MOOCs: the C***** word is the problem!

Educators love 'C' words. I once wrote a spoof blog about a 'C' word generator, where the software randomly generated five 'C' words. The ‘C’ word creator puts the ‘C’ into courseware. The creator selects from a considerable database of ‘c’ words including;  creativity, challenge, commitment, communication, compassion, cooperation, collaboration, connections, culture, conflict, clarity, concise, context, competence, change, chemistry, contribute, critique, compelling, coordination, consultation, community etc. It takes five of these, randomly, and inserts the phrase, ‘The 5 ‘Cs of..............’  and’C’reator will define your course structure in seconds. Above all, they love the word 'course'. The danger with MOOCs is to become trapped in the language of learning - homework, lecture (means patronise in ordinary language), pass or fail, 

College course not the goal

The first wave of MOOCs suffer from replicating the standard 6/8/10 week semester college ‘Course’. That’s their problem. They’re too long, sometimes too ‘video’ heavy’ and don’t actually match the needs of the real audience – lifelong learners. The data is clear – MOOCs are for all. This is to be celebrated, not disparaged. Once you flip the benchmark and see MOOCs as evolving towards widespread use by everyone from school students, parents, vocational learners, students, adults, professionals, the retired, then the coin drops. This is all about flipping the model. My talk at Online Educa in Berlin argued that MOOCs are not evolutionary but revolutionary and that now the digital genie is out of the academic bottle, it will spread to other areas, where it will be far more effective and beneficial. MOOCs are NOT about HE, they’re much more important than that. 

Massive Open Online CONTENT

Once you see MOOCs as “a supply response to a demand problem” you see that the demand is not actually HE, that’s a tiny portion of the demand. Real demand lies in lifelong learners of all ages, backgrounds and locations. It’s an anytime, anywhere, anybody medium. Don’t get trapped into thinking that ‘course completion’ is the goal – it’s not. Don’t get trapped into thinking that ‘certification’ is the goal – it is not. Don’t get trapped into thinking this is about long, and often long-winded, HE courses – it is not. It’s about demand, namely learners, and their choices. If you walk around with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, said Abraham Maslow, almost the only interesting thing he said. But this habit has plagued the MOOC debate. It’s not about courses stupid, it’s content.

A course demands completion, content, even structured content, does not. Take your time, dabble if you want, go as far as you want. The course is an institutional artefact. Keep them in institutions but don't foist them and their constructs on the web or the rest of us.

Wrong questions get wrong answers

If you ask the wrong questions you get the wrong answers. Time and time again I hear MOOC myth questions. The first set make the age-old category mistake of equating MOOCs with University courses. MOOCs are much bigger than this and are NOT to be equated with college ‘drop-out’ or the 18 year old undergraduate expectations around completion and certification. Neither are they weak pedagogically – in fact many of the more innovative things that are happening in online learning are in the MOOCosphere, in learning analytics, use of video and online assessment. Neither are they part of the LMS world, as their coding is much more agile, flexible and scalable. Finally, they can and will make money. Even if they don’t the benchmark is the ridiculously expensive college degree and that ain’t hard to beat.

MOOC Myth 1: It’s about courses

Flips inward to outward. Where closed, offline, supply-led, elitist HE scarcity with small numbers subject to the tyranny of time and location FLIPS TO open, online, demand-led abundance with massive numbers anywhere, anytime

As George Siemens says, it is “a supply response to a demand problem”.

MOOC Myth 2: Catastrophic drop-out

Flips drop-out to drop-in. Where the inappropriate concept of high-school and University drop-out, meaning failure FLIPS TO another concept - drop-ins, where it’s OK to leave, and stopping is rational. Drop out, when applied to MOOCs is simply a category mistake. Completion is not always desirable. It is not the goal.

MOOC Myth 3: All about 18 year old undergraduates

Flips horizontal to vertical, from the 18 year old undergraduate model and Higher Ed MOOCs TO the lifelong learner, corporate MOOCs, not-for-profit MOOCs, charity MOOCs, vocational VOOCs and high school HOOCs.

