Six months ago, HKU launched its first MOOC HKU01x Epidemics with over 10,000 enrolled students and 1,226 certificates of completion earned. Comparing this MOOC learner certification rate of 12% with the average of around 5% (Jordan 2014), a picture of a successful course begins to emerge. To celebrate that success, the E-Learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU) led a seminar presenting varied perspectives from some of the major stakeholders in designing and running Epidemics.

The seminar attracted a full-house and Dr. Joseph Wu, who led Epidemics, fittingly spoke first, sharing the professors’ perspective. And what a perspective it was, with 11 professors – all top-tier scientists from the field of infectious disease research – delivering lectures on the MOOC, along with invited experts such as Professor Peter Piot (from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) who spoke in one of the course’s highly topical panel discussions. In addition to the contributions of the professoriate team, Joe highlighted two further key factors: HKU School of Public Health’s influenza research program, with its highly interdisciplinary approach; and long-standing collaboration in terms of research and teaching between the school and other world-leading institutions such as Harvard’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics.

Dr. Chao Quan spoke next about his role as lead TA in Epidemics, sharing the support and coordination perspective. Chao also spoke of inter-professional collaboration between the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and EPSU colleagues and additionally highlighted how TAs can support professoriate staff during course preparation – for example in helping to prepare short lecture scripts for the MOOC instructional videos – and during the course run by being active in moderating the discussion forums.

Two instructional designers from EPSU were up next. Dr. Jingli Cheng considered the learners’ perspective, sharing some fascinating initial results gleaned from Epidemics entrance and exit surveys, with the following highlights:

• A score of 4.6/5 in terms of  overall satisfaction  with the quality of the course
• 92% of participants would recommend the course to others
• 53% of those earning a certificate intend to include it on their resume
• US learners were the most represented on the course (23.2%) with Hong Kong in second place with 11.2%
• A detailed analysis of the raw learning data revealed some interesting findings about the effectiveness of course materials

Darren Harbutt followed Jingli, presenting the instructional design (ID) perspective. Darren outlined the ID approach for Epidemics and contrasted it with the slightly different roles assumed in other upcoming HKU MOOCs. The other main takeaways from Darren’s input focused (once again) on the benefits of inter-departmental collaboration and the importance of adaptive and responsive workflows.

Professor Ricky Kwok brought the event to a close outlining how HKU is leveraging MOOCs to feed forward the insights gained into the bigger E-learning picture and highlighting once again the power of collaboration, within HKU and between institutions to help promote sustainable MOOC development and ultimately achieve the outcome of improved student learning.

Overall, a timely and well-received seminar and a moment for all those involved to reflect on the successes of the past while considering future improvements, with collaboration and teamwork emerging as key themes. Have you registered yet for the second iteration of Epidemics?

References

Jordan, K. (2014). Initial Trends in Enrolment and Completion of Massive Open Online Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 15(1), 133-160.

Resources (HKU Portal login required)

Presentations in PDF: Dr. Joseph Wu / Dr. Chao Quan / Dr. Jingli Cheng / Darren Harbutt / Professor Ricky Kwok

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Guest blogger series: Joseph Wu on Coursera Partners Conference 2015

Dr. Joseph Wu is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine. His primary research is in influenza epidemiology and control, particularly focusing on pandemic preparedness and response. The MOOC developed by his team, Epidemics, attracted over 10,000 enrollees in its first offering.

I led the production of HKU’s first MOOC Epidemics which was launched on the edX platform in September 2014. In this Coursera meeting, I participated in one of their design labs to exchange experience and views about MOOC production with other MOOC developers (whom I presumed were mostly using the Coursera platform). The facilitator from Coursera asked us to share a few pain points in our MOOC development and operations. It turned out that my major concern was not quite among the top concerns from others.

