Didaktics of media: Designing MOOCs

This blog post is one part of the series “learning diary” for a course at my university.

Goals:

Based on the title for that unit I assume we will learn something about designing MOOC. The linked article on the other hand, features a paper about the Tech Ed Revolution, which “will be the Learner Revolution”. It goes on and on about investors needing to put money in education (either traditional education or start ups) and how these start ups could fuel the next learning revolution.

What have I learned:

A MOOC is a massive open online course with thousands of participants.

The two types of MOOCs are

  • CMOOC - Cooperative MOOC . MOOCs where all participants has to cooperate and work together.
  • XMooc - Extended MOOC. Classes of Universities where non students can watch the videos as well.

My University is one of the first Universities which can self accredit a course!

Designing MOOC

The main parts on designing a MOOC is conception, production, execution and evaluation.

Conception

Why do I want to serve MOOC? It’s cool, it makes money, I want to transfer knowledge. You need to define goals.

For whom do I create MOOC? For everyone? For Students? For Users of a technology? For employees of a company? For a community of special topic?

Which content has my MOOC? The language is important and has influence on the target group. The content is important as well. The length is good to have 6-8 weeks. What is the structure of the content.

What format has my MOOC? CMOOC or xMOOC? Is it self-paced or synchronous? Which tools are you gonna use for communication? Will there be gamification elements? Is there a certificate offered?

Attention: Do you have all the rights to ALL your used content? Images in slides? Videos, the tools which are needed for doing the tasks.

Under which conditions is my content published? See CC Matrix. Make it clear if one can use it in which ways.

Costs: The Hasso Plattner Institut plans $50000 for a MOOC. Simple MOOCs are possible starting at $10000.

Production

Think about marketing. Offer them for example on class-central.com. Advertise them early on.

Promovideo: Declare content, organisation of the course

Webcam vs. real camera

Postproduction is needed

Should the quizzes be peer graded or automatically graded? You need to create unique questions. Watch cultural specialties.

Execution

Evaluation

Use an internal or external tool?

Does the MOOC needed to be archived?