This document discusses the potential for using MOOCs to promote cultural diversity and communication. It provides examples of MOOCs that focus on culturally specific topics from indigenous studies programs. However, it notes that MOOCs still tend to be biased towards audiences from developed countries and higher education levels. The document also describes a MOOC called "Archaeology of Portus" that aimed to create a globally diverse learning community and encouraged contributions from learners around the world. It provides lessons learned from this MOOC, including the importance of personalization and allowing flexible educator roles. Finally, it discusses opportunities for MOOCs to facilitate cultural sharing through areas like translation, citizen research, and open annotation of video content.

1. MOOCs, Citizen Science and
Cultural Communication
#WUNGDC15
@GraemeEarl

2. MOOCs?
• Massive Open Online Courses

3. What are MOOCs made from?
• xMOOCs vs cMOOCs: implications for cultural diversity?
– Some calls for a new kind of MOOC specifically targeting
culturally-specific topics
• Videos
• Learning objects
• Quizes
• Linked resources (including learner contributions)
• Feedback
– Comments/ forums
– e.g. Google hangouts

4. How are MOOCs run?
• Educators
• Facilitators
• Returning learners (“mentors”)
• Learners (online/ face to face/ blended)
• External learners (i.e. not registered on the course – again,
may be f2f)

5. How are “MOOCs” funded?
• Institutions (recruitment; profile; philanthropy)
• Certificates (evidence now of reaching self-sustaining
tipping point)
• Examinations and other feedback e.g. professional
accreditation (CPD)
• Data mining
• Advertising
• Privacy and tailoring (similar to the freemium model)

6. MOOCs are *the end of everything*
• “Unbundling the university” ? Avalanche Is Coming? (See
Ben Wildavsky’s talk)
• Open Badges and “jailbreaking the degree” - Degreed
• Mitchell Duneier – TA slaves?
• Dumbing down? Try the cryptography MOOC…
• Drop out rates? See Hugh Davis talks
• Everything has to be open?

7. Diversity in MOOC themes?
• Bias in MOOC demographics? E.g. Developed world,
education level bias (Christensen et al 2013; see FL
demographics)
– World Bank and Coursera – running courses, Open
Learning Campus, African Virtual University
• “Decolonising the web” (WUN IIRN Sydney 2015) ?
– Indigenous Studies: Australia and Aotearoa New
Zealand (Course Central)
– Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education (edX)
– Aboriginal Worldviews and Education (Coursera)
– But what kinds of knowledge and modes of knowledge
creation and communication?
– The cultural implications of English and the need for
negotiating English use “locally” ?
• Are OERs already well in advance in terms of cultural
diversity?

8. MOOC as Cultural Containers?
• Web Science & MOOCs  MOOC Observatory
• Discussions of power by Professor Sassen
– Particularly, the work/ life digital confluence and
economic status
• Familiarity with networked interactions (rich/poor)
– are MOOC “learning communities” biased towards
the affluent?
– Navigational metaphors?

9. Navigation
• Guo and Reinecke 2014 – studied more than 100,000 students
on 4 courses
• Learning style influences navigation e.g. jumping back to earlier
details, scanning vs linear navigation, and so on
– Only one fifth of (certified) learners studied adopted a linear
pathway
• Demographics e.g. age or country, used in turn to suggest
correlations with subsidiary variables e.g. student/ teacher ratio
in that country
– For example, linear navigation much more common in
demographics where teacher: student ratio is lower

10. Guo and
Reinecke 2014

11. Cultural contextualisation?
• Growing research comparing cultural discriminants with MOOC design
• Risk of neo-colonialism (Nkuyubwatsi 2014)
• Ethics? e.g. Alvarez 2014 – requirement to consider and accommodate
any diversity in educational practice but cf.
– MOOC role in marketing;
– the digital divide;
– “blindness to difference” (Harri 2009)
• (Over) emphasis on technological solutions (i.e. contra to critiques of
navigation) e.g. platforms and a lack of emphasis on their inherent
cultural bias e.g. threaded forums

12. Cultural contextualisation?
• Cultural diversity in language and access
• Range of suggestions e.g. privacy policies, limiting idiom,
avoiding cultural stereotyping (Marrone et al 2013)
• And…
– Much of the conversation is mediated through other
channels, sometimes for privacy reasons e.g. UoS Web
Science MOOC
– Ethics of social media alignment, anonymity, and
‘consent’ ?

13. Cultural contextualisation?
• How contextualize?
– Social media & F2F groups
– Specialisation e.g. choice of topic for a particular exercise
– Explicit inclusion in course design e.g. choice of exercise to
complete
– Educator flexibility to this contextualization process, even
contra their favoured teaching style
• Technological affordances of MOOCs should emerge through
Value-Sensitive Design

14. Citizen Translation
• Open Translation MOOC http://www.ot12.org/
• edX CAT course https://www.edx.org/course/principles-
practice-computer-aided-pekingx-01718330x
• traMOOC http://www.ouslovenia.net/project/tramooc/
(topic analysis and sentiment analysis for evaluation)
• Crowd translation e.g. Duolingo or form within MOOCs
• Educator-led manual translation

