MOOC - No Longer Moot

Today, if you wanted to learn computer programming what options would you consider? Would you join a private institution offering this course, or find a part-time course being offered by a prestigious university, or go online to self-study?

If you go with the third option you would be spoilt for choice.

As a beginner you could go to Khan Academy and take their introductory course on Computer Science, where you would learn JavaScript hands-on using their built-in code emulator (http://www.khanacademy.org/cs). Or, you could head to AcademicEarth.org and watch video lectures of the courses taken by Stanford University professors on computer programming (http://www.academicearth.org/courses/programming-methodology). Or, you could register for one of the several free courses at Coursera.org (www.Coursera.org). Or, you could sign-up for a free course being offered by Harvard, MIT and Berkeley at their EdX online learning platform (https://www.edx.org/). Or, you could take a free course on Udacity (http://www.udacity.com) that promises a hands-on, problem based learning experience.

If you choose to go with Coursera, Udacity or EdX, not just for computer programming but for a number of other courses, you would be one of the tens of thousands of students from all over the globe taking that course. That is why these courses are being called MOOCs or Massively Open Online Courses.

The term MOOC was coined by David Cormier and in this 4-minute video he explains what a MOOC is and how it is different from a traditional learning experience - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc

In 2008, George Siemens and Stephen Downes conducted one of the first MOOCs. Titled, ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge’ the MOOC was on how knowledge gets constructed in a networked age and how deep learning happens when meaning is co-constructed by a network of connections (learners, knowledge networks, diversity of opinions…). The essence of connectivism is similar to what Seth Godin describes as role of education – not collecting the dots (knowledge nuggets) but connecting the dots. In fact, Siemens’ ‘Connectivism’ is a learning theory for the digital age and is the undergirding pedagogy (or should we say ‘webagogy’) in MOOCs.

In 2011 professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig conducted an online course on Artificial Intelligence, which was taken by more than 150,000 students from over 200 countries. This initiative has now transformed into Udacity.

MOOCs seem to be the foundation of the disruption that is emerging in education, which could be described as the ‘Eklavya Model of Self-Directed Learning’. In the Indian epic Mahabharata, Eklavya is a tribal prince who aspires to learn archery but is not taken as a student by the famous teacher Dronacharya because he is not of the right lineage. So Ekalvya sculpts a clay statue of the teacher and embarks on a journey of self-learning. MOOCs, taken by teachers who are best in the field, are like virtual Dronacharyas who are there to guide and facilitate anyone who is passionate about learning.

MOOCs are an evolving construct and in every new MOOC the facilitators are trying new experiments – building in tests of recall into the video to make it more cognitively engaging, giving assignments which are then peer reviewed by the community, creating self-study groups, encouraging students to contribute to the course Wiki, catalyzing face-to-face meet-ups among students and so forth.

While MOOCs are excellent for self-learning, as yet they do not provide certification that is recognized by employers or traditional institutes of education. However, it is a matter of time before such informal, self-directed learning becomes more and more acceptable. Already initiatives like Mozilla’s ‘Open Badges’ are experimenting with recognizing informal learning and in future projects and e-portfolios created by students in a MOOC, individually and collaboratively, will become acceptable as evidence of learning and understanding.

The main criticism of MOOCs is that a great learning experience is one which is customized and personalized to the specific needs of a student. However, MOOCs by their very definition are tools of mass education. But this will change.

One change that is already underway is the ‘Flipped classroom’ – where students ‘gain knowledge’ using online open educational resources like MOOCs and then use the classroom time with the teacher to dwell into what they did not understand. Integration of learner analytics (check out Khan Academy’s learner analytics) that gives details not only about how much time a student spent on the learning resources but also highlights which steps were problematic, goes a long way in helping teachers tackle individual students’ problems. In the coming years more insightful learner analytics will become part of MOOCs and make mass customization of education a reality.

So will you use a MOOC to learn computer programming? If lectures and theoretical exercises are not your cup of tea and you really learn when you get your hands dirty then get yourself a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino, or for your kids check out MIT’s Scratch initiative, or GameStar Mechanic or Coding Academy, and become part of the fast growing community of DIY learners. I will leave it to your curiosity to Google these to find out more. Collaborative learning-by-doing is the next disruption in education that is unfolding but more about that in another issue.

