Are MOOCs impacting on-campus students? Jul. 2014 | Page 30

MOOC: Organisational Analysis
Platform: Coursera

CONTEXT
In the Autumn of 2012, Dan MacFarland ran both the on campus Organisational
Analysis MOOC alongside his regular on campus course of the same name. The
course had 44 on campus students and 44,000 MOOC learners (Erickson, 2012).
The course was a core module for a few related disciplines, Law, Sociology and
Education. This kind of module would normally require quite a lot of reading and
many of the on campus students were not particularly technically minded.

COURSE DESIGN
There were over 60 lectures, which included screen side chats. There was a
particular format to the on campus class in that the lectures from the MOOC were
used as a discussion piece for the classes, coupled with materials and questions
around the lectures and activities like role play and simulations.
There was a particular emphasis on group work with students working on applying
organizational theory and as this course had been run on campus before, there was
already a wealth of material and expertise. The classes were also interactive and
the academics were able to participant in the discussions and answer questions as
they walked around the groups. There seemed to be a lot of student engagement,
both for teaching and for feedback. Similarly to Himpele (case study 1a,b &C), they
also had regular weekly activities where they used Coursera as an example
organisation and then linked the forums that both types of students (online and on
campus) used to allow for the richness of the increased cohorts to share and gain
knowledge from each other. McFarland mentions how he tried to help the on
campus students present their questions to the whole cohorts (on campus and off)
to increase the educational experience.

SUCCESSES

MSc Digital Education

University of Edinburgh, 2014

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