The Road to Better MOOCs

The latest sensation in ed tech and eLearning, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are online courses offering large-scale enrollments and open access to coordinated educational curricula. Generally-accepted examples include Coursera, Udacity, edX, Udemy, and, depending who you ask, even the Khan Academy.

Sound familiar? It should. In the last few weeks alone, MOOCs have graced the covers of TIME, the New York Times and Forbes, been featured in TV news from ABC to NBC, and blogged about on the Washington Post and TechCrunch, to name a few.

Innovation, hype, or a touch of both?

In some respects, the concept is neither new nor particularly innovative; relative to advancements in internet tech, it’s already age-old. In my opinion, MOOCs represent the inevitable, logical next step in education. As an instructional tech enthusiast, I appreciate the MOOC sensation, but as a web technologist, I’m underwhelmed by all the hype.

Why the recent media frenzy? If for no other reason: education lags 30 years behind most of the world, and 50 years behind Silicon Valley. At ed tech conferences, I still hear presenters using phrases like infuse our pedagogy with the 21st-century magic of Web 2.0 technologies — holy jumping weasel critters on a hot cross bun, how I cringe. Guess what, Dr. Educator? Web 2.0 died. (That is, assuming it ever existed.) No, Dr. Teacher, YouTube is not new, Flickr is crusty with mold, and Wikis are not the next frontier. So, when MOOC startups finally hit the big-time, the world of education reacted like a dear in headlights.

There’s a tsunami coming…

Now that 80% of people believe college isn’t worth the money, higher ed has to face the needs of students, not just consumers. Following this fall’s college enrollment season, the media has started to pay attention, too. No, MOOCs won’t ever replace the higher ed paradigm, but they’ll inform each other in parallel as the first struggles to monetize and the latter struggles to stay relevant. As noted by NYT columnist David Brooks in his article on MOOCs: there’s a tsunami coming. Indeed, higher ed is one of the U.S.’s foremost ‘industries’ (shortly behind defense, banking and pharmaceuticals), but 4 out of 5 people think it’s simply broken.

Hence the media coverage.

Elements of a good MOOC

I’ll be the first to admit: I have no idea how to run a ‘good’ MOOC. In fact, no one really does. Of course, MOOC bigwigs like Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun and edX motherships Harvard and MIT are trying to nail it, but all they’ve shown thus far is that that there’s high demand for MOOCs. This isn’t to say their products aren’t ‘good’, but it’s obvious they’re still concocting formulae for perfection.

Disclaimer — Some analysts divide MOOCs into two, very different categories: cMOOCs and xMOOCs. cMOOCs, or connectivist MOOCs, emphasize democratized and collaborative learning. xMOOCs, by contrast, employ a more traditional pedagogy centered on information consumption. These are the MOOCs being offered by today’s major providers. With their origins in Stanford and MIT’s Computer Science departments, xMOOCs have a lot more technology ‘under the hood’, and these MOOCs are the focus of this article.

Each provider bares its own strengths and weaknesses, and oftentimes, these vary from course to course. A sophisticated standing analysis of the circumstances comes from Amanda Ripley, the hotshot TIME journalist who authored the magazine’s recent cover story. My synthesis is this: MOOCs as a concept may not be new, but as a business model, they’re just sprouting. The ‘big three’ MOOC providers are still revenue-neutral, so the fruit is very much raw.

The eMeat and ePotatoes

That said, I do know this: all good MOOCs should have certain functional and technical characteristics in common. At the moment, these are decent criteria for identifying ‘good’ MOOCs, but they don’t constitute good MOOCs. In general, they contribute to the personalization or individualization of the learning process, the cultivation of learning communities, and the scale of delivery. I’ll amend this (rudimentary) list as I make new discoveries, but as of winter 2012, they include:

1. Piecewise, Modular Video Content

In stark contrast with the video-based lectures of the last couple decades, modern MOOC videos are split into smaller parts. This allows some videos to be skipped without undermining the learning process. In theory, it also permits groups of videos — collectively, ‘modules’ — to be rearranged relative to other modules when the curriculum isn’t strictly cumulative. MOOCs of the near future will dynamically (‘modularly’) assemble larger videos from infinitesimal (‘piecewise’) chunks of video to serve individual needs on the fly… just like a good tutor modulates his instruction in real life. High-speed, cloud-native technologies are just beginning to facilitate this sort of realtime assembly (and no, Mr. Pedagogue, I don’t mean YouTube).

