3. Overview of the Massive Open Online Course
(MOOC)
• MOOC Momentum
– The impact of MOOCs on higher education and
corporate learning
• Maturing MOOCs
– How MOOCs have been received and evolved
• Molding the MOOC
– Assembling hybrid learning experiences
• Marketing the MOOC
– If you build it, will they come?
3
4. 4
What Is Your Experience?
I’ve deployed a MOOC.
I’ve started a MOOC (but did
did not complete it).
I’ve completed one or more
more MOOCs as a
participant.
Just curious.
5. MOOC Momentum
• Higher Education
– Georgia Tech master’s degree in Computer Science for
$6,600
– 1,400 enrollees
– How employers will view this type of degree is still to be
determined
• Traditional Higher Education Methods Persist
– Only 15% of Coursera enrollees are of traditional college
age
– Remaining 85% divided between adults looking to
expand their horizons – or, more likely, gain new job skills
• As Do Notoriously High Dropout Rates
– 90 percent or more
– MOOC developers need to realize that most enrollees in
low
or no-cost courses are “window shoppers”Source: What Are MOOCs Good For? and What MOOCs Teach Us
6. MOOC Momentum
• Corporate Alliances
– 350+ companies are paying Coursera and Udacity
• To identify the best and brightest students in relevant courses
and refer them as possible job candidates
– Google has enrolled 80,000 employees in Udacity’s
HTML5 course
• A prime example of using a MOOC for workforce training
• Corporate “Sponsorship”
– Deloitte, Yahoo!, & other companies encourage
employees to enroll in MOOCs for career development
purposes
• Not all of these companies give credit for MOOC
completion
• “Hybridization” & Collaboration
– Over 100 companies have used the University of
Virginia/Coursera platform, Coursolve, as a tool to find
solutions to real-life business problems
Source: 7 Ways Corporations Use MOOCs
7. MOOCs on Gartner’s “Hype Curve”
Tech
Trigger
Peak of
Inflated
Expectations
Trough of
Disillusionment
Slope of
Enlightenment
Plateau of
Productivity
Visibility
Time
8. MOOCs on Google Trends
Source: Google Trends using the term “MOOC” January 1, 2015
9. Maturing MOOCs
• Shopping for Snippets
– This can account for the low completion rates
• Participants “drop out” when they have what they
need
• Comparable to Textbooks
– Viewed by many as being as much a reference
tool as anything else
Source: What Are MOOCs Good For? - MIT Technology Review
10. Molding the MOOC
• Is the MOOC Evolving Into Something Else?
– Increasing integration of social media
– Employment candidate screening tool
– “Open” may not mean “free”
– Maturing from lecture-laden to more interactive
and collaborative
Source: 7 Ways Corporations Use MOOCs
11. Marketing the MOOC
• Captive Corporate Audiences?
• Goodwill Gestures
– “Ripple effect”
• Increasing Engagement
– WIIFM
• Certification
Source: 6 Tactics to Sell Your Courses and Boost Awareness
12. MOOC Mainstays & Metamorphoses
• What Hasn’t Changed (Yet)
– Massive enrollments
– High dropout rates
– MOOC demographics
• MOOC Variations
– DOCC
• Distributed Online Collaborative Course
– BOOC
• Big Open Online Course
– SPOC
• Small Private Online Course
– SMOC
• Synchronous Massive Online Course
Sources: Musing on MOOCs and Will MOOCs be Flukes? (New Yorker
Magazine)
The MOOC Meter
13. MOOCS in 2014
What was predicted or
suggested:
– MOOCs need to make money
– Or maybe MOOCs can just be
nonprofit
– The audience MOOCs attract
may determine what they
become
– MOOCs need to put data to
good use
– MOOCs may need to look
overseas for growth
What actually happened:
– Xerox acquires Intrepid Learning
– Coursera reaches 10 million
enrolled learners
– edX and Google launch
MOOC.org
– MOOC audiences tend to be
non-traditional students and
“shoppers”
– MOOCs are becoming more
personalized to their audiences
– Miriada X becomes the first non-
US MOOC provider to cross 1Source: What's in Store for MOOCs in 2014? – EducationDive http://www.educationdive.com/news/whats-in-store-for-moocs-in-
2014/198600/
14. “Experts” Outlook for 2015
• MOOCs Are Here to Stay
• But perhaps not in their present form
• MOOC Structure Will Become More
Interactive
• Problem-based
• Collaborative
Source: MOOCs and eLearning: Where Are We Headed?
