Summary of current articles; presented at USDLA 2013 National Conference in St. Louis.

1. April 30, 2013
MOOCs: Separating Fact from
Myth to Build Learning Context
Tim Boileau, Ph.D.; Brian Zuel – Indiana State University
USDLA 2013 National Conference
1Tuesday, April 30, 13

2. Birth of cMOOC
✤ The concept of MOOC was first implemented in 2008 with an open
online course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes at the
University of Manitoba, "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge".
✤ The environment created was a web site using aggregation, remix,
repurpose, and feeding forward of content and media identified by
the students using blogs, YouTube videos, synchronous video
discussions, and RSS feeds to build knowledge structures within a
domain. A MOOC is a platform! (think Google Course Builder)
✤ Focus was on peer-constructed knowledge and curation in a virtual
learning environment. cMOOCs emphasize creation, creativity,
autonomy and social networking learning.
2Tuesday, April 30, 13

3. MOOC Hyperbole in 2012
✤ MOOC - Massive Open Online Course
✤ The demise of the campus as we know it.
✤ The most important education technology in the past 200 years.
✤ Free education for all, anywhere in the world with online access.
✤ Professors at prestigious universities host reviewable online
lectures and curate videos, content and activities for their students.
✤ Learners can tap into Ivy League-quality instruction on their own
time, at their own pace and with little to no cost.
✤ Despite the hype, MOOCs have yet to solve seemingly simple
problems, such as producing a sustainable business model and
evaluating student performance in a meaningful way.
3Tuesday, April 30, 13

4. MOOC - Disruptive Innovation
✤ A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a
new market with its own value network; and eventually goes on to
disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or
decades), displacing an earlier technology.
✤ Examples of disruptive innovations include:
✤ MP3 file format and the effect on the music industry
✤ Wikipedia and the effect on bound encyclopedias
✤ eBook formats, enabling self-publishing and impact on the broader
publishing industry
✤ Digital readers and the effect on the newspaper and magazine
industry
✤ MOOCs and the presumed effect on higher education
4Tuesday, April 30, 13

5. Clayton Christensen defines a disruptive innovation as a
product or service designed for a new set of customers.
"Generally, disruptive innovations
were technologically
straightforward, consisting of off-
the-shelf components put together
in a product architecture that was
often simpler than prior
approaches. They offered less of
what customers in established
markets wanted and so could
rarely be initially employed there.
They offered a different package of
attributes valued only in emerging
markets remote from, and
unimportant to, the mainstream."
5Tuesday, April 30, 13

6. MOOC Hype Cycle
✤ The MOOC hype cycle officially began in Fall 2011 when Sebastian Thrun of
Stanford's AI lab offered three engineering courses for free, online. Thrun's AI
course had an enrollment of 160K.
✤ Thrun went on to form Udacity while colleagues Daphne Koller and Andrew
Ng formed Coursera, to offer free online courses.
Gartner Hype Cycle of
Emerging Technologies:
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7. Peak of Inflated Expectations
✤ MIT launched MITx (Massachusetts Innovation & Technology
Exchange) in December of 2011, merging with Harvard in early 2012
to create edX.
✤ In the same period, a consortium of British universities has created
there own MOOC platform called Futurelearn.
✤ More than 90 universities worldwide had teamed up with one or
more MOOC providers, with investments of over $100M, prompting
the New York Times to declare 2012 as "The Year of the MOOC" in
November of last year.
7Tuesday, April 30, 13

8. Trough of Disillusionment
✤ Despite the huge investments in MOOCs societal benefits related to
the "democratization of education", the initial performance
measurement of learner engagement and success is considerably less
than others forms of distance education.
✤ Completion rates for courses average around 10% with course pass
rates at 5%.
✤ Public interest in MOOCs is pinned to rising costs in higher
education, along with the promise of being able to reach tens of
thousands of students of all ages, regardless of geography, social
class, and learner motivation.
8Tuesday, April 30, 13

