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Project-based MOOCs. A Field Report on Open Learning in Media Education
Friederike Siller, Jasmin Bastian, Jöran Muuß-Merholz and Tabea Siebertz
P stands for Participant-Driven. Participants are encouraged
to follow their own way of learning, set their
own focus and put their own ideas into reality. The course
can be used as a platform to find collaborators and supporters,
to work together and discuss issues connected
to the topic of the course. Participants thereby are at the
wheel for their own learning activities. They can choose
between different levels of involvement and different
types of activities. They can even leave the structure proposed
by the host of the course and develop own ways of
working and learning.
P stands for Participation. The Media Literacy Lab is
open for everyone. We are inviting learners not only to
join an academic group of students, but also to participate
in the courses and debates on media literacy in the 21st
century. Students at higher education are just as welcome
as teachers and parents, teenagers and programmers, academics
and practitioners.
P stands for Public. Our work and our discussions within
the courses are public by default. They even stay public
after the end of the course. Observers are not only tolerated,
but also invited to follow the activities within the
courses.
P stands for Partners from inside and outside of Academia
As the topics and the projects of our courses are aimed
at the real world, the Media Literacy Lab strives to work
together with partners from the field in which we are
working. Partners can bring their own expertise, questions
and participants. And of course they can and should
use the results of the courses for their further work.
Opening up MOOCs
Openness seems to be fundamental to MOOCs: this is
what the first O in MOOC stands for. Advocates for open
education are claiming that open means much more than
open for everyone to enrol (see Reclaim Open Initiative
2013). In our courses, we refer to open on multiple levels:
• Enrolment. This is underlying to all MOOCs meaning
that everyone can take the courses without restrictions
regarding formal or non-formal qualifications.
• No Costs. No expenses (at least in 2013) also constitute
a criterion attached to almost all MOOCs. No
one has to pay for taking the courses.
• Platform. Digital resources and practices are incorporated
not via a single platform. The infrastructure is
open as we are (mostly) using open-license technologies
like WordPress, Mediawiki, Etherpad plus e.g.
Google+ Community.
• Licensing. The authors think of open as in Open Educational
Resources as meaning that our resources are
not only available for free but also are licenced under
a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) Licence.
Everyone can reuse, revise, remix and redistribute
the material that is made available for our courses.
The open licence does not only refer to resources
offered by the presenters but also to the results. Everyone
who wants to register has to agree that the
results of the collaborative work are published under
the CC BY License.
• Pedagogics. We understand the offered course structure
as a scaffold that must be open to allow different
styles in participating and contributing for every participant.
In doing so open course organization reflects
the pedagogical perspective of an inner openness for
learning allowing a high degree of freedom for the
learner.
• Public. Every component of our courses is visible to
the public. No registration is needed to see all resources
and results. Even the discussions within a
Google+ Community or a Wiki are open and public.
This does not mean an obligation for public exposure.
The way participants work individually and within
their teams can be chosen by themselves. Furthermore
it is possible to take part using a pseudonym.
• Transparency. The MLAB Team is trying to work in a
more transparent manner than most educational institutions
do. We aim to publishing our ideas and plans at
an early stage so that people can inform, criticise and
contribute.
pMOOC “Good Apps for Children”
In summer 2013, more than 250 participants collaborated
in the pilot course Good Apps for Children (2). Within
three weeks, participants had developed a set of criteria
to review apps for children and set up a database with
100 app-reviews. In addition, some participants produced
podcasts interviewing children about their favourite apps.
In order to accomplish this, approximately 50 teams of
around four group members formed worked to match and
merge their work with the results of the other groups.
This demanding process was supported by scaffolding
via peer-to-peer feedback, peer leading, peer reviewing,
coach mentoring and videoconferences with the organizing
team. The course community on Google + (3) also
played a vital role. Here, participants shared experiences
and information, gave each other support and organized
peer-to-peer structures. It was interesting to observe that
many groups started to leave offered course structures
and organized themselves online and offline in places they
felt comfortable (ranging from Facebook and WhatsApp
Experience Track |289