Shall We MOOC? A SWOT Analysis at the Program Level

Transcription

1 Shall We MOOC? A SWOT Analysis at the Program Level Vanessa P. Dennen and Amit Chauhan Instructional Systems, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. Abstract MOOCs have been a fast-paced and well-publicized educational trend. Designing and delivering a MOOC is a time-intensive endeavor and as such requires careful consideration before becoming involved. Our public research university has yet to become a MOOC provider, but we have been pushed to consider what role our Instructional Systems program and faculty members might play should MOOCs become an institution-supported endeavor or even as leaders or experimenters in this realm. We conducted a SWOT analysis focusing at the program level to assess the conditions related to designing and delivering a MOOC. Our findings show that reputational issues come heavily into play, as does the need for resources. We conclude that for a motivated faculty member who can identify sufficient personal rewards for the time expended on a MOOC, it may be worth the effort. Introduction Inour graduate Instructional Systems program, the topic of MOOCs arises frequently. During many class sessions, MOOCs are woven into the conversation. MOOCs might be discussed from the perspective of instructional design, or as the basis of research. Sometimes the discussion shifts to the potential social impacts of MOOCs, such as whether they can help democratize education. Increasingly, we hear one particular question: Why aren t we hosting a MOOC yet? The MOOC trend has moved quickly. The support of the elite universities in the United States with all of the top 10 universities offering a MOOC as of this writing 1 may have influenced this development somewhat. Although these universities have been quick to offer up courses in this format, Daniel 2 reminds us that their status as elites does not mean that they are inherently more pedagogically prepared or talented than other institutions entering this domain. In response to the question of why our program has yet to offer a MOOC, my colleagues and we might conveniently hide behind the statement that ours is not one of the universities that have entered into a partnership with a MOOC platform such as Coursera. This statement implies that we are simply waiting to be asked by our university s leaders before getting involved, and to some extent, that is true. However, it is worth pushing deeper into this question. Ours is a large, public research university similar to any number of other MOOC-offering institutions. What if our university leaders were encouraging us to develop and offer MOOCs? What if we had an official partnership? Is this something we would want to do? At this point, we have flipped the question a bit: Should we develop and host a MOOC? If so, why? In this article, we attempt to answer this question at the program level. The current slate of MOOCs have been heavily identified with universities, but MOOCs are not designed and delivered by universities. Rather, it is individual faculty members, who may rely on varied university support services, who design and deliver MOOCs. Faculty members will most directly be affected by the shifted time, labor, and outcomes associated with MOOCs, but their academic programs or departments also are affected via affiliation as well as shifting faculty duties and the need for support. Exploring the issue at this localized level is relevant, and we imagine that many other academic programs have been resting in the same position as ours and potentially fielding similar questions and having similar conversations. Approach We used a SWOT analysis to determine whether a program such as ours should offer a MOOC, if the opportunity arose. We considered each of four areas strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats separately, outlining the manner in which our program would be prepared to host a MOOC (strengths and weaknesses) as well as the potential outcomes for our program (opportunities and threats). Then, we triangulated our own internal analysis with the discussion of MOOCs that has occurred across a variety of published sources, ranging from scholarly articles to news stories and blogs. Finally, we examined the four areas together, to make an evaluative determination of whether or not our program might find hosting a MOOC to be a reasonable possibility. Context Our program offers MS degrees in three areas Instructional Systems, Open and Distance Learning, and Performance Improvement as well as a PhD in Instructional Systems. Masters students may complete their degrees either on campus or online, while the PhD program is campus-based. Our classes typically have an enrollment of students, and maintain a high level of interaction between student and instructor. We currently have six tenure-line faculty members who are actively engaged in the program curriculum and teaching. All touch on areas related to instructional design and technology-based learning in their research and teaching. Strengths At the program level, our strengths are mostly related to human capital. We imagine this to be the case for many programs considering a MOOC. Our faculty members have well-established DOI: /mooc ª MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. MOOCs Forum 17