2. Frequent Formative Assessments and Immediate Feedback

Wikipedia (citing Dr. Terry Crooks) defines formative assessment as procedures employed during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. Good MOOCs offer healthy doses of formative assessment by inserting frequent comprehension quizzes between video, text, and interactive segments. Usually, the learner is not allowed to progress until he succeeds, but adaptive learning platforms like Knewton (a few blocks from my office) are even getting better at (a) refactoring assessments in real time to reflect learner needs, and (b) adapting subsequent learning materials based on the results. Another advantage of formative assessment is the opportunity to offer immediate feedback — perhaps the single most beneficial aspect of eLearning at this time. In the future, mobile platforms could take the concept further by offering periodic, random assessments to measure concept retention. Maybe this is an aspect of summative evaluation, but the delivery method and lower stakes are much more formative than summative. MOOCs of the future will rely heavily on emerging technologies that make all this possible, collectively known as learning analytics.

3. Hybridized (Not Standalone) Simulations

Who doesn’t appreciate educational Flash widgets like this one? Self-contained “simulations” like that, though, can only go so far. Many aren’t appropriate for teaching new concepts, so much as reinforcing existing ones. While there’s merit in this, I think the world of eLearning often forgets there’s a world beyond the worldwide web… and it’s perfect for running hybridized simulations. Drawing on Ripley’s anecdote, why use Flash to illustrate the Pythagorean theorem when 100% of students have a tree and sun outside with which to run their own experiments? Students could build their own simulations by recreating experiences through a simulations construction interface provided by the MOOC. It’s less self-contained, but this hybridized approach wields three huge advantages: (1) experiential learning, (2) higher-order thinking, and (3) potentially spontaneous learning communities. And while it’s not wholly ‘online’, this approach would introduce diversity to the MOOC process. Providers will eventually discover how to make this model viable, and when they do, they’ll see effectiveness ratings skyrocket.

4. Mobile-First Instructional Design

In the 1950s, Madison Avenue realized that 83% of convertible ad spaces sat around unused: staircase surfaces, bottle cap undersides, apparel artwork, etc. The advertising industry’s growth from that point has hinged on its ability to identify new fora for targeting consumers, and it has done so masterfully. The eLearning industry could learn take a page from that book: 90% of learners own smartphones or tablets, so why not design MOOCs based on mobile learning strategies? Why not take advantage of the 200,000 years we spend playing Angry Birds to educate willing learners? From a pedagogy standpoint, there’s a lot you can do with portable devices you can’t do with standard computers, including research field trips, social learning, and location-based learning… all within the context of MOOC. Technologically, it also opens up a world of possibility, notably augmented reality.

5. 21st-Century Certification

One question in the MOOC sustainability debate is that of certification. Some MOOCs don’t yet offer certification on completion, others believe it’s the key to monetization, and others still argue its holds no certifiable value. I propose another issue entirely: traditional ‘certification’ doesn’t stand up to forward-thinking MOOC standards. For example, imagine you and I both receive a certificate or badge in Molecular Biology 101. Perhaps you mastered the biochemistry portion of the curriculum, but didn’t perform as well in the genetics portion. I, on the other hand, nailed the genetics portion, and didn’t do so well with biochem. Nevertheless, we both received a certificate. The same certificate. In what context would that certificate be meaningful, then? As long as we’re using the dynamic, database-driven technology of MOOCs to offer instruction, we might as well rethink the certification process to reflect individualized learning outcomes, not just completion. Hopefully, this would add enough value to offset some of the cynicism surrounding the MOOC certification debate.

On the Road

No MOOC provider has successfully implemented all five points identified above. In fact, no MOOC provider has fulfilled the whole of any one point identified above. As I noted, they’re still concocting formulae for success. However, certain providers and courses have assimilated these principles, and are slowly, surely striving towards them. As they continue to fall under media scrutiny and discover increasingly open arms in higher ed, MOOCs will find their place in the system. Their technologies and approaches will progress by building on iterations past. And with any luck, consumers — students — will emerge from the storm more gratified, willing and prepared than ever before. ₪

Update: I highly recommend you glance at Sir John Daniel’s new whitepaper, Making Sense of MOOCs, for a matchlessly thorough review of the MOOC industry. It’s been very well-received in the ed tech world.