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
Dr. Masato Kajimoto is an Assistant Professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. Masato specializes in news literacy education, multimedia storytelling, and social media in journalism. His MOOC, “Making Sense of News”, starts on May 19, 2015. Register now.
As an instructor of the upcoming Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) at HKU, my focus to attend this conference was to find out how other university educators around the world have been developing their pedagogical designs specific to the online platform that is totally new to me.
The conference featured more than 25 sessions and covered various aspects of MOOC implementation from institutional strategies to video production workflow. I was particularly intrigued by the engaging teaching approaches adopted by some participating scholars whose instructional methods draw on a number of research in cognitive science, neuroscience, educational psychology, social psychology and other related fields.
I was aware that the concept of MOOC is still in its early stage in the academia and some observers are skeptical about where it is heading but what I didn’t know was the tremendous amount of efforts put into the production of courses at a global scale with many experimental projects and the user analytics data that eloquently tells us about the effectiveness of different teaching and learning approaches.
There are two major takeaways for me from this conference:
First, seemingly subtle changes in the instructional design and video presentation could have a strong impact on users’ learning experience and improve the overall understanding of the subject matter.
Take, Dr. Barbara Oakley, for instance. She is the author of New York Times bestselling science book, A Mind for Numbers, and her MOOC is one of the most popular and successful on-demand courses on Coursera. She demonstrated through a series of workshops how she performs and produces her video clips based on her knowledge in science of learning — the complex connection between neuroscience and social behavior — to minimize learners’ cognitive overload.
For example, she takes an aesthetic decision of how to frame a talking head in the video to a new level of pedagogical decision. According to her, including the hands of a standing instructor (three-quarter shot) has proven to be more effective in the asynchronous online communication than a close-up shot as researches have shown that hand gestures would help learners understand the instruction better.
When she uses graphical elements, they appear just a second earlier before her narration kicks in. In other words, explanation comes shortly after the visual cue is presented. This seems to create a moment of short cognitive challenge inside our head (as we try to figure out what the graphic illustrates), which keeps users engaged in the video.
Professor Richard Mayer, a well-known educational psychology expert who penned such books as Learning and Instruction and Applying the Science of Learning, also shared in his keynote speech a variety of multimedia teaching techniques derived from his research in the science of learning. His presentation focused on how we could effectively reduce students’ extraneous processing of information and solidify understanding of the subject matter in the video-driven, online environment.
His illustration of research findings again reminded that instructors need to pay attention to subtle details. The spacial distance between a graphical element to the text; instructors’ intonation in the voice over; frequent inclusion of the word ‘you’ in the narration, signaling what to focus with gestures (or other cues like highlighting texts); they all significantly affect the learning outcome.
The ‘tricks of the trade’ shown by the two scholars and many others like them in the conference are tremendously valuable to the course I am developing right now.
The second takeaway might sound somewhat contradicting to the first, but, I find that it is important to remember there is no one formula that guarantees success on the online platform. Although there are some proven methods to improve MOOC courses as discussed above, this new way of creating a global, non-restricted teaching and leaning environment for all members of the public has encountered many unexpected challenges and we need to figure out what to do as we go along.
The sharing session on copyright-related issues, for one, was both helpful and confusing. On the one hand, I could learn a lot from the cumulative experiences of the expert panel members and participating educators in dealing with the legal matters; on the other hand, the circumstance and the nature of each course is different and thus, in the end, there is no straightforward procedure one can follow in this regard.
The same goes to the marketing strategies of promoting the courses. In this workshop, while I could learn a great deal about the basics such as search engine optimization and social media integration as well as other common public relations planning, the participants’ experienced outcomes greatly differed for the same methods. University brand, country, timing, targeted student groups, public’s demand, industry’s demand and all other factors obviously come into play, and thus, one’s experience cannot be easily duplicated by others.
The second takeaway is nothing unexpected or insightful but it was a reminder for me that in practice I need to try everything I can for my upcoming course and see what comes out. The two-day conference taught me not to be afraid of making mistakes because that was the way other colleagues have been tackling the MOOC.
In one workshop, two researchers showed us their horribly executed web-cam video lectures they used for their first MOOCs and their dramatically improved third iterations, which put me at ease as it has taken some pressure off my shoulders; at the same time, their presentations made me realize that we teachers are also learners in this global endeavor and we all learn something important for our trade along the way.
One of the University’s strategic research themes under the ‘Community Area’ hosted by the Faculty of Education is The Sciences of Learning Strategic Research Theme (SoL-SRT). A component of this theme was the Spring Symposium 27-28 February: Young Researchers in the Science of Learning, hosted by the Laboratory for Communication Science, SoL and the Faculty of Education.