2 DENNEN AND CHAUHAN careers that bridge both scholarship and practice, giving them credibility as potential subject matter experts and instructors for a MOOC. Further and perhaps a bit unique to our field is the reflexive nature of a MOOC for many of our faculty, who are well versed in pedagogy; instructional design; teaching online and engaging students through the use of technology; assessment; and evaluation and research. These skills would allow us, without outside assistance, to design, develop, implement, and evaluate either a connectivist (cmooc) or a more traditional lecture-and-activity based (xmooc) learning experience with robust activities and assessments (see ref. 3 for a full description of types of MOOCs). We believe that this type of synergy across all areas related to the MOOC is, itself, another strength. Our graduate students, similarly, are a strength. Many have directly experienced MOOCs. As instructional designers, they are already well prepared to step in and assist with the design and implementation of a MOOC, and many would be interested in participating on a MOOC-related instructional or research team. Further, many are international students, able to translate course materials and provide support in other languages. Weaknesses For all of our experience with online pedagogy and instructional design, our program community has never designed or delivered a MOOC. It is not the OOC part of the equation that is potentially daunting, but the M. We are accustomed to teaching small classes for a well-known learner audience. Some of us have experience with large-scale instructional design in formal education and training settings. Adapting to an open course with an undefined and potentially large group of learners is a new challenge. A potentially large group of non-revenue-generating learners poses another challenge, this one directly impacting our practical ability to implement a MOOC. Even if we could design and teach the course without seeking help outside the program, we would need the support of a variety of university offices and resources. At a minimum, in order to implement a successful MOOC, we would need assistance with technology (including both a hosting platform and ongoing technical support for learners) and marketing. Both of these areas are outside the scope of our collective expertise within our program. At this time, our university does not have any corporate support or partnerships for MOOC, nor do we have an institutional vision related to MOOCs. We have a robust Office of Distance Learning, but they are focused on providing courses for paying, degree-seeking learners and housing those courses within our existing learning management system. In the context of a MOOC, we would be leading our university down this path, and although that is a potentially exciting prospect, it could also be quite daunting if we did not manage to acquire the support and blessing of our administration and various university support offices. Our current faculty evaluation and reward system is also a weakness. At the present time, teaching loads consist of two courses per semester, with the expectation that these courses generate funded credit hours. The university has high expectations for scholarship, and faculty spend the bulk of their remaining work time seeking external research funding and generating peer-reviewed publications. In a survey conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education, 81% of all respondents indicated that teaching a MOOC took time away from other duties. 4 As at many other universities, there has been no proactive determination of how a time-consuming endeavor such as a MOOC would count toward annual reviews, merit pay, and promotions, but we anticipate that this would be a major concern for anyone who got involved. Consequently, there may be a disincentive for faculty members to devote time to offering a MOOC when that time could be spent on activities that are better recognized and rewarded within our institution. Finally, we cannot ignore political issues. MOOCs are a controversial topic among faculty. Although one might assume that those professors who are designing and offering MOOCs are in favor of them, there are many others who are critical of MOOCs. These critiques range from arguments that integration of MOOCs into formal higher education will result in a loss of personal interaction and educational quality to concerns that MOOCs may signal an undesirable turn toward corporatized learning. Although the support of colleagues across campus is not necessary in order to design and implement a MOOC, it is obviously desirable to maintain strong, working relationships with other academic units. Opportunities The opportunities that we see arising from a MOOC can be summed up as the three R s:, Recruitment, and Research. These appear to be the opportunities that MOOCs have offered at the institutional level, and they are equally attractive at the program level. is a common reason for offering MOOCs. 5 Offering a MOOC at this time would help build our reputation as a leading program in the field of Instructional Systems. Additionally, as noted by Kolowich, 4 there is the possibility that it could help faculty members build their reputation and establish contacts outside of a university setting. Of course, the reputational elements would be contingent on our success; the media have been quick to report on those MOOCs that have struggled. 6,7 In this sense, there is a reputational risk as much as there is a potential reward. Recruitment and reputation are closely related; learners may become interested in our program after directly having a positive experience or upon hearing about someone else s positive experience. Given that we offer the MS degree online, geography should not be a potential deterrent for prospective students. A MOOC would allow a prospective student to try one of our courses and learn more about our program before committing to a full-degree program, much in the way that our existing five-course graduate certificate programs do, although with a much lower cost and more casual sense of obligation. We would expect, however, that the majority of the students in a MOOC would not be potential degree-seeking students for a variety of reasons; for example, a degree might not be consistent with their personal goals, available time, academic qualifications, or finances. Thus, in terms of recruitment, the actual potential for a 18 MOOCs Forum

