EdTech2015 Conference University of Limerick, 2015

1. A low-cost MOOC production workflow for distributed teams
Rita Day, Brian Mulligan
Centre for Online Learning, IT Sligo
EdTEch2015 Conference 2015

2. What is a MOOC?
 “The opportunity to learn about a subject
from an expert, in the company of other
interested learners.”

3. What’s a MOOC?
 Massive Open Online Course – A model for delivery
learning content online to any person who wants to learn
more about a topic
 No limit on attendees
 Geographically diverse
 Free or reduced cost
 Variability in structure, content and
instruction
 1000’s of participants
 Between specified dates
 Material, Quizzes, Peer graded
assignments

4. Project outline
 A major reservation about Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs) is that they are extremely expensive to develop and
deliver and for most institutions this cannot be justified on a
sustainable financial basis.
 Intel Ireland have funded research on the development and
testing of a methodology for low-cost MOOC production.
 The development of four MOOCs in programming aimed at
secondary school and vocational students, where the key
developers are located outside IT Sligo.

5. Project Plan
 In this project Moodle has been used as an online
repository for the learning material; with a quality
checking mechanism facility rolled out in a pilot
programme from January 2015 and the re-run
planned for launch in September 2015.
 The pilot will be available to students within the
developers sector and through wider participation
with open availability to all by a registration
process.

6. Intel Ireland Coding MOOC Project
Funded by Intel Ireland
 Objective:
 To develop (4) free online courses in coding for
young people
 Leverage the amount of data in this field
 Measuring value
 Quality at low cost
 Led by IT Sligo
 Project Manager, Rita Day
Project Leader, Brian Mulligan
 Partners
 DIFE, DIT, CoderDojo,
FIT, SW College

7. Web Page Development
 Jessica Matthews, DIFE Drogheda Institute of
Further Education
 Currently piloting HTML, CSS
 Available Autumn 2015

8. Roboslam
 Frank Duignan, Dublin Institute of Technology
 https://roboslam.wordpress.com/
 Currently piloting
 Available Autumn 2015
 Electronic fundamentals, C programming
 Requires ordering a kit (€250 / 10 kits)

9. Multiplayer Online Game Development
 Noel King, Coder Dojo
 Javascript, Server programming, Clientside programming,
networking
 Currently piloting
 Available Autumn, 2015

10. Mobile Game Development
 Mark Taylor, Fast-track to IT (www.fit.ie)
 MIT AppInventor
 Pilot starts 13th April, 2015
 Available Autumn, 2015

11. Globalisation of MOOCs
 The globalisation of MOOCs is also being explored as one of the partners has
agreed to trial the MOOCs with a Zambian student cohort.

12. Southwest College - Zambia
 Further Education – online meets the needs
 Free education in Africa (MOOC)

13. Are MOOCs financially viable?
 The project will review the cost analysis per developer,
resources requirements for developing and delivering
MOOCs, the costs of MOOC production and delivery, a
time-by-task analysis, the sustainability of MOOCs and the
future direction through tracking of post-MOOC
longitudinal studies.
 Topics include Content Development and Sourcing,
Hosting Platforms, Pedagogical Approaches,
Communication and Support, Institutional Systems and
Services, Assessment and Accreditation.

14. How much does it cost to record and
publish a lecture?
 Recording set up.
 –Video
 –Audio
 –Screen capture
 –Etc.
 •Mixing
 •Editing
 •Post-processing
 •Publishing
 •Yale: €40k per course

15. Costs to Develop
 Instructors develop their own courses
 Course development 100+hours
 Course management 8-10hours per week
 Provider services
 $250,000+ per course
 $50,000+ every time the course is taught
 Free to participants

16. "Could it be cheaper? - IT Sligo Research"
 Target audience – young people learning to code
 Free platforms
 Low cost recording tools
 Open Education Resources
 Instructional branding
 Quality and standardisation
 LoCoMoTion Project moocs4all.eu
 How to build low-cost MOOCs
 MOOC starting June 2015
 IT Sligo, Technical U. of Delft, U. of Girona, Fachhochschule Bielefeld,
Bath Spa University

17. "Could it be cheaper? - IT Sligo Research"
The project aims will investigate:
 1. How were the students’ experiences in terms of the course
design (e.g. learning materials, activities and teaching support)?
 2. How effective was course with regard to students’ learning
outcomes?
 3. How do the outcomes differ from more expensive MOOCs?
 4. What were the costs involved in constructing the MOOCs?
 5. How were the instructors’ experiences in terms of the course
from production to execution?

18. Quantification of Developers effort
 Number of hours in course design (definition of topics and
content)
 Number of videos per week:
 Average length of video:
 Development of videos:
 Average time to:
 plan/design a video:
 Preparation / assemble materials
 record video
 carry out any processing before submission to IT Sligo
 Time spent authoring quizzes per week
 Number of assignments in course
 Average time writing the assignment


19. Useful
Ideas
 Simplify
 Recommended standard
 Templates & Design
Patterns
 Workflow
 Hardware
 Training (minimal)
 Support

20. What is the
Challenge?
 To maximise quality
 To minimise costs
 To minimise the
workload
skills required
on the Subject
Matter Expert

21. Useful Ideas
 Moderate ambitions
 Simplify processes – sample lean workflow
 Recommended standards – templates – course design,
slides, quizzes
 Minimal training
 Reliable hardware
 Responsive support
 Peer Assessment
 You Tube as the video platform
 Alignment of activities to the learning outcomes

22. Useful ideas continued…
 Criteria for selection
 Ease of recording
 Ease of publishing
 Scalability
 Cost of hosting
 Bandwidth requirements
 Recording, viewing
 Publishing options
 Output quality and formats
 Navigable recordings

23. Sample lean
work flow

24. End of Course Survey

25. Thank you and acknowledgements

26. Any Questions?
www.itsligo.ie/online