15. 15
What Are Your Predictions?
MOOCs will “plateau.” MOOCs will fade away.
MOOCs will forever
change corporate
learning.
Other – please specify in
Q&A.
16. Summary and Key Takeaways
MOOCs will continue to be a Learning
Trend for 2015. Things to consider:
• Enroll in a MOOC to gain a learner’s perspective first-
hand
• Encourage employees to enroll in MOOCs and
conduct focus groups throughout and after the
experience
• Start small if you decide to try a MOOC
– Possibly a SPOC or a BOOC
• Consider a collaborative experience with others in the
industry
– “Co-opetition”
17. 17
Questions
In the Q&A panel,
pose questions or
share your
thoughts on the
future of MOOCs. !
?
18. Keep the Conversation Going All Year Long!
Hashtag
#trainforward
Follow the GP Strategies Blog
http://blog.gpstrategies.com
LinkedIn Group
Exploring Learning Trends
Our speaker today is Steve Swink, a Training Specialist with GP Strategies.
Steve has been with GP Strategies since 2007, delivering and supplementing both ILT and virtual training. He also worked in adult learning for over 17 years serving in various roles at area community colleges, developing and delivering customized software training programs. Previously, he developed and delivered a product education and sales training program for a major regional health insurer. Steve holds both bachelors and masters degrees in business administration from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Steve served on ASTD’s (now ATD’s) 2013 and 2014 ICE-PAC , or International Conference & Exposition Program Advisory Committee.
He is a contributor to GP Strategies’ Blog page.
In July of 2014, he conducted a Webinar, Musing on MOOCs, and his article, Is Now the Time to Move on MOOCs? appeared in the August 2014 edition of Chief Learning Officer Magazine.
I’d like to thank everyone for joining us today.
MOOCs – or Massive Online Open Courses, have received a great deal of attention in the past several months; so, we’d like to take some time to talk some more about this phenomenon – where it’s been, and where it may be headed.
First, we’ll take a quick look at the impact of MOOCs on higher education as well as corporate learning.
Next, we’ll try to see where MOOCs currently fall along the “Hype Curve” and how they are being received by and adapting to the marketplace.
Then, taking this a step further, we’ll see how MOOCs are evolving, or might evolve into something else as they continue to mature.
Finally, we will talk briefly about promoting and marketing your MOOCs or other innovative learning initiatives.
Throughout this webinar, we’ll be asking for your thoughts and feedback through polls and the Q&A panel.
Let’s kick off this session with a quick poll to see what your experience with MOOCs has been.
Please check the polling panel on the right-hand side of your screen and tell us which of these categories best represents your exposure to MOOCs – or Massive Open Online Courses:
Have you deployed or been involved in the deployment of a MOOC?
Have you enrolled in, but – like overwhelming majority of MOOC users – not completed a MOOC?
Have you completed a MOOC – or multiple MOOCs?
Or – are you just curious and want to know more?
[HOST OPENS THE POLL, AND SHARES AND ANNOUNCES THE RESULTS]
MOOCs are continuing to impact the Higher Education arena – sometimes in unpredictable ways.
In October of 2013, Georgia Tech offered a Master’s Degree in Computer Science for $6,600, drawing 1,400 enrollees. The jury is still out, however, on how employers will value this degree compared to a traditional Master’s Degree.
MOOC Platform provider Coursera stated that their enrollee data shows only 15% of their participants are of traditional college age, with the large majority of users being people seeking either personal development topics or new job skills to help them advance their current careers.
Very high attrition rates still persist in MOOCs as well, with many ‘dropout’ rates being over 90 percent. Most of this can be attributed to the fact that the overwhelming majority of MOOC participants are window shoppers. Serious students will stay the course because they are self-motivated and driven.
