Abstract
<p>Despite the increase in massive open online courses (MOOCs), evidence about the pedagogy of learning in MOOCs remains limited. This paper reports on an investigation into the pedagogy in one MOOC - Oxford Brookes University’s ‘First Steps in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education’ MOOC (FSLT12).</p><p>FSLT12 was an open and free professional development opportunity for people moving into HE teaching. It was a small course (200 participants registered from 24 countries) which was focused on introducing HE teaching skills, and, uniquely, to deliberately integrate open academic practice as a vital part of professional development for HE teachers. A qualitative, case-study approach was used in the research, based on surveys, interviews, and social media, to provide evidence about how people learned in this course and consider wider implications for teaching and learning in higher education.</p><p>The evidence shows that participants who completed the course were able to learn autonomously and navigate the distributed platforms and environments. The most challenging issues were acceptance of open academic practice and difficulty in establishing an academic identity in an unpredictable virtual environment. An interesting and significant feature of the course was the support for learners from a number of MOOC ‘veterans’ who served as role models and guides for less experienced MOOC learners.</p><p>The research shows that small task-oriented MOOCs can effectively support professional development of open academic practice.</p>
Highlights
2012 saw many types of massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered openly and ‘for free’ by a variety of higher education institutions around the world
Distributed platforms, autonomy, diversity, openness, and connectivity were identified by Downes and Siemens to be key principles for learning in networks (Downes, 2009a, 2013)
These principles and activities formed part of the basis for the design of the FSLT12 MOOC, and the research questions which provide a focus for this paper are:
Summary
2012 saw many types of MOOCs offered openly and ‘for free’ by a variety of higher education institutions around the world. At a later stage it could provide some meaningful data on: the virtual connections participants made; the kind of links we shared; what kind of information we shared Another participant valued blogging for aggregation, ‘Blogging integrates everything to me’ (follow up evaluation) and blogs were seen by one commenter as preferable to discussion forums for being searchable:. Some participants repurposed their own past work to fit the assessment requirements, but others created their presentations from scratch One participant explained her repurposing as follows: For my FSLT12 microteaching, I’d like to share a mashup that includes Luis Moll’s Funds of Knowledge, Jim. Cummins’s and Dennis Sayers’s collaborative critical inquiry, blogging, VoiceThread, and Second Life. The data analysis revealed four significant pedagogical issues for learning in FSLT12
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