Designing Sustainable MOOCs in Europe Training

Training Madrid, 12-16 December 2016
Designing sustainable MOOCs in Europe
MOOC Platforms
Timothy Read
Associate PVC of Methodology &
Emergent Technologies,
UNED, Spain

M O O C
S C O C
What is a MOOC Platform?
What is a MOOC…
…and what is a platform?

I’d like to buy a vehicle…

LMS and VLE (or MLE, ILMS, LCMS,
PLE, POLS, etc.)
In essence: “learning platforms”
(cf. Wikipedia entry)

Why do we need a platform?
Why should we use “a particular” platform?
How can we select the platform and/or tools?

The Platform Mantra
“There is no such thing as free, there is no such thing as
free, there is no such thing as free, there is no such thing
as free, there is no such thing as free, there is no such
thing as free, there is no such thing as free, there is no
such thing as free, there is no such thing as free, there is
no such thing as free, there is no such thing as free, there
is no such thing as free, there is no such thing as free,
there is no such thing as free, there is no such thing as
free, there is no such thing as free, there is no such thing
as free, there is no such thing as free, there is no such
thing as free, there is no such thing as free, there is no
such thing as free, there is no such thing as free…”

Hosting or Housing?

(Approx.) cost of the “big platforms”
• edX: $50K ($10K re-run) for partners
• Coursera: $50K
• U. Texas $10M develop+deploy on edX
• Udacity $200K develop, $50K run
• Etc.

(Approx.) cost of the “cloud”

Platforms, Tools and Pedagogy:
Technological Affordances
“We shape our tools and
then our tools shape us”
- J.M. Culkin (1967)

The platform defines/limits
the pedagogy…

Let’s consider an example case:
UNED and its e-Learning platforms

Virtual campus (WebCT) consisted of:
• 100 courses, 150 teachers, 300 tutors, 12,000 students
• VLE separate from main university systems
• No formal processes (enrollment, maintenance, support, etc.)
but there was a well established blended ODL methodology.
Platform History at UNED (2000)

Virtual Campus of 1270 courses.
WebCT:
• (Most) courses from 26 Faculties & E.S.
• 200 Doctoral courses
• > 4000 Tutors online
• > 140.000 Users
aLF:
• 500 virtual communities
• >32.000 users
• >2.000.000 sessions
• > 600 tutors
& 300 teachers trained
Platform History at UNED (2004)

By Academic Course 2011-12
• 260.079 students in total: 145,104 (EHEA degrees), 6,405+957 (Masters + Ph.D)
• Main eLearning platform was aLF.
• Completely integrated with the university systems (SIS, SSO).
• Centralized management of principal platforms (GestUVA).

2012: Open UNED & Open MOOC
TOTAL - enrolment (159,921) (data from 2013) Enrolment
Starting with English: learn the first thousand words… 41,141
Professional English 32,804
German for Spanish speakers 21,455
Practical course on e-Commerce 11,666
Accountancy: the language of business 9,341
ICTs for teaching and learning 6,825
etc.
TOTAL Courses (130,000 hours of learning activities) 20
Long tail: 17,000 student-generated resources with over 48,000 revisions
(In 2012 edX only had
370,000 students!)

Mediatic Effect of Open UNED
& Open MOOC Launch
Launch event published in:
• 141 News media
• > 100 Web sites

So which platform should I use
for my MOOC?
Options:
• Use your institutional platform
(MOOC / LMS)
• Find a niche market platform
• Roll your own platform…
Let’s see some examples

What questions should we be asking?

Canvas Network

C O U R S E sites

Teachable

TeachableCosts

Freemoodle

Not Quite MOOC Platforms – Why?

The MobiMOOC
“Platform “ Example

Roll Your Own MOOC Platform
W I K I

An example tool for your MOOC “platform”
(We’ll be searching for more in the group activities section of this class)

What can I expect (technically) from MOOC platforms
in the future?
https://www.upsidelearning.com/presentation-future-of-
learning-technology-2015.asp
Non linear!

Can we talk about a technologically
mediated educational continuum?
Formal / informal
Learning Digital Living
Informational
artefacts
Community
Mobility
(& ubiquity)

Technology for building MOOC communities
• “Why” and “how” questions
• Relevant skills
• Horizontal & vertical
• Mobiles
• Affective structure!
Timothy Read, Feb. 2016 (All images other than my own, if not referenced, are
taken from PublicDomainPictures.net – Thanks!)
34/2
9

Any question?
Any answers…
(The majority of the images used in this presentation have the CC0 Public Domain licence and come from
https://pixabay.com. Thank you for a great academic resource!)

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