The Corporate Learning world has also taken a cue from MOOCs, crafting a variety of alliances and strategies to leverage this still relatively new tool.
In 2014, there were over 350 employers that partnered with MOOC providers Coursera and Udactiy to use MOOCs as an employment screening tool – again, this may be a situation where MOOCs can act as a filter to highlight driven and motivated individuals.
Google leveraged Udacity’s HTML5 programming course as a workforce training tool by enrolling 80,000 employees in this MOOC.
Other companies, such as Yahoo and Deloitte, leverage MOOCs as a professional development tool by encouraging their employees to enroll in courses for professional development. Some, but not all – employers will give credit for MOOC completion.
Finally, consortia of employers have been using MOOCs to collaborate – sometimes across companies – using MOOC-based platforms such as Coursolve by Coursera and the University of Virginia.
IT research and advisory firm Gartner developed the “Hype Cycle” to measure maturity, adoption, and social application of specific technologies.
Depending on who you ask and how you define a MOOC, their origins can be traced back anywhere from 5 – 7 years, or perhaps a bit more.
Let’s take a look at the buzz that MOOCs have created on a leading search engine during that timeframe.
As you can see here, the Google Trends data seems to flow along the same trend of Gartner’s Hype cycle, with an early peak back in 2007, and the ‘trough of disillusionment’ bottoming out in 2011. The ‘slope of enlightenment’ appears to have been scaled in 2013, with 2014 seemingly being the year that a somewhat bumpy ‘Plateau of Productivity’ is being approached.
So, just how have MOOCs been maturing in the marketplace, and where might they be headed next?
Because MOOCs are “massive”, “open”, and in many cases low risk, they tend to draw a lot of “window shoppers”. These are enrollees who come and go, “cherry-picking” the knowledge that they feel is most relevant to them.
MOOC demographics continue to bear out the fact that the majority of MOOC enrollees are those who already have some form of a formal education versus those individuals seeking first-time certifications and/or degrees.
So, while the creators of MOOCs may have intended for the goal to be to bring low-cost quality education to the masses, evidence seems to indicate that MOOCs, for the most part, are reaching a much different market.
As MOOCs continue to mature, several trends are developing.
More MOOCs are leveraging existing social media tools as part of their overall delivery structure
Example: McAfee’s onboarding program
Employers are using MOOCs as an employment screening tool, not only by mining MOOC provider data, but also offering their own ‘get acquainted’ courses.
As MOOCs struggle to settle in on a business model, ‘Open’ no longer necessarily means ‘free’, as evidenced by Georgia Tech’s $6,600 Master’s Degree Program
MOOC providers continue to experiment with making them less “Massive” and “Open” focusing more on the experience of the users by engaging them in interactive and collaborative activities.
Example: Consortia of employers using Coursolve.
Depending on the setting of your MOOC, you may have a ‘captive’ corporate audience who may be enrolled because the course is mandated. However, coercion doesn’t do much for learner engagement.
Whether the MOOC is internal or external, goodwill gestures of ‘giving away’ free and relevant information can have a ripple effect and allow you to leverage ‘word of mouth’ advertising.
And, like all marketing or advertising campaigns, promotions should focus on the benefits of enrollment and completion, or the What’s In It For Me”?
Finally, certification of some sort can be appealing to users, to show the world they have completed the experience and gained relevant knowledge or skills. Certification is more meaningful when it’s been validated by challenging assessments.
Your advertising campaign, whether it be a landing page or something else, needs to answer four questions for readers/viewers:
What am I getting?
How am I benefiting?
Why do I need to do this right now?
How do I obtain what’s being offered?
As MOOC offerings and enrollments continue to climb, some traits are remaining relatively constant, while certain ‘flavors’ or varieties of MOOCs have already emerged and continue to evolve.
In a November 7, 2014 New Yorker magazine article, author Maria Konnikova points out that MOOC pioneer Sebastian Thrun has expressed concerns over MOOCs educating others as he had wished. So, perhaps the MOOC is not necessarily what its originators had envisioned, but is that a bad thing?