The points that we discussed most were real-time management of questions and complaints from learners, justification of the value of MOOCs to senior management in universities, the lack of beta-testing support, etc. These are factors that are geared towards learner experience, visions and strategies for MOOC among universities, and the design of MOOC platforms. My major concern was more about the seemingly unrecognized burden and stress borne by the in-house MOOC production team members who are often graduate students and research staff of the MOOC developer drafted to venture into this unchartered territory of MOOC education. To them, many aspects of MOOC production such as copyright clearance, sourcing for graphics and animations, filming, video assembly and editing, translation, and beta-testing are not really their primary interests, expertise or responsibilities. Furthermore, given that most institutions are still trying to position themselves in this new realm of MOOCs, there is no or very little existing in-house support (in terms of both technical expertise and financial resources) readily available to help the team with MOOC production. My impression is that with a few exceptions such as Rice University and John Hopkins University, most universities have not yet figured out clearly how MOOC will be integrated into their teaching and learning strategies. Without a consensus on the value and cost of MOOC within an institution (or even a department), it is difficult to have a fair and objective assessment of students and staff involved in MOOC production and operations in their performance evaluation. The value and cost of MOOCs themselves are difficult to assess. The requirements and outcomes for MOOCs vary substantially depending on their nature and scope. For example, teaching computer programming would presumably be less demanding on speaking techniques and illustrative graphics but more demanding on real-time interactions and tutorial, while teaching history would require captivating eloquence and graphics that we expect in a BBC or CNN documentary program. On outcomes, computer programming MOOCs tend to have a lot more learners than MOOCs on history, so using the number of enrollees as a performance metric (which is often done for showcasing popularity) is unlikely to be fair when comparing MOOCs from different disciplines. These are issues that need to be addressed upfront in order for the production of MOOCs within an institution to be sustainable.

Guest blogger series: Grahame Bilbow on Coursera Partners Conference 2015

Professor Grahame Bilbow has been Director of the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) since May 2013. Prior to this, he was an Assistant Director of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in the UK, with responsibility for the Arts and Humanities. In recent years, Grahame’s interests have turned to the quest for quality in teaching and learning in higher education internationally.

The Coursera Partners Conference was a great opportunity to learn more about Coursera, their vision and their strategic priorities, and to meet many of their partners.

Specialisations: the answer to the problem of scalability?
A recurrent theme at the Conference was to do with the ‘scalability’ of MOOCs: their capacity to grow in a planned and efficient manner. At the moment, MOOCs tend to spring up in an organic way, and are largely disconnected from each other. In the interests of scalability and future revenue-generation, Coursera are becoming interested in the development of so-called MOOC ‘specialisations’: sequences of interrelated courses that culminate in a capstone project that only course completers are eligible to take.

What do specialisations look like?
Specialisations tend to consist of a number of MOOCs that are shorter than standard individual MOOCs. According to Coursera, nearly half the learners they surveyed expressed a preference for specialisations that consisted of three or four MOOCs, each of four weeks’ duration separated by one or two weeks, leading on to a capstone experience. An example of a specialisation is the Modern Musician specialisation designed by Berklee College of Music in the United States, which consists of three short MOOCs followed by a capstone project.

How do learners react to specialisations?
Coursera’s research suggests that there is a widespread preference among MOOC takers for specialised MOOCs of this type. It appears that the rates of course completion and verified certificate conversion are both higher among takers of specialisations than among takers of individual MOOCs, and this translates into higher revenue. What appears to appeal to learners about specialisations is the fact that the content of MOOCs can be more comprehensive and cohesive and have clearly aligned learning outcomes. This knowledge can then be applied in practice in the capstone – something that also appeals to employers. Specialisations can also involve collaboration across training providers, and this can result in more broad-based learning that appeals to learners and employers alike.

So, what’s in it for us?
Specialisations are of interest to the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) at the University of Hong Kong. The MOOC we are planning in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education could quite easily be broken up into a number of three-four week modules dealing with discrete topics such as instructional design, student learning styles, assessment for learning, and so on, and include a capstone project which would require takers to apply what they have learnt to their own real-world teaching and learning situations. I am optimistic that such a modular specialisation course with integrated capstone would be of interest internationally; however, it might be of particular interest in a regional context, among teachers in higher education in Mainland China and elsewhere in East Asia.

HKU’s second Massive Open Online Course – The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia will begin on April 14. Here’s a sneak preview of the first week’s videos. Register to join us and thousands of learners from around the world.

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Learn more: Sneak Preview 2 / Trailer