Theme 5 - OER and MOOCs

For the past few years, Open Educational Resources (OER) and, especially, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have attracted academic and media attention. Both are part of an ‘open education’ movement that offers students and faculty access to free resources for integration into courses and supplementary learning, as well as self-directed, interest-based learning.

While much of the initial excitement about the potential of MOOCs to radically modify higher education has dissipated, educators are developing MOOCs to reach and serve new student groups, blend credit and non-credit learning and raise their institutional profile. MOOCs are being re-designed, often with the modification of the “massive” component, to serve smaller, more specialized educational purposes.

OER include a multitude of resources from taped lectures to high-end simulations and games with the defining characteristic that they can be freely adopted and adapted, with appropriate credit, for learning anywhere in the world, whether by faculty or individual students.

MOOCs for Open Learning: As a way of reaching new students and expanding their profiles, many institutions experimented with MOOCs. At Fanshawe College in Ontario, a MOOC on the societal and practical aspects of sustainability offers four levels of achievement, depending on the student level of involvement and commitment.

As an early member of the MOOC consortium Coursera, the University of Toronto in Ontario developed five MOOCs in a variety of disciplines to assess designs, registrations, time commitments and multiple other factors.

At l’Université du Québec à Trois Rivières in Québec, Canada, a French-language MOOC on personal finance drew in registrants from 20 countries, while one on play for early childhood education has in participants with both personal and professional interest in the topic.

A MOOC on the ancient cuneiform system of writing is offered at Università Ca’ Foscari in Italy to provide prospective students with an introduction to the field and for the general public to learn about and create the symbols they see in museums. Dublin City University in Ireland offers MOOCs with topics related to Ireland, including language, literature, history, music and conflict resolution. The Irish language MOOC emphasizes active learning.

MOOCs at the University of Geneva in Switzerland integrate Massive Open Online Research Projects is such fields as astronomy and literature to provide real-life research experiences to participants.

Dual Purpose MOOCs: Several institutions offer MOOCS as a free resource to the general public, while offering students the option to register and complete assignments for credit. At Cape Breton University in Canada, a dual-purpose MOOC addresses recommendation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the need for more education for and about Aboriginal peoples and their cultures. The public participate in a face-to-face classroom streamed internationally and interact through social media.

The Business School at Karlstads University in Sweden works with the Service Research Centre on a series of MOOCs available as credit and non-credit offerings, featuring videos and other resources integrated as OER. The focus is on applying the learning to each participant’s workplace. Students in a MOOC for secondary school teachers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology are offered the option of registering for credit after completion of the first three modules.

Integrating MOOCs: In the Faculty of Education at the University of Iceland, students, as one of their course assignments, chose a topic-related MOOC to analyze for structure, support and pedagogical approach, as well as content.

Open Educational Resources: At l’Université de Montréal in Canada, a tool for designing online scenarios has been created and made freely available to guide faculty and design staff in the preparation of scenarios, focusing on active pedagogical approaches and the selective use of information and communications technologies.

In France, funding from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research supports eight digital thematic universities, composed of existing institutions and organizations, which have created over 34,000 OER, including MOOCs, available on a single portal in multiple languages.

The University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland offers, in partnership with American and New Zealand partners, an open resource six-course Higher Education Certificate Program in Business as an OER, available through OERu. Students can choose to pay for assessment, making them eligible for a Certificate from the University.

Click one of the three links below to see a list of the Pockets of Innovation under each category and a link to the specific Pocket of Innovation.