MOOC Myth 4: Just videos

Flips lectures to short video. Where the 1 hour lecture which has no basis in the psychology of learning and exists simply because the Babylonians had a 60 based number system, delivered at a fixed time, fixed location, once only FLIPS TO short videos where ‘less is more’, seen anytime, anywhere, available to be viewed many times.

MOOC Myth 5: Weak on assessment

Flips off- to online assessment. Where offline, compulsory certification, teaching to the test once a year using pen & paper and no innovation FLIPS TO online, where there’s a minority interest in certification, learning for learning,’s sake, anytime and there’s lots of innovation, such as peer assessment, ProctorU, automated essay marking and so on.

MOOC Myth 6: Just an LMS

Flips old platforms for new. Where traditional LMS/VLE vendors such as SumTotal, Blackboard and Desire2learn , with monolithic code is inflexible with few releases and a high cost per learner FLIPS TO  Django, Python, Ruby on Rails, MVC framework, cloud-hosted flexible, agile platforms with a stream of innovations and releases at a cost of cents/pence per learner

MOOC myth 7: No evaluation

Flips bad data to big data,. Where  bums on seats, contact time, course completion, summative assessment and happy sheets FLIP TO performance, competences, feedback, useful and personal data that guides learners and improves design.

MOOC Myth 8: Can’t be monetised

Flips grants to monetization. Where expensive, government funded institutions, load up on loan ridden students plunging them into deep debt FLIPS TO cheap learning from many sources, such as not-for–profits, for profits, payment for certification, sponsorship, more students, and huge organisational and government savings.

Conclusion

I simply ask you to flip your mind and see MOOCs not as courses but free content. In this respect, it’s more like Wikipedia and YouTube, both massive learning tools, used by hundreds of millions of learners. We don’t talk about drop-out in Wikipedia or YouTube. What they talk about are drop-ins – the huge amount of real use.

Maths curriculum: full of howlers & schoolboy errors

Anthony Gardiner has rightly exposed the new maths curriculum, in a 56 page critique, as being so flawed and full of schoolboy errors, that many of the same mistakes, and some extras, will once again lead to poor teaching and low performance. It is ‘doomed to succeed’ in the sense that it dresses up rigour as rote learning and repetition.

Roman Numerals howler

Gardiner ridicules the inclusion of Roman Numerals as having ‘no role to play in school mathematics’. He's right. More importantly, he shows that the authors claim that the Roman numeral system came to include ‘0”. It did not. That was introduced through the ‘Hindu-Arabic’ numeral system. Like the ridiculous imperative to include Latin in the Ebacc, this is pure ideology and snobbery at work. As Gardiner points out, you won't find this nonsense in the curricula of high performing countries.

Too much too early

This is the big one, the mistake that continues to plague the teaching of maths. To introduce concepts and, easy but unsophisticated, methods of calculation too early, may gives the impression of progress but it simply halts progression further down the line. This is Gardiner’s main criticism, that poorly defined ideas and methods are foisted upon the learner without adequate understanding. For Gardiner, some Key Stage 1 and 2 is badly specified with items listed “unnecessarily and unrealistically early”. This has fatal consequences, as their premature introduction will not be understood, badly taught and could be left until later without causing problems. Rigour in this sense is merely a rush to failure.

Too vague

In Key stage 3 “too many things are left implicit”. This is a point he makes time and time again in his 56 page critique. The lack of structure and detail will mean inadequate teaching and the rote learning of concepts that need to be ‘understood’ for later progress. This lack of clarity and guidance is what leads to learners’ failing to cross the many conceptual chasms that await them in early maths.

Practical work

One of the greatest failings of our system is the abject failure to teach using practical work and physical apparatus. It leads to often dry, repetitive teaching and failure by learners to grasp ideas and methods. Gardiner points to an “eerie silence about practical work relating to volume and capacity, and activities designed to establish an internal yardstick that would allow pupils to estimate everyday weights with tolerable accuracy”. I couldn’t agree more. Here we go again – chalk, talk and fail.

Maths howler

He repeatedly points to the unfortunate requirement for pupils to “calculate mathematical statements”. This is a fundamental error, often seen in maths content, where formulae are wrongly assumed to be ‘solved’ and statements ‘calculated'. The bottom line is that the document has “clearly not been proof-read, uses key words incorrectly, or includes avoidable howlers”.

