Are MOOCs impacting on-campus students? Jul. 2014 | Seite 21

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What has changed for academics using MOOCs with their students?

3.5 RESEARCH DESIGN

This was a qualitative study using secondary data (Robson, 2011). A video of a
recent webinar which involved four academics, all using Coursera entitled
‘Pedagogical Webinar: Flipped Classroom/Blended Learning ‘ an unlisted video
hosted on Youtube (Himpele, McFarland, Rixner, & Fisher, 2013) was used as the
source of data. The academics involved were from Vanderbilt University, Rice
University, Stanford and Princeton. The webinar was recorded in January 2013 and
was hosted by Coursera.
The transcripts from the webinar were created by using software (ExpressScribe) to
slow down the speed of the video and then transcribe the content. These
transcriptions were then uploaded into Dedoose and Thematic analysis was applied
to the identify codes indicating common themes.
The transcripts were then used to create case studies of the four academics
involved and the common occurrence of themes between them were identified.
Follow up emails to the participants were also used. For a more comprehensive
understanding of the nature of the impact of MOOCs. the use of descriptive case
studies was decided upon as MOOCs are a contemporary phenomenon (Yin, 2009).
Descriptive case studies were produced for context.

3.6 CREDIBILITY
This is a remarkably frank discussion between these institutions. Since the
production of the webinar, some of the academics have published their own findings
of their experiences (Bruff, et al, 2013) which are consistent with the comments
made in the webinar.

3.7 BIAS
I have a professional interest in the use of MOOCs to enhance education and am
situated at the Centre of Innovation in Technologies and Education at the University
of Southampton, who are a partner with the Open University MOOC platform

MSc Digital Education

University of Edinburgh, 2014

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