Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): An Assessment Based on Personal Experience

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1 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): An Assessment Based on Personal Experience By Martina Mangelsdorf, Managing Director and founder of GAIA Insights Trends come and go in education as in any other domain. Just every now and then, there s a trend that turns the regular ebb and flow of new ideas into a tidal wave of a mega trend, shaking up the world as we know it. Whether or not MOOCs have what it takes to become such a tidal wave remains to be seen. However, they certainly have the potential to change higher education forever. MOOC stands for massive open online course and is aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the internet. According to Wikipedia, MOOCs originated from within the open educational resources movement and roots. They are a recent development in the area of distance education, and a progression of open education ideals. While there is no commonly accepted definition of an MOOC, two key features seem prevalent: Open access. MOOC participants don't need to be a registered student in a school to "take" an MOOC, and aren't usually required to pay a fee. Scalability. Many traditional courses depend upon a small ratio of students to teacher, but the "massive" in MOOC suggests that the course is designed to support an indefinite number of participants. (source: Wikipedia) One example of a popular MOOC provider is Coursera ( a social entrepreneurship company that partners with universities to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Their vision is a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions, giving everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. Higher education that overcomes the boundaries of geography, time and money! - as one of their participants is quoted. Coursera currently offers 198 courses in 18 categories, spanning a wide range of areas, such as Humanities, Medicine, Biology, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Business, Computer Science, and many others. According to their website, over 1.6 million students benefit from Coursera s partnerships with 33 universities, predominantly but not exclusively US-based. While Coursera claims that the design of their platform is based on sound pedagogical foundations, there is still a reasonable level of controversy regarding the extent to which online instruction is as effective as face-to-face instruction. A lot of research and analysis has been done in this field and you can either be convinced by various studies concluding that online learning methods are, on average, at least as effective as face-to-face learning. Or you can try it out for yourself, which is what I did. This article is my very personal assessment of an MOOC as a viable alternative for executive education: Can a massive open online course effectively engage and develop a senior level audience?

2 One of the Coursera programs recently offered was a course entitled Gamification, lectured by Kevin Werbach, Associate Professor at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. The course lasted 6 weeks, it was comprised of 12 lectures, each lasting between 8 and 15 minutes, and I was one of students from over 150 countries taking it. Considering the criteria that make or break a learning experience, here is what I found the MOOC cater to very well, while other aspects might have been better served in a traditional classroom setting: Content A common concern around MOOCs is that challenging content would not be transferable to an online platform with a massive audience. Now, gamification may not be the most sophisticated subject I could have chosen but it was the one that interested me most (the reason for this would be an entirely different article). We also covered quite a bit of ground in demanding areas, such as game design principles, motivational theory, and various aspects of behavioral psychology. I was actually positively surprised how well Prof. Werbach managed to break down complex concepts into easily digestible chunks. When I see some other courses offered by Coursera, including Exploring Quantum Physics or Mathematical Biostatistics Boot Camp, I guess in the end, this quality is more of a challenge for the instructor (and speaks for his pedagogical skill) than it is a serious hindrance for students. Methodology Learning through an MOOC basically means watching a number of video lectures taught by an instructor. While this allows every student to learn at their own pace, it obviously inhibits learners to ask questions and build a personal relationship with the faculty, as it might be the case in a personal face-to-face setting. While Coursera programs are designed to incorporate an extensive use of interactive exercises, classic Q&A sessions remain wishful thinking. What I found extremely helpful instead, was the possibility to rewind and watch a video section multiple times until I was sure that I had understood the lecture. Also very valuable, especially for non-native speakers, was the fact that students could download transcripts for each video to go over the content again, thus combining auditory and visual learning channels. Besides, the video lectures I followed, frequently stopped, and students were asked to answer questions to test whether they are tracking the material. This certainly helped maintain student focus and engagement. Apart from the relationship with faculty, even more importantly one might think, are the interpersonal relationships that often develop between participants when they attend a face-toface program together. At least, speaking for myself, when I attend classroom training, I usually enjoy meeting new people, bonding over the exchange of best practices, and potentially making new friends. Obviously, this element is another limited factor with MOOCs. While courses often include online forums that provide ample opportunities to engage with other students, to post questions, and enter discussions, most chats center around program content, course logistics, or pure socializing. In my opinion, this kind of virtual interaction does not make up for deeper connections that tend to emerge in face-to-face settings and often lead to valuable business focused insights. The diversity of a global community of thousands of students can be enriching in one way, but barely goes beyond superficial contact.