As we discussed back in our July 24, 2014 webinar Musing on MOOCs, several variations of MOOCs have sprouted up:
The DOCC; or Distributed Online Collaborative Course
The BOOC; or Big Open Online Course
The SPOC; or Small Private Online Course – and
The SMOC; or Synchronous Massive Online Course
By their names alone, some of these variations may not meet the textbook definition of a MOOC. The ‘MOOC Meter’ shown indicates that as various traits or components of course offerings change, that particular offering may no longer meet the standards of a ‘pure’ or ‘true’ MOOC.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the predictions or recommendations that were made for MOOCs around this time last year, and some of the significant events surrounding MOOCs that took place in 2014:
Since MOOCs first appeared on the scene, it’s been noted that operators either need to find a way to successfully monetize their operations or commit themselves to a non-profit status. A few events related to this concern took place in 2014.
Coursera reached 10 million enrolled users
They also raised an additional $20 million in funding
edX and Google launched MOOC.org
Xerox acquired Intrepid Learning, a MOOC platform provider
It was also predicted that MOOCs may continue to mold themselves to meet the needs of their users, based on demographics and other data.
As we’ve seen previously, Coursera data has shown that the majority of their users tend to already have at least some degree of formal education, thus making them more prone to be ‘window-shoppers’.
It was also suggested that MOOC operators should leverage the data they collect to better mold the MOOC offering to meet the needs of their customers.
As we’ve discussed previously, several MOOC offerings are spinning away from the traditional MOOC model to more collaborative and personalized models.
One final observation was that MOOCs might need to look overseas for growth.
In that same vein, the Spanish-language MOOC provider MiriadaX, which targets both Spain and Latin American countries, became the first non-U.S. MOOC provider to exceed 1 million registered users.
Additional resource for MiriadaX - MOOCs in 2014: Breaking Down the Numbers
So where are MOOCs headed in the coming year?
Many experts believe that MOOCs are here for the long run, but will continue – perhaps out of a necessity for survival – to evolve.
Several sources suggest that MOOCs will need to become more interactive, adopting a problem-based and collaborative approach.
There have also been recommendations that the best MOOCs will need to become more personalized to gain true acceptance and value.
=============================
MOOCs and eLearning: Where Are We Headed?
See more at: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/elearning-mooc-best-practices-trends.shtml?__scoop_post=c30015a0-8ad4-11e4-fdd8-90b11c3ead14&__scoop_topic=3911425#__scoop_post=c30015a0-8ad4-11e4-fdd8-90b11c3ead14&__scoop_topic=3911425
As we wrap up our session today, we’d like to close with another poll, and then solicit your questions and comments on the future of MOOCs.
First, the poll:
(Again, please check the right-hand side of your screen for the polling panel.) What do you think will happen with MOOCs in 2015, and perhaps beyond?
Do you believe that MOOCs will:
Plateau without much more change or impact?
That they’ll fade away, eventually to be ‘put on the shelf’
Or, perhaps we’re only seeing the beginning – or ‘tip of the iceberg’ and that MOOCs will forever change the learning landscape.
OR – perhaps ‘None of the Above’ – if you choose this option, please put your prediction in the Q&A panel.
[HOST OPENS POLL, THEN SHARES AND READS RESULTS]
Thanks to each of you for your input.
Now, we’d like to hear more about what you think about MOOCs. Please give us your comments in the Q&A panel on the right-hand side of your screen.
What questions do you have about MOOCs or any of the related learning trends we’ve discussed in this session? Please pose your questions in the Q&A panel.
We’ve only had a brief 20 minutes together here today, but we definitely want to keep the conversation going throughout the coming year – not only on MOOCs, but on all learning trends for 2015.
If you’re not already a member, we encourage you to consider joining the LinkedIn group Exploring Learning Trends.
We also encourage you to bookmark the URL blog.gpstrategies.com where you can read and comment on blogs and join in on the discussion surrounding a variety of learning topics.
Finally, you can engage with us and others on Twitter using the hashtag #trainforward
[HOST CLOSES THE WEBINAR, MENTIONING UPCOMING EVENTS, SPEAKER CONTACT INFORMATION, AND RECORDING AVAILABILITY – ALSO THANKS ALL FOR ATTENDING]
