www.le.ac.uk

Fostering collaborative investment in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Bernard Nkuyubwatsi PhD Student Institute of Learning Innovation University of Leicester Email: bn30@le.ac.uk

Introduction

• MOOCs opportunities explored by a diverse stakeholders

Formal students: supplement paid courses,

Pre-university students: have a taste of higher education

Employees & professionals: professional development

Institutions: attract students to their paid campus-based for some and cut down the cost of higher education for others

Academics: experiment online teaching

Governments: Some commissions appointed

• Challenges: Doubt on quality, MOOC production cost, no trusted assessment and credit for MOOCs

5 types of resources for investment in MOOCs & Open Education

Political

Resources: Policies,

regulations and legal

frameworks

The management and control of the 5 types of resources

Political

Resources: Governments, policy

makers & leaders

Non-rivalrous and rivalrous educational resources

Non-rivalrous resources (Weller, 2011, p. 85) : Resources that are shareable in a way that their use and quality is not affected by the number of users.

Weller (2011, p. 85) argues that taking a copy of an electronic learning material does not prevent others from accessing them.

The quality of the digital contents shared online under open licenses is not affected by their massive accessibility and use.

Rivalrousness of the five types of resources

Collaborative investment for non-rivalrous education

Each of the 5 types of resources is needed to build sustainable open higher education

The pedagogy of abundance(Weller, 2011): Abundance of open courses (MOOCs) & learning resources (OER) vs depletion of financial resources

With more investment of non-rivarlous resources, education can be made non-rivarlous

→MOOCs have shown that it is possible.

Addressing quality concerns • One of the most popular frame of education: high

quality commodity produced for students to consume

Some of the consequences

Shift of interest from skills, expertise & competencies development toward grades & diplomas (Wright, 2014, para. 8).

The waste of talents (Robinson, 2010) and heutagogical resources

Collaborative quality enhancement that involves all stakeholders may be solution

Collaborative quality enhancement

Political

Resources: Governments, policy

makers & leaders

Shared

benefit

European terrain for collaborative investment in MOOCs & Open ed

• You lead in openness, equity, quality and diversity

Higher education free: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany and Austria

Higher education affordable in many other European countries

• You already European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)

• Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) framework in many European countries

Entry into European higher education via RPL

Recognition of non-formal & informal learning for progression in Higher ed

Legal framework and open licensing

• ECTS may be an enabling legal framework

• Open licensing enables sharing & circulating learning resources

• Open licensing already embraced by OpenupEd

• Open licencing contributes to building a non-rivalrous open education

Conclusion • Five types of resources can be invested in open education and

MOOCs: political, financial, technological, pedagogical and heutagogical

• The five types of resources are managed and controlled by different stakeholders which calls for collaboration

• In this collaboration, all stakeholders would enhance quality together

• Collaboration is sustainable when build on shared benefit/value

• Collaboration can allow the continuity of equity, quality, openness and diversity across Europe

• ECTS and RPL, coupled with open licensing, are enabling ingredients

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References

European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2014). Modernisation of Higher Education in Europe: Access, Retention and Employability 2014. Eurydice Report. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Retrieved from http://www.ehea.info/news-details.aspx?ArticleId=348

Weller, M. (2011). The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming the Scholarly Practice. New York: Bloomsbery.