3 Logistics Given the fact, that no one has to travel anywhere to attend an MOOC and that these courses are usually offered free of charge, cost savings can be a substantial argument for organizations to move from face-to-face to remote learning set-ups. In addition, another huge advantage of MOOCs is the fact that all course material videos, transcripts, slides is downloadable and therefore made-to-last. While conversations in a traditional classroom setting certainly also add value to the student experience, it is almost impossible to capture everything that is going on in a live session. Note taking can distract and even distributed scripts typically do not cover everything a professor says. This is different when you follow a recorded lecture that you can keep on file for as long as you want. The catch 22 of this is the fact that any material available to the students is only as good as it is clear and understandable. In my case, I initially struggled to fully understand the provided instructions around course logistics and homework assignments. It can be frustrating if there is no one to ask directly for clarification, even though over time, questions like these are largely addressed in the offered chat forums. Probably the biggest disadvantage with an MOOC set-up is the risk of technical glitches. If the course material is not optimized for every internet browser, for example, the learner s experience can be quite heavily disturbed by trying to figure out how to solve various technical issues, thus distracting from the content and losing interest in following the program. During the 6 weeks duration of the course I took, several technical issues occurred, which irritated students, temporarily suspending their access, leading to submission deadlines for homework being postponed. Even the course faculty admitted at some point, that the technical platform wasn't yet mature and reached its limits due to the gigantic amount of participants from all over the world. When considering this virtual set-up for senior executive education, clearly this kind of disruption would not be acceptable. (Then again, you probably wouldn t have people enrolled.) Sustainable Outcome So if a cost-efficient MOOC covers relevant content, is taught in an interactive manner, but lacks interpersonal relationships and technological maturity, can it even lead to a sustainable outcome? One of the key ideas of the Coursera approach is mastery learning, to make sure that students have multiple attempts to demonstrate their new knowledge. This is achieved by using interactivity, to ensure learner engagement and to assist long-term retention; and by providing frequent feedback, so that students can monitor their own progress, and know when they've really mastered the material. During my course, for example, I had to produce 4 multiple choice based homework quizzes, 3 written assignments and 1 final exam. Now, is this more or less effective for long-term retention than traditional classroom learning? I don t know but what certainly is a lasting outcome of our class is the extensive online wiki on gamification that was created by the students of my course. Offered as part of the program but considered an additional voluntary add-on, the course wiki grew to include countless posts, links and articles about major concepts, resources, case studies, and much more. If nothing else, this is definitely an invaluable sustainable outcome of the course! Accreditation Though the design of and participation in an MOOC may be similar to college or university courses, probably a major issue at least up to now is the fact that they typically do not offer accreditation. Unlike classroom programs, where the faculty gets to assess each student s work and submissions to ensure that they accomplished a certain minimum

4 qualification, most MOOCs rely on peer reviews instead because in many courses, the assignments do not lend themselves easily to automated grading by a computer. While peer reviews versus faculty feedback may dilute the quality of the outcome, in my experience, the peer reviews fulfilled their task of supporting my learning experience. In our course, the instructions and the rating scale for peer reviews were very clear. The anonymous comments my peers made on my submissions were constructive and helpful and I didn t have the impression that the task of providing mutual feedback was taken lightly by anyone. Using specific algorithms, it is actually expected that by having multiple students grade each other s homework (anonymously), it will be possible to obtain grading accuracy comparable or even superior to that provided by a single teaching assistant, as it rules out personal bias. Personally, I value the certification I will receive signed by Prof. Werbach as much as if it was a credit issued by the University of Pennsylvania. To me, the actual learning is more important and relevant than the piece of paper proving that I attended a certain class. Last but not least Considering all of the above, MOOCs compared to traditional face-to-face learning doesn t seem to offer any outstanding benefits. But I must admit that I kept an ace up my sleeve and this, to me, is the biggest plus why an MOOC wins over each and every classroom setting: The magic word is flexibility. Considering the busy life of senior executives, this is an almost priceless asset. Not only can you choose when to take a course, you also determine when to start, stop, interrupt, re-start, repeat and finish each single lecture. You can do this anywhere you want, anytime, as long as you are connected, at least long enough to download the material. As soon as you have the lectures or slides on your mobile device, you can learn on the go, on a plane, in a taxi cab. I cannot even begin to mention all the various places where I have listened to and/or watched Prof. Werbach s lectures. At the office, on the sofa, in my kitchen, at the gym his video-embedded face has been pretty much everywhere in my life for the past 6 weeks! I could watch 2 or 20 minutes at a time, whatever I could squeeze into my agenda, and I loved that flexibility and freedom. Final Conclusion So, can a massive open online course effectively engage and develop a senior level audience? Well, I can only answer this for myself but I don t see why not. I personally found it a very rewarding experience with a powerful impact and I learned A LOT. Instead, I think that the question whether or not an MOOC adds critical value or is rather a trivial waste of time ultimately depends on two aspects: 1. The quality of the instructor is he/she inspiring? Dedicated? Funny? Does he/she manage to convey a message that is interesting and compelling? 2. The personal engagement of the individual student is he/she committed to learn? Is he/she participating actively, following lectures and ensuring individual progress? Demonstrating self-discipline and willingness to close any gaps pro-actively? Without these two being present, I guess any minute spent on an MOOC is a waste of time. But honestly, is this different from a random face-to-face instruction? I don t think so after all, effective learning is what you make of it. Virtual or not.

5 Criteria Face-to-Face Setting MOOC Sophisticated content Q&A / relationship with faculty Interpersonal relationships amongst learners Unbiased feedback through anonymous peer review Lectures and course material to review and keep «forever» Delivery independent from technology Cost-efficiency Sustainable outcome Accreditation Flexibility Copyright Martina Mangelsdorf, 2012

6 Criteria Face-to-Face Setting MOOC Sophisticated content Q&A / relationship with faculty Interpersonal relationships amongst learners Unbiased feedback through anonymous peer review Lectures and course material to review and keep «forever» Delivery independent from technology Cost-efficiency Sustainable outcome Accreditation Flexibility