Presentation on massive open online courses, created for Global Learn 2016, Limerick, Ireland It shows the administrative side of MOOCs, including their conceptualisation, planning, design, development, delivery and evaluation.

1. MOOCs Behind the Scenes
Brenda Cecilia Padilla Rodríguez*
Alejandro Armellini**
Viviana Carolina Cáceres Villalba*
* Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (Mexico)
** University of Northamtpon (United Kingdom)

2. Massive Open Online Courses
The technological infrastructure has the potential to support large-
scale use (Steward, 2013).
Any person with Internet access can participate for free,
without having to meet any strict pre-requisites (Anderson,
2013).
Delivery is via the Internet.
MOOCs are coherent academic interventions with a defined set of
learning outcomes (Youell, 2011), and (usually) start and end dates.
M
O
O
C

3. The MOOC Process (I)
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Conceptualisation
• Marketing
strategy
• Academic
purposes
Development
• Challenge of
desgining for a
wide audience
• Teams of
academics
(Allen & Seaman, 2014; Arnold et al., 2014; Hollands & Tirthali, 2014; Ross et al., 2014; Sharples et al., 2014)

4. The MOOC Process (II)
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Delivery
• Little personalised
support
• Automated
“teaching”
• Community of
learners as main
source of guidance
Evaluation
• Low completion rates
(approx. 15%)
• Evaluations focused
on learners’
perceptions
(Bayne & Ross, 2014; Jordan, 2015; Milligan & Littlejohn, 2014; Padilla Rodriguez et al., 2015)

5. Participants
10 participants,
4 universities in
the UK
MOOC
coordinator
Learning
designer
Learning
technologist
Course
builder
Facilitator
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6. Procedure
• Initial contact via email
• One hour semi-structured interviews
o Conceptualisation: reasons for offering MOOCs
o Design, creation and delivery
o Course evaluation
o Challenges and recommendations for the future
• Interviews audio recorded
• Inductive thematic analysis
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7. Reasons for offering MOOCs
• Pressure to join other institutions on the MOOC stage
o “We felt we had to do it; others were doing it” [P7])
• Using MOOCs as a marketing strategy (Allen & Seaman,
2014; Hollands & Tirthali, 2014)
• Taking advantage of existing learning materials by
repurposing them
o Example: converting a book or a face-to-face module into a MOOC
• Reaching an international audience
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8. Reasons for offering MOOCs
The overarching strategy is…
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“There is no strategy.”
[P9]

9. Design and Creation
• Team-based approach for MOOC design
• Heavy reliance on videos
o PowerPoint presentations with audio
o Animations
o Filmed discussions between content experts
• Limited use of open educational resources (OERs)
o Time required to find and repurpose suitable resources
might exceed the time needed to create them
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10. Design and Creation
• Only three participants mentioned conducting a
pilot before launching MOOCs
• Promotion through the Marketing Department of
participants’ universities
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Main reasons to fail to conduct a pilot of the MOOC:
Not enough time
Not enough funding

11. Delivery
• Communication mostly in unstructured discussions
• Conversations on social media
o For example: Twitter hashtags, Google Hangouts, Flickr
• The assumption that knowledge is within the
community of learners might be flawed.
• MOOC learners sometimes offer incorrect advice.
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12. Delivery
• Relevant role of the teacher
o Keeping conversations on track
o Clarifying confusions
o Student ambassadors
• Making MOOCs self-sustainable by automating
processes and requiring little support from teachers
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Challenge:
Not enough time
Not enough funding

13. Evaluation
• Some MOOCs offered non-credit bearing completion
certificates.
• Only one interviewee [P4] was involved in a MOOC which
offered academic credits (for a fee) after a formal
assessment.
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Learning Evaluation
• Quizzes with multiple-
choice questions
• Self-assessments
General Evaluation
• Satisfaction surveys
• Data from learning
platforms

14. Evaluation
• Information on learners’ sociodemographic profile,
engagement indicators (eg, clicks or page views) and
perceptions of improvement
• Lots of data available but not enough time to analyse it
• MOOC considered a success for being innovative, before it
was even launched. --- No interest to check later!
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Was your MOOC effective?
We are not sure.

15. Evaluation
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Clear goals help us know if we are
successful.
Goal: Increase
student
enrolments
Three MOOC
participants
converted to
fee-paying
stdents
SUCCESS

16. Challenges
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Obtaining enough
funding
Managing time
Creating and
sustaining a large and
active community of
learners

17. Benefits for Academics
• Academics develop a learning design skill set.
o “We've learned a lot about e-learning-type teaching”
[P9]
• Academics feel empowered.
o “If they had told us years ago that we would be able to
do something like this [developing and delivering a
MOOC], we wouldn’t have believed it” [P2]
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18. Recommendations
• Plan well in advance before implementation [P1]
• Design the MOOC to be platform-independent [P7]
• Consider how the MOOC works for learners from
different nationalities [P7, P10]
• Focus on the students’ perspective, on how the MOOC
benefits them [P1, P10]
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19. What have we learned?
• The emergence of MOOCs is sometimes driven by a desire
to “follow the trend”.
• MOOCs often fail to benefit from existing OERs.
• MOOC facilitators can prevent conversations from going off
track and intervene if learners share incorrect ideas.
• Claims of MOOC effectiveness usually lack agreed indicators
of success, critical analysis or are based on a very limited
evidence base.
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20. Thank you.