Are MOOCs impacting on-campus students? Jul. 2014 | Seite 31

The materials for the course, online lectures in particular were rich in resources,
more so than other years because it was recognized early on that the MOOC
students did not have access to additional resources. The course team made an
effort to provide a very media rich experience for the online lectures.
The forums were used in the context of their course. So the students were able to
apply some of the theories that they were discussing, at a practical level. They
could utilize the forums and gain valuable experience. They were also able to
reflect on Coursera as a new organization and so gain valuable insights from this.
Peer grading was used for this course, so that the students could evaluate each
other and learn from this experience. The students used the prior year’s exam
papers to grade and also grade each other’s, thereby using each other as a
resource.

CHALLENGES

Although there was a ‘huge amount of effort’ put into the course design, there were
some factors that they hadn’t foreseen that caused some issues. The technical
ability of the on campus students was an issue, where on the first day of the course
the range of the levels of ability took up more time and was disruptive to the
sessions.
The students on campus felt that the lack of face to face time meant that the
students lost the connection to the academic and they found the format ‘impersonal’.
They also wanted more of an opportunity to ask questions in real time, rather than
via a discussion forum.
There was also an issue around the fact that the same course was running as a
MOOC. The students felt that they were paying $5000 for a course and that they
were giving the course for free, and that this some how undermined their
programme and made it ‘worthless’. There seems to be some disconnect between
the perceived ‘value’ of the course.

MSc Digital Education

University of Edinburgh, 2014

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