Reading about MOOCs in teaching sustainability

I did a lot of reading in preparation of our own MOOC, here are some summaries on how MOOCs work specifically when it comes to teaching sustainability.

Richter et al. (2024) review the literature for best practice on how to use MOOCs for lifelong learning. This is a very useful article, and for me specifically because it pointed me to other references that I then had to follow up on!

They mention the original article that introduced the four facets of learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be, which the UNECE framework uses. I obviously had to read more about that, and found a speech by the original author of that framework, Delors (2013), that describes it as a “global vision, [… which] rejects the idea of specialisation of spheres – specialisation whereby learning to know happens at school, learning to do happens in the workplace, learning to be happens in the private sphere, and learning to live together happens in the public sphere“. It’s always useful to know where frameworks come from, and especially that this is the background for this one!

Richter et al. (2024) also refer to Farrow (2018) who uses the “7 Cs” model for what MOOCs should pay attention to:

• Content, which should obviously be up-to-date, add value (see also the Wenger (2011) value creation framework that I really like and find super useful when thinking about value of educational projects!), relevance (duh!), and “taught by trusted instructor”
• Context, so that content was relevant (as above) and could be applied in the real world
• Curation and Co-creation, which is about social construction of knowledge and co-creation of content
• Communication, which is about consistent and concise instructor presence and clarity of expectations
• Collaboration on relevant activities, both within the course and offline with peers
• Competition, meaning “collective score-keeping of progress“, and
• Certification, “an appropriate certification of learning“

One super interesting point in Richter et al. (2024)’s interpretation of the “7 Cs” model is that they see the responsibility for “context” with the learner! And that is something I want to take with me — of course we need prompts and tasks where participants need to apply something, but we need to make sure to stress that the most important part is that they make it meaningful for themselves in their own context, not that they follow our instructions!

They also discuss the difficulty that “responsibility for the course is divided between the university partners (which mainly design the learning content) and the learning platform (which is mainly responsible for delivering the course)“, which I had not thought about in those terms before. They also highlight the benefit of using platforms like Coursera, which “significantly enhance the pedagogy through establishing cohorts, forums, time management reminders and progress tracking, and arranging peer reviews and prompts for both learners and teachers for best practice (e.g. essential components for course design and feedback from learnings regarding different components)“. When I read this last year, we were still planning to go with Coursera, but now I am not so sure about that any more!

Lastly, I had to follow Richter et al. (2024)’s reference to Kahan et al. (2017), who, based on a Coursera MOOC on biology, identified seven types of participant behavior: Tasters (with very low engagement in the course; 65%), Downloaders (also very low engagement on the platform, but downloading on average more than 90% of the videos; 8%), Disengagers (started off engaged but did not complete the course; 11%), Offline Engagers (watch downloaded videos, but engage and observe discussions on the platform; 4%), Online Engagers (also very engaged, but watching videos online and engaging in in-video quizzes; 7%), Moderately Social Engagers (oki engagement overall; 4%), and Social Engagers (high levels of engagement, especially in discussions; 1%). This is super interesting for expectation management of how much engagement we can realistically expect to see! But it also makes me think about the importance of downloading (and providing lean media that can be downloaded also with poor connections; NOT what we are doing with our fancy videos! But even more important to offer good transcripts or the scripts we used to film the MOOC?) and doing things offline (i.e. where we have no indication for whether people engage with it).

By choosing to not host our MOOC on one of the huge platforms, but rather host it ourselves and make it completely open, maybe we make learning slightly harder or less fun for the people who would like to discuss in discussion fora within a MOOC’s system. On the other hand, we are very open in inviting discussions on social media or offline in participants’ networks, so maybe that is just as good (or even better, if by engaging on the platform, they were being polite rather than choosing that exact network to have discussions with?)? I still want discussions about the MOOC, but maybe we don’t need to see them happening, but just have to trust that they will happen? And we will of course look for indications that they are happening and see what we can do to support and be involved in them.

Delors, J. (2013). The treasure within: Learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. What is the value of that treasure 15 years after its publication?. International review of education, 59(3), 319-330.

Farrow, R. (2018). MOOC and the workplace: Key support elements in digital lifelong learning. International Entrepreneurship as the Bridge between International Economics and International Business: Conference Proceedings of the 9th ENTRE Conference. 5th AIB-CEE Chapter Annual Conference, International Entrepreneurship, Krakow, Poland. https://oro.open.ac.uk/59662/1/1763-6726-1-PB.pdf

Kahan, T., Soffer, T., & Nachmias, R. (2017). Types of Participant Behavior in a Massive Open Online Course. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning: IRRODL, 18(6), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i6.3087

Richter, J. L., Leire, C., & McCormick, K. (2024). Massive Open Online Courses for lifelong learning: Towards Flexible and Individualized Education for Sustainability. Proceedings of the Lund University Teaching and Learning conference 2022; Lifelong Learning and Higher Education: New (and Old) Perspectives, 83.

Featured image: Believe it or not, I wrote this post in November last year while sitting on a ferry to Germany to go to a conference. But then somehow it never got posted, so now enjoy the star light in the window and the poinsettia plant behind my screen…