The Learn to Learn Online MOOC: Supporting Novice Online Learner Development

This paper presents findings of a mixed methods study on the experience of novice learners in a MOOC designed to build skills for successful online learning. The Learn to Learn Online (LTLO) MOOC, a five week course delivered in the Canvas platform, has been delivered in 2015 and 2016. This paper describes the intentions of the design team and the participants, the pattern of interactions through the initial and second revised offering, and retrospective perceptions of the course. Utilizing the Community of Inquiry (CoI) in regards to design and delivery resulted in the identification of ways in which to support quality delivery of a MOOC. The ongoing efforts to improve and humanize the design approach in the LTLO deliveries, which included common features found in both cMOOCs and xMOOCs, resulted in adjustments for the second offering of the course to better support a nascent CoI and address some of the unexpected dimensions in the initial 2015 offering. Findings related to the MOOC design point to ways in which design and delivery of MOOCs may utilize the CoI framework. Preliminary delivery findings indicate that learners who responded to the survey were very satisfied with the course design and enthused about online learning after their LTLO experience. Learners expressed how the course has enabled them to continue to develop and explore online learning and to integrate it into their own educational practices. Outcomes of this research point to ways in which MOOCs, designed using a CoI focus, can be developed in scalable ways while maintaining meaningful and quality delivery for learners. Introduction The Learning to Learn Online MOOC began as a component of a broader MOOC research initiative funded by the Gates Foundation. The MOOC offered Athabasca University, Canada’s open university, the opportunity to pilot a high-quality MOOC as a step toward establishing a position about instructional quality in MOOCs. In keeping with Athabasca University’s mission to reduce barriers and increase access to education, LTLO was designed with the principles of social, experiential learning in mind and targeted a general audience interested in online education. Athabasca University committed to deliver and research a MOOC in order to observe, document, measure, analyze, and disseminate information. This was expected to lay the foundation for a well-articulated position at Athabasca University regarding the design and delivery of MOOCs. Learning to Learn Online (LTLO) is a facilitated massive open online course (MOOC) providing novice elearners with technical and learning theory background knowledge to develop effective skills, practices, and attitudes for online learning. The five-week MOOC ran first in the spring of 2015 and again in the spring of 2016. A third run is planned for 2017. Guided by the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), one of the key elements of LTLO’s design is to create smaller, more focused learner support networks within the MOOC by dividing the students into a number of homeroom forums for general discussions facilitated by graduate students. Students are divided into homerooms alphabetically by first name, regardless of student characteristics, abilities, or interests. As part of their learning, students are also prompted, through activities, announcements, and weekly video summaries, to contribute to additional population-wide, lesson-related activity forums throughout the course, with all facilitators participating in each activity forum. Members of a design and delivery committee established the goals of the LTLO MOOC that reflected the intention of the project. Four key goals guided the work of the design team selected for the MOOC: 1. maintain the ‘open’ concept of a MOOC, 2. design using the CoI model, 3. utilize multi-modal design, 4. establish a learning community. Literature review The massive open online course has been relatively under-investigated, despite significant institutional investment and media attention. While some hail the end of the MOOC movement in higher education (Hill, 2016), for institutions dedicated to open and accessible education MOOC delivery and research will continue to have importance. Gasevic, Kovanovic, Joksimovic, and Siemens (2014) emphasize the lack of methodological or theoretical rigor in early MOOC reports, and suggest there may be an extra difficulty in the very scale of a MOOC preventing the use of existing social learning frameworks to understand it. While there is a long tradition of social learning frameworks in educational research, it is the unique characteristics of the MOOC, including the high volume, low interaction, and noise of its discussion forums that suggest a seeming mismatch between traditional educational research methods and the new structural qualities of the massive open online course. Nevertheless, the importance of instructor presence remains a key tenet of research in online learning (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005), and despite the challenges brought on by scale, the role of the facilitator within a MOOC, and the greater problem of creating a true community of learners, becomes an important, emerging area of exploration. Four Design Goals 1. Maintain the ‘open’ concept of a MOOC. Provide learners with choice in their own learning experience; designing for learners of varying knowledge and computer experience. This goal was articulated in that there were no prerequisites for any part of the course. MOOC learners were free to choose their learning path and could move through the course however they wish and at whatever level of engagement they selected. Computer and Internet Basics sections were created to ensure scaffolding of information beginning at even a novice computer user as an effort to further reduce barriers to entry. 2. Design using the CoI model. Design to feature cognitive, teaching, and social presences as posited by Garrison, Anderson, & Archer’s (2000) Community of Inquiry model:  Cognitive presence: content was presented in progressive chunks and learners were provided the opportunity to practice and apply each section of content. Learners were led through constructivist activities leading them to formulate their own personal strategy for adapting to the online learning environment.  Teaching presence: Three levels of instruction were present in the course included the Professor, the Inspirer, and the Facilitators. The course was led by an Athabasca University Faculty member who acted as the figurehead of the MOOC in the role of the Professor. The Professor provided a consistent flat presence through the use of pre-recorded video and pre-written text segments. The second level of instructor presence, the Inspirer, involved a dynamic interactive presence in the course. The third level of instruction was that of the Facilitators who were responded to daily learner emails, discussion board posts, submissions and activities.  Social presence: instructor-student interaction and student-student interaction were encouraged throughout the course. Video announcements by the Inspirer and use of multi-media were used to increase social aspects of the course. Ongoing course discussion was facilitated, fostering the development of a learning community. 3. Utilize multi-modal design. The MOOC should utilize a full range of multi-modal aspects and designs to appeal to various learning preferences: text, audio, visual, video. Various types of content representation and use of multi-media throughout the course should be evident such as: ongoing course discussion, a variety of assessment methods (such as quizzes), practice activities, explores activities, and e-portfolio type of activities. 4. Establish a learning community. Learners should be encouraged and prompted to develop a learning community through the presentation of course content, within activities, and by course Facilitators. Teaching Presence As described in the goals outlined in the previous section, the CoI was the design framework utilized by the design team. Key for the LTLO MOOC design were the course components that represented the three levels of instructor presence in order to both support learners and to encourage the development of a Community of Inquiry (CoI). The particular details of how the three levels of instructor presence were incorporated into the design are as follows:  Lead Instructor: University Faculty member Provided a static presence via pre-recorded videos (each of the five module introductions) and text-graphics placed strategically in modules to help clarify complex subject matter.  The Inspirer: Graduate Student Provided a dynamic presence via informal video and text announcements, discussion board posts, and email support, acknowledging and addressing notable content contributions and in-course activities by learners. Declining frequency as learners became more self-reliant and built CoI.  Facilitators: 10 Graduates/Students Provided a dynamic presence designed to provide a sense of touch with all participants. Each Facilitator was responsible for: daily monitoring and facilitation of discussions in one ‘Homeroom’ forum and topics started in the various course forums by learners from their homerooms, and responding to email queries from leaners, declining frequency as learners became more self-reliant and built CoI. The Study In order to study the participant experience in the LTLO MOOC, a mixed methods (Cresswell & Clarke, 2007; Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004) approach was selected. A strength of the mixed-methods approach is that researchers can answer a more general range of research questions resulting in stronger evidence for conclusions as well as more detailed descriptions of the complex phenomena being studied (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004). Qualitative and quantitative data were collected in this study via online surveys, journaling, and semi-structured interviews. A total of 474 pre-course su