For Learners

MOOCs are a boon for you. Don't have a good teacher, or don't have a teacher, or don't understand the way your teacher teaches, go search for a MOOC or other open educational resources. Even if the course being offered is of advance level listen to the introductory lectures for each topic. For example, MIT professor Walter Lewin has great lectures on Physics for under-graduates. If you are in school you could listen to the introductory lecture on each topic - http://www.academicearth.org/courses/physics-i-classical-mechanics  

For Teachers

MOOCs are a great way to keep your knowledge up-to-date. Not only can you participate in the courses to gain knowledge, since there are tens of thousands of participants, you could use MOOCs to gain insights into where students get stuck and use that to enhance your teaching. Also, since the students are from hundreds of countries you could consider organizing physical meet-ups in your city, where you could facilitate the students face-to-face, perhaps for a nominal fee. Of course, you could also consider making your classroom a flipped classroom.

Wikipedia article on Flip Teaching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching

For Parents

Think of MOOCs as free tuition from some of the world’s best teachers. Help your kids identify the right MOOC – to supplement what they are learning in school, or encourage them to participate in a MOOC to gauge their interest in a particular discipline and make an informed choice about what they would like to pursue. For example, ask your children to watch introductory video lectures on psychology, or finance, or economics on sites like AcademicEarth.org to make up their mind about what subjects to choose. You could also use MOOCs to learn what you always yearned for but didn't because your formal education was about learning to earn and not about yearning to learn!

A very interesting 1988 interview of famous science fiction author, Issac Asimov, on his book “As Far as the Human Eye Could See” – he shares his thoughts on future of education (and we are now living this future): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJAIERgWhZQ&feature=relmfu

For Knowledge Workers

Going has never been so good for self-directed, lifelong learners and it is only getting better. Introspect on how you learn best and then find out learning resources online that suit you most. Or, join a community of practice in your interest area. Or, start your own online learning community, curating MOOCs and other learning resources and catalyzing conversation and collaboration for a deeper learning experience. Such is the long tail of online learning that you can find fellow enthusiasts even in the most niche of topics.

Watch this 4-minute video – Success in a MOOC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8avYQ5ZqM0&feature=relmfu

Quotes

"A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know and to find those who want to learn it from them; and, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known." – Ivan Illich, author, Deschooling Society (1971)

“When it is time to die there’d be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, that you had learnt as much as you could, gathered in as much of the universe, and enjoyed it. What a tragedy if you passed through and got nothing out of it.”
– Issac Asimov (in an interview with Bill Moyers)

Free Resources

A detailed presentation on becoming a Knowledge Sommelier – learn the art of curation in education: http://timelesslifeskills.co.uk/groups/teachers-as-curators

A detailed presentation on augmenting the classroom by supplementing classroom teaching with online conversation and collaboration: http://timelesslifeskills.co.uk/groups/augmented-classroom

Good Website

A website about MOOCs: http://www.mooc.ca/index.html

TIME magazine issue on ‘Reinventing Education’ – you can read several articles online, including this one titled “College is Dead. Long Live College” - http://nation.time.com/2012/10/18/college-is-dead-long-live-college/

Good Book

“The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined” by Sal Khan (Khan Academy)

In this book Sal shares his strategy for bringing – “a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere” and explains why he thinks technology will make classrooms more human and teachers more important. The book is available as an eBook on Amazon.

Good Video

In this six-minute TED talk Peter Norvig describes the learning from his experience of teaching 150,000 plus students:

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_norvig_the_100_000_student_classroom.html

Gamifying Learning

From time immemorial great ways of learning have been – experience, sharing stories of these experiences, introspection, playing, tinkering, observing, experimenting and trial and error. This is why human species has also been described as Homo fabers – those who love to create and Homo ludens – those who love to play.

Imparting learning as disciplined, formal education is a fairly modern invention, only a few centuries old. While it may be efficient, it is often boring, or stressful, or irrelevant, or all of the above. This is because formal education has degenerated into passive consumption of knowledge and its later regurgitation in tests of recall. Whereas, research shows that deep learning happens when a learner is self-motivated to learn and constructs own understanding of knowledge.