15. The value of cultural diversity?
• Kulkarni et al 2015: Deliberate creation
of globally diverse virtual classrooms.
• Small groups that are ephemeral and
encourage “self-reference” i.e.
contextualization. (Tendency for
exaggerated behavior and taking on
novel learning personae (by some) may
not always be a negative; see also e.g.
Turkle)
• Pupil/ teacher ratio here used as a
factor to encourage diversity, alongside
other factors
• Positive impact on learning seen
“In your country, which forms of
prejudice are the most socially
acceptable, and which ones are
the least acceptable? Why are
some forms more acceptable
than others?” (Social Psychology
course discussion topic)

16. “Archaeology of
Portus”

17. Archaeology of Portus: exploring the lost
harbour of ancient Rome
• Archaeological practice
• Portus in the Roman world
• Scales of archaeological analysis
• Types of archaeological materials
• Encouraged contributions by the MOOC community to build up a picture
of Portus using the same structure.
• Each week we relate an artefact to the history of the site for that week and
to the scale for that week.
• Each video is less than 5m in length
• FutureLearn model based on social learning around “steps”

18. Developed by Grant Cox @gbjc105

19. Developed by Peter Wheeler @Peter__Wheeler and @James_E_Miles

20. Developed by Peter Wheeler @Peter__Wheeler, Hembo
Pagi @HemboPagi and Ian Kirkpatrick @iankirkpatrick

21. • Rich Interactive Narratives
• ChronoZoom
• Photosynth
Interactions
Content by Peter Wheeler @Peter__Wheeler, Greg Tucker

22. Interactions
Works by @iandawson and @gcbeale

23. • Translation (manual)
• Flickr providing cross-references and folksonomies
• Social e.g. aggregated blogs to MOOC blog, Vimeo, Sphere, Scoop.it,
Mendeley etc.
• Social elements are not new but now *so easy*
Widening the community

24. CIP, UG, PGT and PGR students filmed & facilitating
Course being used at UG and
PGT level in 2014/15
F2F students keen on community
membership
Bridging F2F and MOOC communities
Portus: enriching F2F for our students

25. Lessons from Archaeology of Portus
• Personalisation (e.g.
“Graeme”) encourages related
behavior by learners
– Some evidence for impact
on v high retention rate
• Attempt at a standard English
may be misguided – better to
focus on realities of
individual’s communication ?
– cf. our legibility analysis
(GFOG etc.)

26. Lessons from Archaeology of Portus
• Commonly now our UoS courses begin with an
introduce yourself step – an icebreaker
• Behaviour here fits with that seen in the literature
e.g.
– use of profile to define general context “single
parent; Retired engineer; learning
disabilities”
– detailed context in comments “Didn’t
understand the previous point because I…”
– frequently with caveats: “Although I
haven’t…”
• Fluid roles of facilitators – not always defined in
their profile or name e.g. Graeme Earl vs Graeme
Earl (Educator)

27. Lessons from Archaeology of Portus
• Creating an archaeological “MOOCosystem”
including many OERs might assist cultural
diversity BUT has demographic bias
• Create deep links and analyse routes e.g.
– “The Later Second Century”
– “The life of Hadrian” (Hadrian’s Wall -
FutureLearn)
– “Constructing the wall” (Roman
Architecture – Coursera)
• Mash-up courses e.g. Creative Writing
(“Imagine Portus”) or Creative Coding
(“Modelling Portus”)
• Note: I made deep links to the platform across
all media and didn’t receive a single complaint

28. Lessons from Archaeology of Portus
• Fairly flat demographic (age, education, employment)
• Countries: c. 50% UK; 20% US; Australia 5%; 3% Italy + c.
110 others
• Growing Italian engagement in the course (Portus and local
identity)

29. Lessons from Archaeology of Portus
• “MOOC Observatory”: Learning analytics and cultural
diversity.
• 98 UoS MOOC datasets so far; > 500,000 comments;
demographic and learner data for >100,000 learners.
• Improved learning design through analytics, and learner
interaction (e.g. topic mining).
• Strict ethical framework.
• Demographic analyses underway.

30. Lessons from Archaeology of Portus
30
E.g. massive viewing figures for soton eprints
PDFs linked from the course, with the FL
platform providing an impromptu peer review
system.
E.g. follow-up post giving results to
Palaeoenvironmental advanced step
E.g. a few staff and students contributed blog
posts linking Portus to their research

31. Lessons from Archaeology of Portus
• Access to data and tools powerful component;
encouraged co-creation of digital cultural
artefacts
• Data MOOCs? Citizen research and cultural
practice?
– E.g. Zooniverse – the Galaxy Zoo journal
– E.g. potential for groups such as Indigo
Trust – Open Data; technology for social
change
• MOOCs bridging Press : Documentaries
(second screening) : Education : Publication :
Data

32. Lessons from Archaeology of Portus
• Potential for rich video
annotation:
• Via Synote some videos are
being richly annotated by
learners
• All Portus videos will be openly
accessible without FutureLearn
login before the summer;
allowing
– Mashups
– New linking and referencing
– Rich annotation of all
videos
– Personal transcripts
• Please contact me to signup

33. A MOOC for WUN?
Many thanks.
@GraemeEarl
@UoSFLPortus
Sign up! https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/portus