I could go on... but the task is a little depressing.

Conclusion

Don’t imagine for one minute that this is purely about maths, it’s about ideology, stubbornness and a belief that if only young people were taught as I was taught, all would be well with the world. What’s sad is that we’re condemning yet another generation to premature ideas and poor teaching, where learners will either fail to cross the many cognitive chasms that Gardiner outlines or have to learn stuff that is quite simply irrelevant. In my view this has to be solved, not by leaving it to the vagaries of variable teaching but to acpture good maths teaching in a rigorous adaptive learning system, that implicitly knows and tracks the learner's progress using smart software. As we can see from this attempt at a curriclum definition, maths is too important to be left to error-prone humans!

Student loans: an omnishambles - why we should all worry

We all know about student loans in the US topping $1 trillion, above credit card debt. But the UK revealed its own problems this week and it's not good news. The student loan book is a rapidly inflating bubble with the total value of outstanding loans set to quadruple from the current £46 billion to £200 billion (at today’s prices) in less than 30 years. To be absolutely clear, over a third (35%) of new loans are not expected to be repaid and around 50% not to be repaid in full. Although nobody knows for sure and the problem is likely to get worse, not better. In the short term, over the term of the next parliament the Government expects there to be a £3 billion shortfall between what was expected in repayments and what will actually be collected.

No idea!

Year on year BIS over-forecasts how much student loans it will collect. This has led to huge, forecast, budget problems. Worse, still they have no idea what has happened to hundreds of thousands of students, write only cursory letters to find out and regard chasing the debts as a waste of time. The amount that has been written off has risen by 25% over the last three years.

Laws of expected and unexpected consequences

But before blaming BIS we have to reflect on the impossible task they face. There’s every incentive for students to ‘disappear’ and make every effort to go under the radar. This, in itself, may destroy one of the rationales for getting a degree – the ability to contribute openly and constructively to society. We may also be inflating another debt bubble, as student loans will not be included in mortgage risk calculations (in fact they will) exacerbating the debt problem.

So this policy suffers from the law of both expected and unexpected consequences. All the signs are that this is getting worse, not better, and that we are burying our heads in the sand when it comes to solutions.

Sharp rise in unsecured consumer debt

PwC attribute a sharp 4% rise in unsecured lending of £8.6 billion to £216 billion in 2013, almost entirely to student loans. The UK is among one of the most indebted nations on earth, with over £8000 of debt per household. The danger comes with interest rate rises and the dampening effect debt has on getting mortgages, starting a business and so on.
Big impact elsewhere
I thank Seb Schmoller for pointing out the excellent lecture by Bahram Bekhradnia, where an additional worrying consequence is outlined, that of increased CPI and therefore increased cost to the public purse on pensions and other benefits of around £1 billion due to the increase in student fees. This is a curious double pump effect on the debt bubble, where increasing student debt, increases public spending.

Solution

This may be unpopular, but I believe in student fees, as alternatives effectively regressive taxes. It also establishes a direct link between what you get and what you pay for. However, this system would be a lot cheaper then the current system, if fees were paid up front, with generous means testing and bursaries. We’re heading for trouble by offsetting debt into the future.

MOOCs: where next? 7 strategic ways forward

Educational institutions have choices on MOOCs. What they don’t have a choice on is the use of online learning. To deny students access to online content and learning experiences is to deny reality. At the most basic level this includes the management of learners and learning, even the first step of recording lectures is useful but it also means more sophisticated active learning experiences. To continue with a totally offline strategy is not strategy but stubbornness.

On MOOCs (or whatever they turn into), the options seem to be as follows:

1. Ignore

If you are completely certain about high student numbers and high tuition costs and don’t have budgetary problems, then you have the luxury of ignoring MOOCs. It’s dangerous, as you do have to at least recognise that they are having impact and you may eventually lose out to institutions who successfully market their brand at your expense (MIT a good example), attract more students, increase access, provide flexibility and lower costs.