This is what happens when we are playing a game. We are intrinsically motivated and overcome difficult challenges of our own volition. Games are high on effectiveness and engagement and they cultivate self-awareness, self-control, attention, effort, persistence, rule following, boundary negotiation, bonding, trust, empathy, respect, fairness and making right choices. But talk about using games in education and you have parents complaining how games are addictive and colossal time-wasters and educationists lamenting that games foster adverse social behaviour, at times resulting in outright violence.

Is there a way we can make the most from games to enhance a learning experience, while minimizing their downside? Gamification may hold the answer.

Gamification is use of game-elements in non-gaming contexts. Nike creating an online community where customers share their exercise data with friends and use friendly competitiveness to improve fitness; or, citizen science projects like GalaxyZoo.org involving amateurs to help identify new planets and galaxies by analyzing massive amount of data; or, Volkswagen changing driver behaviour by rewarding drivers who drive within the speed limit through a lottery created by pooling fines imposed on drivers who violate the speed limit – are all examples of gamification.

Gamification of learning is not simply adding points, badges and leader boards as a layer on top of a learning activity. It involves deconstructing good games to find elements that can be used to enhance learning. According to designer Sebastian Deterding, a good game connects with the personal goals and passions of the players and a great game lets the players customize the goals. Exactly what advocates of personalization of education are looking for?

Game designer Raph Koster observes in his book, ‘A Theory of Fun’, “With games, learning is the drug”. If this is indeed the case then why do students find learning taxing in a school environment? Deterding postulates that this is because in a school environment the conditions are not optimal because unlike a game the challenges provided are not novel or interesting (interesting challenges are contextual and learners identify with them because they are based on learners’ aspirations, or life situation), there is no varying of pace in learning, scaffolding that allows gradual learning may not be present and learners at school do not get ‘excessive positive feedback’ which is informational in nature and not controlling or judgmental.

Game designer Amy Jo Kim explains that in a game a ‘newbie’ needs to be ‘onboarded’, a ‘regular’ needs fresh challenges so that new learned behaviours become a habit and an ‘enthusiast’ plays the game for achieving ‘mastery’. One size does not fit all – an important lesson for formal education. Kim further propounds that good games embody the same five elements that are imperative for wellbeing and happiness, as suggested by father of positive psychology Martin Seligman – the PERMA elements: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. Elements that would surely go a long way in enriching a learning experience.

In his book ‘Social Intelligence’ author Daniel Goleman explains the impact of emotions on learning and performance. He explains that our cognitive performance is highest at the right level of stress, and inspired moments of learning combine – full attention, enthusiastic interest and positive emotional intensity. Hans Selye too observed that an optimal amount of stress is important for improved performance. He described it as ‘eustress’ or euphoric stress, which is the opposite of distress. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a similar mental state, which he calls ‘flow’, where one strikes optimal balance between skill possessed and challenge faced.

Game designers understand this optimal skill-challenge balance very well. That is why they build ‘levels’ in a game. If experience or knowledge is low and challenge is high it leads to anxiety, so games provide scaffolding like hints; if knowledge is high and challenge is low it leads to boredom, and to beat boredom games allow the players to quickly get to the next level of challenge. Great lessons here for differentiating learning to suit individual learner needs. Such personalization of learning is becoming more and more doable, as described in detail in Clayton Christensen’s book, ‘Disrupting Class’.

In his book, ‘The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game’, game designer turned teacher, Lee Sheldon illustrates many examples of how he has used ARG (Alternate Reality Games) in his classroom. He also incorporates other game mechanics. For example, one of the first things he did was to tell the students that in his class they all start at Grade-F (or Score = 0, as in a game) and that they have to work their way to higher grades. They earn Experience Points for what they do in the class, including one point for simply showing up and work their way to better score/grades, akin to moving to higher levels in a game. ‘World Without Oil’ is an example of an ARG to solve real-world problem by chronicling alternate future scenarios.

In summary, by deconstructing good games we can identify elements that can be used to augment learning. A good game constitutes a challenge that players have an intrinsic motivation to undertake and master, it has innovative and constantly changing stimulus that ensures intense engagement, it allows autonomous choices while incorporating a rule system that ensures fair play and clear winning conditions, it has instant, juicy and informative, non-judgmental feedback that improves performance, it provides a safe but not sterile place where consequences are not dire, frustration is taken in stride, failure is less shameful and in collaboration there is mutual respect, trust, benevolence and empathy.