9. Business of MOOC
Coursera
This for-profit MOOC founded by Andrew
Ng and Daphne Koller has teamed up
with 62 colleges (and counting) for its
classes. The company is experimenting
with a career service that makes money
by connecting employers to its students,
and attracted $22-million in venture
capital in its first year.
Kahn Academy
Salman Khan made waves when he quit
his job as a hedge-fund analyst to record
short video lectures on everything from
embryonic stem cells to—you guessed it
—hedge funds and venture capital.
Udacity
This for-profit MOOC, started by the
Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun,
works with individual professors to offer
courses. By March 2013, Udacity had
raised more than $21-million in venture
capital.
edX
Harvard and MIT put up the original $60-
million to start this nonprofit MOOC. So
far, students can take classes only from
Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley, but
classes from nine more universities are
coming soon.
Chronicle of Higher Education - 2013
9Tuesday, April 30, 13

10. xMOOC Offerings (Coursera)
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11. MOOC Courses on Coursera
✤ 1. GLOBALIZING HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH FOR
THE ‘KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY’
✤ 2. MORE THAN A HIGH SCORE: VIDEOGAMES AND LEARNING
✤ 3. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
✤ 4. ABORIGINAL WORLDVIEWS AND EDUCATION
✤ 5. E-LEARNING AND DIGITAL CULTURES
5 MOOCs Teachers should take as Students - Edudemic
11Tuesday, April 30, 13

12. MOOC Audiences
1.Internal students on course –
cost savings on volume courses
2.Internal students not on course
– expanding student experience
3.Potential students national –
major source of income
4.Potential students international
– major source of income
5.Potential students High school –
reputation and preparation
6.Parents – significant in student
choice
7.Alumni – potential income and
influencers
8.Lifelong learners – late and
lifelong adult learners
9.Professionals – related to
professions and work
10.Government – part of access
strategy
12Tuesday, April 30, 13

13. Globalization of MOOCs
✤ Differences in infrastructure, content, language and culture begin to chip away at
the notion of global-based courses in a one-size-fits-all model for democratizing
education.
✤ Some educators worry a one-way transfer of educational materials from the rich
north to the poor south will amount to a wave of “intellectual neocolonialism".
✤ “If they are going to democratize education, which is a good goal, you have to go to
the different democracies and see what they want,” Lani Gunawardena, a professor
of instructional technology at the University of New Mexico who also teaches online
courses, said. “You cannot put your personal point of view there and say you’re
democratizing education.”
✤ Arab students prefer significantly more rigid structure and more interaction with
their instructors compared to American students. Arab learners need to know
specifically what to do and how to do it. They find the open flexibility and wide
chance to provide their input and ideas uncomfortable.
✤ In China, students don’t necessarily openly argue with each other based on points of
view. They build knowledge based on collaboration.
13Tuesday, April 30, 13

14. MOOC Questions in 2013
✤ Is there a MOOC Bubble about to pop?
✤ Institutions weighing the risks of being left behind in a newly
reshaped playing field of higher ed vs. the risk of being outperformed
in an extremely competitive market with low or non-existent profits.
✤ Where will the money come from?
✤ Considering MOOCs represent on the one hand, free education for all,
then who pays for it? Grants from foundations, charging for
certificates, data mining, in-MOOC adverts, book sales, etc.
✤ How do you handle cheating and accreditation?
✤ Video-based proctoring; American Council on Education (ACE credit)
✤ Should MOOCs have grades?
✤ There is no established assessment methodology; potential to reach
unlimited number of students
14Tuesday, April 30, 13

15. MOOC Questions in 2013
✤ Badges, credits, or degrees?
✤ Use of existing credentialing system or establishing new systems
✤ Competition or collaboration with universities?
✤ MOOCs as a marketing tool for elite schools
✤ How will MOOCs provide for differentiated learning?
✤ One size fits all; students who cannot self-regulate their learning
may need individualized guidance, while students with learning
disabilities and special needs may require personalized learning
processes.
✤ Can MOOCs recreate the campus experience?
✤ Physical learning environments for immersive learning experiences
15Tuesday, April 30, 13

16. “The competition inherent in the gadarene rush to offer MOOCs will create
a sea change by obliging participating institutions to revisit their missions
and focus on teaching quality and students as never before.”
Sir John Daniel, 2012
MOOCs as a Game Changer
16Tuesday, April 30, 13