3 SHALL WE MOOC? MOOC to yield new degree-seeking students for our programs is uncertain and is not, alone, sufficient reason to develop and deliver a MOOC. The research opportunities afforded by a MOOC are particularly attractive to us as instructional systems researchers. Learners interacting in a MOOC generate a tremendous amount of data, and a large number of learners can provide the opportunity to cultivate a robust sample for quasi-experimental research. These data can be used to better understand how particular learning designs affect interactions and outcomes as well as to examine issues related to learning and instruction in a particular subject matter area. In a 2012 TedTalk, 8 Daphne Koller of Coursera described how effective these big data sets are at illuminating connections between learner s incorrect answers and either incorrect mental models or particular errors that might otherwise have gone unnoticed or been considered random errors in a smaller data set. Similarly, should we wish to try some innovative pedagogical techniques, a MOOC might yield the opportunity for robust research on their effectiveness. Thinking on a bigger scale, we can see the future potential that doing an independent MOOC would bring us, such as opportunities to influence our university s approach to MOOCs, leading to other programs trying MOOCs or even to the development of a university partnership with one of the existing MOOC platforms or providers. Obviously, any decisions in that realm are contingent on such efforts being consistent with the mission and goals of our university. In other words, our university s official position on and involvement in MOOCs would be determined at a much higher administrative level, but we certainly would welcome the opportunity to be academic program leaders in any such discussions. Threats In an ideal world, we could design and deliver a MOOC to great acclaim and success. The reality, however, could be quite different. A major threat involves the climate of the MOOC marketplace. Will it be saturated by the time we arrive? Will we be duplicating someone else s efforts? Will the competition for students be too tight? Or will public interest for MOOCs start to wane? These questions can all be summed up in one potential marker of failure: building a MOOC and having no students enroll in it. Our concern here is not necessarily with course completion rate, which is low in most MOOCs, 9,10 but with expending a great deal of effort and not being able to complete the instructional cycle and deliver a course to anyone. It is not that we would want thousands of active students; a more modest cmooc such as the one Voss 11 recently hosted would be fully aligned with our vision. MOOC enrollments are somewhat of an enigma in any case, measured in any number of ways and representing diverse learners with diverse intent. An instructor has no way of knowing if the enrolled learners are serious about taking the course or have the necessary skills to succeed in it. Further, the number of active students engaged in the course could vary by hundreds or even thousands from week to week. MOOCs typically see a steep drop-off from the number of students who sign up for the course and the number who successfully complete the entire course. 9,10 In an xmooc, low enrollments or activity levels might not be visible or have much effect on the active learners, but in a cmooc low enrollments could affect the viability of certain planned learning activities. Two related concerns are the unknown costs of MOOCs and the support issues associated with running them. Once a MOOC has begun and needs arise (e.g., additional teaching assistants, bandwidth, or technical support), there would be pressure to expend additional resources in order to ensure the MOOC s success. Universities are not typically quick to approve new expenditures, and resources are not necessarily going to be allocated to a nonrevenue-generating project. The tension between the need for additional resources and the potential for public failure could lead to some very uncomfortable situations for those involved in the MOOC enterprise. A final threat would be the potential risk to our reputation. As noted above, MOOCs tend to receive considerable attention from the educational press, and MOOCs in which problems occur are likely to be highlighted as less-than-success stories. If we designed a MOOC Table 1. Summary of SWOT Analysis AREA DESCRIPTION Strengths Weakness Opportunity Threat Faculty Credentials Pedagogical experience Students Credentials Interest Diversity Prior experience External vision (e.g., university, corporate partner) Support needs Faculty incentive Political climate Recruitment Research Provide local MOOC leadership Saturated market/competition Low enrollments Unanticipated expenses ª MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. MOOCs Forum 19