This symposium showcased the findings of postgraduate students, post-docs and RAPs across all faculties in the university in order to promote the cross pollination of ideas and encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration. Testimony to the breadth of topics are the variety of keynote speeches, which explored Neuropsychology, Computer Science and Engineering, and Psychology and Human Development. Post-doc presentations drew on research conducted in fields including Speech and Hearing Science, Medicine, Psychology, and Human Performance.
Preceding these highly innovative and engaging discussions was a series of talks which explored new methods in the Science of Learning. The E-learning Pedagogical Support Unit’s Steve Roberts delivered a presentation which looked at how to maximise germane cognitive processing of the viewer of educational videos, and minimise extraneous cognitive load*. Richard Mayer’s Educational Psychology research into multimedia learning formed the backbone of the discussion and initiated a series of questions which touched on learner expectations, available tools, and best practices given potential resource constraints.
The enthusiasm behind the possibilities to collaborate through cross-disciplinary research and chats around how to bridge research and pedagogy were inspiring. Many thanks to the symposium hosts for this fantastic opportunity to learn from peers and colleagues!
*If your centre, division or faculty would like to discuss the principles underlying cognitive load in video production, please contact an instructional designer at the E-learning Pedagogical Support Unit.
Organized by
e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, CETL
Abstract
From September to December last year, HKU’s first MOOC HKU01x Epidemics ran on the edX platform. Over 10,000 learners enrolled on the course taught by 12 experts in the field, with 12% of students earning a certificate of completion on HKU’s successful first venture into the world of MOOCs. However, the preparation started one year beforehand and the knowledge gained, the experiences shared and the lessons learned will resonate long after the course itself has finished.
In this seminar, the speakers will explore various viewpoints arising from HKU01x Epidemics: the institutional perspective for HKU and how it relates to current and future MOOC development; the professors’ perspective on leading and teaching in a MOOC; the perspective of a coordinator and facilitator; the students’ perspective, gathered from research data; and the development and implementation perspective from the instructional designers. Join us as we look back on this rewarding experience and look forward to HKU’s increasing presence in online learning.
About the Speakers
Joseph Wu leads the infectious disease modeling research in the HKU School of Public Health. In 2014, Joseph led the production of HKU’s first MOOC Epidemics which had more than 10,000 enrollees on the edX platform.
Chao Quan is involved in undergraduate teaching for the MBBS TB Clerkship/Emergency Medicine modules. He has also developed HKU’s MOOC, Epidemics.
Jingli Cheng and Darren Harbutt are instructional designers in the E-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, who helped to design, build and run Epidemics.
Ricky Kwok is Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning) and Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at HKU. His work focuses on e-learning, and he is currently leading EPSU to work on HKU MOOCs.
Sandwiches will be served with coffee and tea.
For information on registration, please contact:
Ms Carmen Cheung
Phone: 2857 8539; Email: carmen.cheung@hku.hk.
It would take an individual over 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global internet networks each month in 2018, with video consisting of 79% of all consumer internet traffic in 2018 (Cisco, 2014). Whilst this vast access and consumption of video by no means implies viewers are engaging with or learning from high-quality content, it does indicate that video is a dominant online modality for information ‘chunking’ and broadcasting. In light of this ubiquity of video, the ease in which technology can be leveraged to create viewing environments, and its potential as a medium to provide input, higher education (HE) has been integrating video into teaching and learning at a rapidly growing rate. Flipped classrooms, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), blended-learning classrooms and distance courses are a few of the many contexts in which video is employed as a tool for learning.
The University of Hong Kong is no exception to this trend. With the dual aim of engaging faculty members who produce videos for their learners and fostering interdisciplinary dialogue around this topic, on 11 February the E-learning Pedagogical Support Unit delivered a seminar entitled “Educational Video Production: Design principles for meaningful learning”. Key areas discussed were:
Using this theory as a starting point, participants had the opportunity to discuss issues which commonly arise in video production in their own contexts. For instance, what is the difference between video for education and entertainment? What is the impact of visuals and audio, and the relationship between these modalities, on student cognition and learning? Does adding graphics to spoken words help students’ learning? Is talking over PowerPoint slides more or less effective than a talking head alone? Does adding on-screen written text, which parallels spoken text, support or hinder learning?
Whilst the answers to these questions are not always clear-cut, the importance of generating informed dialogue around our design decisions is paramount if we are to produce videos which are engaging and conducive to learning. One need only glance at the seminar’s enrolee profile to see the breadth of interest in taking part in this dialogue.
The challenge perhaps now lies in further fostering communities of practice and supporting an ethic of exemplar sharing. So if you’re keen to share a clip you’ve created or ask for advice on one you’re currently working on, we would encourage you to contact an instructional designer in the E-learning Pedagogical Support Unit.
References
Cisco. (2014). Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2013-2018. Retrieved from CISCO: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ip-ngn-ip-next-generation-network/white_paper_c11-481360.pdf
Mayer, R. (2012). Multimedia Learning (2nd edition ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