17. RecentTrends in Online Learning
in Higher Education; Pre-MOOC
✤ Over 6.7 million students were taking at least one online course
during the fall 2011 term (out of a total enrollment of 20 million), an
increase of 570,000 students over the previous year.
✤ Thirty-two percent of higher education students now take at least one
course online.
✤ Seventy-seven percent of academic leaders rate the learning outcomes
in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face.
✤ Only 30.2 percent of chief academic officers believe that their faculty
accept the value and legitimacy of online education - a rate that is
lower than recorded in 2004.
2011 Report from Babson Survey Research Group with Support from
the Sloan Foundation:
17Tuesday, April 30, 13

18. Distribution of Online Content
18Tuesday, April 30, 13

19. PedagogicTaxonomy of MOOCs
Blogged by Donald Clark
✤ transferMOOCs
✤ madeMOOCs
✤ synchMOOCs
✤ asynchMOOCs
✤ adaptiveMOOCs
✤ groupMOOCs
✤ connectivistMOOCS
✤ miniMOOCSs
19Tuesday, April 30, 13

20. ActivityTheory
Applied Research in Learning Systems
20Tuesday, April 30, 13

21. ActivityTheory
Activity Theory has its origins in the Vygotskyian concept of tool mediation
and Leont’ev’s notion of activity. Vygotsky (1978) originally introduced the
idea that human beings’ interactions with their environment are not direct,
but are instead mediated through the use of tools and signs.
Boileau, 2011
21Tuesday, April 30, 13

22. Relationship of Activity to Object
In activity theory, the
concept of object is of
critical importance
(Leont’ev, 1978). All activity
is directed towards an
object. Hence the object
embodies the meaning, the
motive and the purpose of
a collective activity system.
22Tuesday, April 30, 13

23. Concept of
Mediation
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The relationship between a subject and an object in an activity system is mediated
by tools and sign systems that are contained within the environment
23Tuesday, April 30, 13

24. SystemsView of ActivityTheory
•Tools shape the way the activity is performed, and
are themselves modified through the activity
•Rules (linked to social/environmental context)
mediate the relationship between the learner and
the community, and are modified by these
interactions
•Perception of role (division of labor) mediates
access to informal learning activities within the
community to produce an organizational level
performance outcome or knowledge artifact
System Mediators of Activity
Some additional inferences that may be drawn:
•Interactive technologies, in terms of available tools and information, determine to a certain extent the level
of collaboration that may occur, and the amount of business intelligence available to the community
•Rules provide structure, aligned with the business culture and social setting, affecting the manner in which
activities are carried out
•Perception of role affects the way roles are perceived and carried out by the learner. It is not uncommon for
a learner to assume multiple roles (e.g., tutor/tutee) in the course of completing an activity
(Engeström, 1987)
24Tuesday, April 30, 13

25. Linking ActivityTheory with
SystemsThinking
The components of an activity system organically influence and transform
one another in response to individual and environmental changes affecting
performance. In this way, the context for the activity and the object is tied to
the system, which is defined by its constituent components. At the same time,
each system under consideration may be thought of as a node (or subsystem)
in a network of interrelated activity systems spanning the enterprise.
Boileau, 2011
25Tuesday, April 30, 13

26. Effect of Contradictions in
Activity Systems – Homeostasis
“Contradictions can occur within the elements of an activity
system (e.g., within the object), between the elements (e.g.,
between the object and the rules), and between different
activity systems” (Hill et al., 2007).
26Tuesday, April 30, 13

27. Research Application of
ActivityTheory
The effect of Interactive Technology on
Informal Learning and Performance in a
Social Setting
Boileau, 2011
27Tuesday, April 30, 13

28. Research Foundation
Activity Theory Model Distributed
Cognition
Behavior Engineering Model
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29. Research Design based on Activity
Theory
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30. Research Questions Derived from
AT Model
30Tuesday, April 30, 13

31. Interview Protocol
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32. Survey to Identify Factors
Affecting Behavioral Intention
✤ Behavioral Intention
✤ Performance Expectancy
✤ Effort Expectancy
✤ Explicit Social Influence
✤ Facilitating Conditions
✤ Implicit Social Influence
32Tuesday, April 30, 13

33. Answers to Research Questions
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34. Answers to Research
Questions
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35. Summary of Findings
35Tuesday, April 30, 13