4 DENNEN AND CHAUHAN that received poor reviews from our students or our peers, it could harm our reputation as a leading program in instructional systems. This reputational threat is magnified for us over programs in other disciplinary areas because of the inherently reflexive nature of any MOOC that we offer; as instructional designers, we are expected to be experts in the design and delivery of technology-mediated instruction as well as in whatever subject we happen to be teaching via the medium. Discussion of SWOT Outcomes Table 1 summarizes the outcomes of our SWOT analysis. Although we have focused specifically on the Instructional Systems program at the Florida State University, we believe that we have identified fairly universal internal and external factors that would influence the decision to offer a MOOC. is a critical factor in the analysis, with reputational issues in play at all levels, from individual faculty to university. On the front end, it influences learner enrollments, and at the conclusion future perceptions of us and our institution. Although reputational benefits may be assessed at every level, we believe that the greatest risks are at the local (e.g., faculty and program) level. Resources whether human, technological, or financial also are highlighted as critical elements of a MOOC; their availability is intertwined with the ability to both develop and host a MOOC. Estimating necessary hosting resources, including facilitation labor, is clearly a challenge, and the risk to reputation rises if insufficient resources are available at this point. In response to the bottom-line question is it worth doing a MOOC? we cannot provide a definitive answer for ourselves or for other programs, whose specific SWOT analysis would differ. There are potential benefits and drawbacks. A faculty member embarking on a MOOC project would require programmatic support and also would need a clear reason for doing the MOOC. Ideally, offering a MOOC would somehow be synergistic with a faculty member s research interests. Should the opportunities be appealing to the faculty member (in this case, most likely in terms of reputation and scholarship) and if the collegial and basic technology support systems are in place, then a MOOC seems like a viable venture. However, if program faculty members are not personally interested and motivated to design and host a MOOC there is no reason to expend the effort. Further, if the political climate is actively hostile or the involved faculty members or program are at a vulnerable point (e.g., pre-tenure or in the midst of an external or accreditation review), focusing time and local resources on a MOOC may not be the best choice. So, Shall We MOOC? Our within-program discussions about MOOCs have resulted in more certainty about some internal curricular needs (e.g., what our students need to learn about MOOCs) than external ones (specifically, offering a MOOC), although we see the potential for some synergy between the two sets of needs. Our curriculum has integrated either within courses or via standalone course topics online learning, open learning, and instructional design. Perhaps this is a good time to more formally merge the three topics and focus on instructional design skills for this context. The outcomes of such a course might serve a wide audience, with our degree-seeking students gaining valuable experience and skills as MOOC designers and facilitatormentors; our PhD students and faculty having a research opportunity; our program benefitting from any related publicity; and the participants in our MOOC hopefully engaged in a learning experience that enables them to better meet some of their personal learning goals. Inspired by this SWOT analysis, we have initiated discussions within the various levels of our university about the feasibility of hosting a MOOC on a one-time, experimental basis. We see some possibilities, and are currently weighing the benefits and risks. At this point, motivation, faculty effort, and available resources are the key issues. Check in with us in a year we just might be able to tell the tale of our first MOOC. Author Note This article represents the authors views and experiences related to MOOCs. It does not represent the official views or mission of The Florida State University. Author Disclosure Statement No competing financial interests exist. REFERENCES 1. McMinn S. MOOCs being embraced by top U.S. universities. USA Today, Daniel J. Making sense of MOOCs: Musings in a maze of myth, paradox and possibility. J Interactive Media Educ. 2012; Siemens G. Massive open online courses: Innovation in education? In: Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice. McGreal R, et al. (editors). Athabasca, Canada: Athabasca University Press, 2013, pp Kolowich S. The professors who make the MOOCs. The Chronicle of Higher Education, MOOC/ Meinel C, Totschnig M, Willems C. openhpi: Evoluation of a MOOC platfrom from LMS to SOA. Fifth International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 2013, Aachen, Germany. 6. Oremus W. Online class on how to teach online classes goes laughably awry. Slate, meltdown_coursera_course_on_fundamentals_of_online_education_ends_ in.html 7. Kolowich S. Professor leaves a MOOC in mid-course in dispute over teaching. The Chronicle of Higher Education, wiredcampus/professor-leaves-a-mooc-in-mid-course-in-dispute-overteaching/ Koller D. What we re learning from online education. TEDGlobal, education.html 20 MOOCs Forum

5 SHALL WE MOOC? 9. Koller D, et al. Retention and intention in massive open online courses: In depth. EDUCAUSE Review, retention-and-intention-massive-open-online-courses-depth-0 (last accessed July 15, 2013). 10. Breslow LB, et al. Studying learning in the worldwide classroom: Research into edx s first MOOC. Res Pract Assess. 2013;8: Voss B. The realities of MOOCs. Learning Technologies Blog, ASTD, Realities-of-Moocs Address correspondence to: Dr. Vanessa P. Dennen Instructional Systems Program Florida State University 1114 W. Call Street, MC 4453 Tallahassee, FL vdennen@fsu.edu ª MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. MOOCs Forum 21