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Open Online Courses in the context of higher education:
an evaluation of a German cMOOC
Anja Lorenz, Daniela Pscheida, Marlen Dubrau, Andrea Lißner and Nina Kahnwald
2. Tools for Individual Learning and Knowledge Management,
3. Requirements and Conditions: Legally, Politically and
Personally, and
4. Learning 2.0 in Organizations: Future of Education
and Training.
Each section lasts two weeks. At the beginning of each
week the facilitators provided several texts, videos, links,
reflection tasks and short impulses via the central course
webpage (http:// sooc13.de) to motivate the individual
learning process of each participant. Over the two weeks
of the course section, there was further input from students
as well as week or section summaries and respective
expert talks and discussions.
Challenges of MOOCs in Higher Education:
The #SOOC13 shaped by institutional
constraints of universities
The conception and organization of connectivist open online
courses in the context of higher education represent
new challenges on institutional/organizational, didactical
and pedagogical issues. Within this section we will give a
short overview of the main challenges in these fields (for
further discussion on challenges, see Pscheida, Lorenz,
Lißner, & Kahnwald, 2013).
Organizational and Institutional Challenges
The implementation of the cMOOC concept into organizational
structures of the higher education system can be
rather demanding. To attain credibility, a course needs to
address different disciplines and examination regulations
as well as assessment strategies. Another problem is how
to set up an assessment concept that also respects the
openness of user-generated content. The main challenge
is to figure out what kind of activity and workload is necessary
for a given amount of credit points. Participants of
the #SOOC13 could receive 1.5, 2, 3 or 4 credit points,
and requirements need to be defined for each group.
There are additional costs for personal and technical
resources. The preparation and implementation of
a cMOOC is an especially time-consuming activity that
cannot be realized by a single lecturer. Collecting input
material, answering organizational questions, the continuous
monitoring of participants’ performances and finally
reading and commenting on their contributions (blogs or
twitter) can be a 24/7 job that needs to be shouldered by
several collaborators.
Didactical Challenges
Regarding didactical aspects, difficulties arise in the area
of target group orientation, competence orientation and
academic approaches. Learners are asked to enhance and
vitalize a cMOOC through their own contributions (texts,
reflections, ideas, pictures, discussions, comments, etc.).
Only vague educational objectives should be defined in
advance, which often causes uncertainty for students who
are faced with MOOCs for the first time. This challenge is
proven within our evaluation: 49.9 % of respondents regard
a more structured course as (very) important. Some
of them mentioned that they miss formal feedback and
prefer more pre-structured information.
The main didactical challenge was the question of the
assessment of learning products and competence development
of the participants within a cMOOC. A summative
evaluation seemed to be inappropriate because participants
had to work continuously on course topics. Some
overall course objectives, especially participants’ reflections
on topic-related questions, collecting feedback on
the use of course tools and the networks they build with
others cannot be assessed by any study. For this reason,
we decided to implement an e-portfolio concept, asking
participants to collect, create, and reflect on different
learning materials and products (see the later section on
experiences).
Pedagogical Challenges
In addition to the above, implementing a cMOOC within
the context of higher education is a challenge of motivation.
Working from remote locations with only virtual
contact and often asynchronous communication is still
a completely new learning experience for most participants.
Therefore it is an important that course facilitators
consider how to constantly motivate learners to participate.
They can ask about foreknowledge and interests
of participants in order to adapt course content; we did
this by asking about social media experiences in preparing
workshops and initial evaluation. Moreover, the internal
structure of the four sections were designed to motivate
and to encourage learning activities by initial and summarizing
blog post from facilitators, interim blog posts from
one or more participants on the course page, lectures given
by experts and several suggested learning activities.
The concentration on targeting is important to ensure
an accurate feedback culture. Although there was no peer
review concept, feedback among participants was motivated
and did take place from the very beginning; but
feedback was mainly implemented by course facilitators.
This meant that participants were sure that their posts
were read, a motivating factor that should not be underestimated.
Last but not least, this implementation of
feedback enhances the instructive role of the course facilitators
which, if necessary, could mediate communication
between participants. It is important to install a feedback
Experience Track |235