Embedding MOOCs in university courses: experiences and lessons learned: EDEN 2016 annual conference: Re-imagining learning environments

The focus so far on the discussion of effects of MOOCs on education in Europe, with associated opportunities and threats, has largely been on pedagogy and learning in a more abstract way rather than on more concrete effects, for example the opportunity to use MOOCs as a tool for professional development for teachers (Schuwer et al., 2015). The role of MOOCs can be an important one in this respect, not the least in the area of ICT in education where the need has been great for teachers all over the world. In this poster, we will describe the experiences of embedding MOOCs in a graduate course on distance education at the University of Iceland (UI) School of Education in spring semester 2016. One purpose of this integration was to expose students to the opportunities involved before graduation so they could be more aware of what might be available for them in their future professional development. Also, those experiences provided materials for critical analysis based on theories, research and pedagogical models in distance education as well as ideas for the design and development of online courses.
In the spring semester 2016, there were 23 active students (12 males, 11 females, age range 25 to 63) in the course which is 10 ECTS. Students got an overview of generations of distance educationa pedagogies (see e.g., Anderson and Dron's, 2011) and a list of reports and journal articles on MOOCs in education. The MOOC project was the first assignment (2,5 ECTS, 25% of the final grade). The majority of the participants had never signed up for or completed a MOOC and were not aware that such courses existed. Six teams of students were formed (3 to 5 students in each team). A list of potential MOOC providers and individual MOOCs were providfed and teams idenitified potential MOOCs of interest from each provider. The teams got six weeks to complete the project.
There were 17 MOOCs from 7 different providers selected. In all cases only one student chose each MOOC except for one MOOC on teaching with Moodle from Moodle.org, which was a topic of high practical interest to many of the students, some of whom were aiming to create a Moodle course in another assignment later in the course. There were seven different courses (41%) run in the Coursera platform, four (24%) by edX, two by OpenLearning, one by FutureLearn, one by Alison, and one by PR Academy. The content of about 41% of the courses (7) were related to ICT and media in education and/or distance or blended learning. Whereas the other 59% had content in relation to varied themes including language, physics, sustainable develpment, and personal development.
All six groups did online presentations (via Adobe Connect) in mid-February outlining their experiences and turned in their final report about a week later. In the poster, major themes and conclusions from these reports will be introduced. In addition, three students gathered additional data with phone interviews among the cohorts participating the course in spring 2014 and this spring. Data will then be presented for example on whether and then how the cohort of 2014 applied their experiences of participating in MOOCs. An overview of pros and cons of embedding MOOCs in university courses will be provided.