.com/2012/11/14/global-conference-hibbs-prepared-remarks/
1.- Unfortunately we get reports that some Coursera courses are good some are bad .
2.- It is good to hear that all MITx Harvardx berkeleyx courses are good ç Good thing is these courses are same as oncampus courses No difference .
3.- The cost of online course including
- Professors intellectual property rigjts + his design effort
- All technical help from simulators, animators, sofyware engineers
- 10 semester of hosting , TAs salary, instructors salary,
- all overheads of the school
is only $ 1,000,000 ( may be even less )
Now asume only 5,000 students taking a course online that is 50,000 in 10 semesters, 5 years , then cost per person is
$ 1,000,000 / 50,000 = $ 20
If MIT charges only $ 25 per course they will make millions $ profit .
That is the beauty . Quality important, quality means brand name .
If demand is high as in any business then high demand online is good too .
Bill
Do not worry. EDX is a money machine they will make billions $ profit within few years .
The cost of an online course
including
intellectual property rights of the professors plus his effort to design
all technical support
all hosting for 5 years
all instructors and TAs salary
is at most $ 1,000,000 ( may be less )
If only 5,000 enrollments per semester that makes 50,000 in 5 years .
Divide $ 1,000,000 / 50,000 = $ 20 per course .
If MIT charges only $ 25 per course they will make billions when they reach to 1 billion students as they claim .
MIT has a vision, Harvard followed them . Be careful number of demand is the most important to make money as in any bussiness .
I wish Stanford and Yale had followed them too .
John
Do not worry about the students paying $ 50,000 to MIT .
MIT , seeing this , says they will give the ceertificate as MITx .
Like Harvard extension degrees . Still they are good .
We employers are smart enough to distinguish the real MIT degree and MITx degrees as well . Well still we will hire MITx graduates at higher wages than regular college graduates from unknown colleges .
If there are millions of people doing courses that use to be offered to only a few hundred how is that going to help overall demand for these skills? I work within a profession which had 100% employment rate when I finished university. Since completing my degree I have seen all universities within my country increase class numbers. Now every year I see people who have spent three years of their lives studying a specific course unable to get their first professional job. Whilst I am lucky to be employable in the area I have studied I have experienced first hand how non transferable my skills are to other sectors of the labour market. I’m deeply skeptical of the wider social good purported by Coursera’s providers. Why would you want the poor and isolated people within our communities being taught law, computer science, economics only for them to be unable to get a job due to excess supply of graduates. To have few opportunities in life is one thing but to be offered an opportunity only for it to amount to nothing is truely heart breaking. With the introduction of MOOC it is worth pondering whether a high school graduate may be better off to become a butcher, baker or candle stick maker. I think MOOC is going to further increase the educational attainment necessary for the most basic of jobs.
another big question is what is the cost that the student are paying?
If time is money and the market becomes harder I will like that set to be researched as well.
This is very sound advice and should be considered closely. At first I was hugely encouraged by Coursera. But having taken their a few of their classes and see how badly they are “run”, and having been deeply involved in online learning for almost 20 years, I am now disgusted by what Coursera is doing to the brand image of those they represent; and the impact that is sure to come by their pace. Here’s the text of my remarks at the Global Education Conference a couple days ago.
All thoughts welcome by return email. skipper@bfranklin.edu
portfolio web site oregonhibbs.com
John
You say you are disgusted… the text of your remarks isnt here… and when I go to your website it seems to be saying how wonderful Coursera is!
Confused of Scotland