Surely these are ingredients that can be borrowed for enhancing any learning experience – be it formal education or an app.

For Learners

The key take-away from gamification for learners is the understanding that something becomes fun and intrinsically motivating when it is relevant to own context. So learn to restructure learning activities such that they are better aligned with your own aspirations. For example, you may think that there is no point studying quadratic equations or Calculus because you will never apply them in your daily life. Change this mindset and instead think of them as a learning experience that helps you figure out how to learn difficult and complex concepts, which is a very useful life skill.

For Teachers

Think how you can dovetail gaming elements to make your teaching more situated, contextualized and personalized for your learners? What lessons gamification has for adding an emotional impact to a learning experience? How gamification is especially suited to impart 21st century skills like innovative problem solving and empathetic collaboration? How games have a mechanics where assessment is embedded and what lessons this has for finding alternates to weekly tests, which cause unnecessary anxiety and fear of failure and ridicule. Can you embed assessment into learning itself? Project-based work is one example.

Watch a short animated introduction on Gamifying Education: http://extra-credits.net/episodes/gamifying-education/

For Parents

Why do games hold the rapt attention of players? Don’t you wish your children could have similar concentration while studying! In her book ‘The Power of Mindful Learning’, Ellen Langer explains that the natural state of the mind is to seek variety. Thus, for us to pay attention to something for any amount of time, the image must be varied. For example, we usually have no difficulty in paying attention to play because in play novelty is inherent – every minute of a tennis match is different. The trick to improving attention lies in our ability to vary the target of our attention. We need to figure out ways of looking for novelty in a stimulus that otherwise seems static, say a teacher talking in the class or when we are reading a long research paper. By creating novelty in a stimulus we make it more interesting and hence do not get distracted. Teach your kids how they can make learning an adventure or a game, for example, by reading a story from the perspective of different characters in the story, or making up different endings to the story. Such mental interaction makes the stimulus (learning content) novel and hence more interesting and diminishes distractions.

Short videos on this website explore how fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better - http://www.thefuntheory.com

For Knowledge Workers

Analysing the design of great games provides an insight into self-motivation – how games can make players toil and persevere. In his book ‘Drive – Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us’, author Daniel Pink explains that motivation 1.0 was based on our biological drive of survival and growth, motivation 2.0 is based on ‘carrot and stick’ approach, but we are now moving towards motivation 3.0, that Pink describes as AMP – Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Autonomy:  the urge to direct our own lives, Mastery: the desire to get better and better on something that matters, and Purpose: a yearning to do something larger than our self-interest. Knowledge workers can learn from games that beyond material rewards, a key motivator we have is our innate desire to excel, and use this understanding to become excellent lifelong learners, who yearn to learn.

Dan Pink’s TED talk – The Puzzle of Motivation http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Good Book:

‘The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game’ – Lee Sheldon

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MultiplayerClassroom

Good Video:

‘Paideia as Paidia – From Game-based Learning to a Life Well-Played’ – Sebastian Deterding

http://bit.ly/LS6coD

Good Website:

John Seely Brown: Chief of Confusion

http://www.johnseelybrown.com

Free Course:

‘Gamification’ – by Professor Kevin Werbach, Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania 

https://www.coursera.org/course/gamification

  

Quotes:

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – Mark Twain (in Adventures of Tom Sawyer)

Prof Henry Jenkins, former MIT Education Arcade program faculty member, quips that he has seen students playing Sid Mier’s famous game ‘Civilization’ and to win they enthusiastically cheat by reading their history textbooks!

Only the Curious Shall Thrive

This is a 5-minute animated overview of my new book, 'Only the Curious Shall Thrive - Strategies for Lifelong Learners to Formulate Insightful Questions'.

The book explains why ability to formulate good questions is especially important in the 21st century and details questioning strategies that can be deployed to achieve learning goals like deeper understanding, mastery, creativity and wisdom.

Kindle (USA) edition is available here:http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007YH6JHU
Paperback (USA) edition is available here: http://amzn.to/MAz7vL
The book is also available in these formats on Amazon UK and other Amazon stores