36. Implications for IT
✤ Informal Learning - as much as 90% of learning by knowledge workers
occurs through informal learning activities; mediated by PLE’s and PLN’s
✤ Social Influence - knowledge workers will select technologies that work
for them (performance expectancy), yet usage patterns are shaped in
large part by implicit and explicit social influence, bounded by setting
✤ Technology is Evolving - Web 2.0 and mobile have created opportunities
for social knowledge creation, collaboration, and curation. Web 3.0
(Semantic Web) moves beyond meta-tags to a database level for
interpretation and organization of content personalized for user and
context
✤ Learning as a Cyclical Expansive Process - intermediate levels for
learning and performance are created through mediated activity and
evolve via developmental contradiction
36Tuesday, April 30, 13

37. MOOC
Heuristic p1
37Tuesday, April 30, 13

38. MOOC
Heuristic p2
Available
online:
h-p://www.wcet.wiche.edu/
wcet/docs/talkin
g-­‐points/
WCETTalkingPoints-­‐
MOOCs-­‐04-­‐08-­‐
2013.pdf
38Tuesday, April 30, 13

39. Additional MOOC Resources
■ What Campus Leaders Need to Know About MOOCs,” EDUCAUSE, December 2012. This brief discusses how MOOCs work, their value
proposition, issues to consider, and who the key players are in this arena.
■ The MOOC Model: Challenging Traditional Education, EDUCAUSE Review Online (January/February 2013), A turning point will occur in
the higher education model when a MOOC-based program of study leads to a degree from an accredited institution — a trend that has
already begun to develop.
■ General copyright issues for Coursera/MOOC courses, Penn Libraries created a copyright resource page for schools using the MOOC
Coursera platform. This page provides an overview of special copyright considerations when using Coursera.
■ Online Courses Look for a Business Model, Wall Street Journal, January 2013. MOOC providers, Udacity, Coursera and edX, seek to
generate revenue while they continue to experiment with open platforms.
■ Massive Open Online Courses as Drivers for Change, CNI Fall Meeting, December 2012. Speaker Lynne O'Brien discusses Duke
University's partnership with Coursera, and their experiments with massive open online courses (MOOCs)
■ MOOCs: The Coming Revolution?, EDUCAUSE 2012 Annual Conference. This November 2012 session informs viewers about Coursera
and the impact it is having on online education and altering pedagogy, provides insights into how and why one university joined that
partnership.
■ The Year of the MOOC, New York Times, November 2, 2012. MOOCs have been around in one form or another for a few years as
collaborative tech oriented learning events, but this is the year everyone wants in.
■ Massive Open Online Courses: Legal and Policy Issues for Research Libraries, ARL, October 22, 2012. This issue brief addresses policy
questions regarding MOOCs, open access, fair use, and research libraries.
■ What You Need to Know About MOOC's,” Chronicle of Higher Education. CHE’s collection of MOOC-related articles.
■ Challenge and Change,” EDUCAUSE Review (September/October 2012). Author George Mehaffy discusses various aspects of innovative
disruption facing higher education including MOOCs.
■ A True History of the MOOC,” September 26, 2012. In this webinar panel presentation delivered to Future of Education through Blackboard
Collaborate, host Steve Hargadon discusses the "true history" of the MOOC. It’s also available in mp3.
■ The MOOC Guide. This resource offers an online history of the development of the MOOC as well as a description of its major elements.
■ MOOC.CA. This MOOC-centric newsletter, authored by Stephen Downes and George Siemens, offers news and information on MOOC
providers.
■ Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Constituent Group. This EDUCAUSE constituent group takes a broad look at MOOCs as a
paradigm of learning communities and open education.
■ Reviews for Open Online Courses is a Yelp like review system from CourseTalk for students to share their experiences with MOOCs
(Massive Open Online Courses).
■ ELI 7 Things You Should Know About MOOCs (November 2011) provides additional key facts about MOOCs.
39Tuesday, April 30, 13

40. Tim Boileau, Ph.D.
New Media and Learning
Indiana State University
––
Timothy.Boileau@indstate.edu
http://timboileau.wordpress.com
40Tuesday, April 30, 13