Are MOOCs impacting on-campus students? Jul. 2014 | Page 18

over half the faculty who have taught on MOOCs have reconfigured how they teach
their on campus students (Fitzgerald, 2013). Although this was highlighted as a
success, San Jose State University has also withdrawn from the Udacity platform,
citing that they need to reconfigure their courses (Kolowich, 2013). They have
found that the learners on the MOOC were getting much poorer results than those in
the same classes on campus. This could highlight the impact of the affordances of
platform providers.
Koller talked of ‘Flipping the classroom’ and using the videos that she had created
for her MOOC as homework for her on campus students. Though recently, Koller
has come under some criticism for her ‘rosy ideals’ on how her interpretation of the
Coursera MOOCs efficacy, mainly regarding business models and the elitist nature
of the company (Bates, 2012). EDx also ran a pilot with San Jose State University
and will offer access to materials for a fee to California State University. This
apparent business model is seen by some to go against the concept of ‘open’
however, this is open to debate as the business models are evolving (Koller, 2012b;
Lapowsky, 2013, Straumsheim, 2013).
Flipping using MOOC materials has become one of the salient features of the use of
MOOCs, by academics who have expanded their own modules to be MOOCs and
those who have adopted their use to enhance a module (Bruff, Fisher, McEwen, &
Smith, 2013). Being able to focus more time on the learning has led to other
innovative forms of learning and assessment for on campus students. Peer grading
and assessment is widely used in MOOCs and is also being used within the lecture
time after this had been shown to be effective for learning. Although it appears that
there are some prerequisites for success. Peer assessment may be challenging for
someone who does not understand the problem at hand and so may not be able to
offer advice on solutions, even if they have been provided with them (O'Toole, 2013;
Zhang, 2013; Martin, 2012) What has been shown within this study however, is that
under the right conditions, MOOCs have provided a positive learning experience for
both academics and on campus students (Yuan, 2013). This is the blended model,
discussed earlier, providing a rich, adaptive, engaging learning environment which
enables students to become active learners, and thereby providing the motivation to
learn.

MSc Digital Education

University of Edinburgh, 2014

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