2. Pilot

This seems like a sensible tactic as you can introduce the concept of a MOOC to faculty without great risk. The danger is that pilots mostly lead to cul-de-sacs, as they don’t create any sense of urgency, momentum or real change. In fact, they can become an easy target for those who want to avoid change. There have been several examples of this recently in the US, where the MOOC has become a strawman, to be beaten to death.

3. Experiment

A series of MOOCs, such as the six launched by the University of Edinburgh, provide a strategic statement to the organization and outside world. They involve a range of faculties and provide enough learners and data to make them useful as a major research project. This is the right way to conduct a strategic experiment. The results of the Edinburgh experiment have proved fascinating. LINK

4. Strategic external marketing

When MOOCs are seen as an actual channel for an institution to reach out to new learners, whether they be high school students, prospective national students, prospective international students, adult learners and alumni, this is a strategy of sorts. However, it remains a one-legged strategy, as without reflection on what needs to happen inside the organiisation, the delivery method may be seen as duplicitous.

5. Strategic external courses

When MOOCs are seen as part of the mission of the institution, in terms of the external delivery of learning, they can then be said to have become truly strategic in terms of their educational purpose. In many ways this brings higher education back to a more authentic purpose, the genuine promotion and delivery of learning and not the harvesting of students and fees. This involves the move towards accreditation.

6. Strategic external & internal courses

When the same, or at least similar, MOOCs are used for both internal (flipped course) and external purposes, the institution is starting to think smartly about strategy, in terms of pedagogy and costs. This is way up the maturity curve as it rubs out the contradiction between what’s done both in and out of the organisation. It requires real change management across the board.

7. Fully integrated online and offline strategy

Strategy is always an integrated entity from which all tactical objectives cascade. When an institution takes ‘blended learning’ (not just blended teaching) seriously, and redesigns their curricula and courses around optimal blends with optimal fuel mixtures of offline and online – then we have a strategy!

MOOCs: 7 killer reasons for choosing EdX

Now that the digital genie is out of the educational bottle, how will educational institutions react? Things are evolving fast but as Gibson said, the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. However, the future is certainly starting to take shape.

MIT mainstreams EdX

In a fascinating article in Inside Higher Ed, Anat Agarwal, the President of EdX said something remarkable while keynoting at the Sloane Conference on Online Learning.  He started with an odd description of EdX as the ‘particle accelerator of learning’. Sound hyperbolic? Maybe not, as MOOC learners are heading way beyond 5 million and beyond. Even more interesting was MITs report Institutional Task-Force on the the Future of MIT Education, where EdX as a key component in its strategy.

In a remarkable strategic move MIT is looking at “unbundling education and blurring boundaries”. Their published report points towards “blended learning” with EdX as part of MITs mainstream, student experience, not just an external, online adjunct. Agarwal wants to redesign undergraduate courses along blended lines, with less on-campus attendance, more online courses and blending into the workplace. It is clear that MOOCs, and EdX in particular, will to a degree, reshape MITs education. But it may also shape the MOOCosphere beyond MIT.

EdX has already clustered seven major advantages:

1. Open source

2. Strong R&D stream (Essay grading etc.)

3. Credibility (MIT & Harvard with $60m plus revenues)

4. MIT first to see MOOCs as a mainstream strategy

5. Google backing (Google Coursebuilder & MOOC.org)

6. Corporate adoption (Tenaris and others)

7. International reach (France & China)

Maths goes massive

The University for industry (Ufi), of which I am a Trustee, has funded a Maths MOOC. We looked at Udacity (literally flew out to see them) but put our money on Google and EdX, with CogBooks giving us an extra pedagogic turbo-charge. This looks, for the moment, like a good bet, as we’re backing a horse that is open source and promises, fort all the reasons above, to be a major MOOC player. But will it be THE player?

Conclusion

On the MOOC chessboard, EdX and Coursera and have emerged as the King and Queen. EdX has the stature and advantages as stated above, Coursera already has the ability to sprint across the board and make big, bold moves. Udacity is a rook that has moved sideways into the corporate sphere. Others, such as Futurelearn, are new knights, navigating their way erratically forward but without the big money and reach. Then there’s the pawns, lots of little outfits moving forward, at different rates. But remember one thing about a pawn – it has the ability to turn into a Queen and destroy the opposition.