Are MOOCs impacting on-campus students? Jul. 2014 | Page 34

The course was designed to include videos that were the equivalent of text books.
They had decided that these would be standalone and that they were there to serve
the purpose of delivering content and were not really for discussion. The students
were grouped for lectures, there were 3 -4 lectures for each group. Each ‘lecture’
was about 10 – 15 minutes and the students were required to watch these twice a
week. There were also quizzes for the Rice students (but not necessarily for the
MOOC students) When the quizzes were created they were specifically designed
with the on campus students in mind.

The aim of the quizzes was to ensure that

the students watched the videos. The students were given a deadline of 1 hour
before the class started and they had to watch the videos and prove that they knew
what was going on.

SUCCESSES
The students’ were not completely happy with this kind of engagement but they
were able to demonstrate much deeper learning than previous classes as they had
projects which would extend the topics that they had learnt. The (on campus)
classes were also set so that those who had completed their homework would sit on
one side of the room and those who hadn’t were in another part, so that they could
continue with the homework and the others were able to take the topics further.
Scott was able to work with those students who had issues and problems. He was
also able to push students to work at a much higher level than they would have
done in a regular lecture.
Peer assessment was a feature of this course, with the students marking each
other’s work. The entire class would discuss the work and agree a level/mark. It
was done by the entire class originally because they didn’t know what kind of
reaction the class would have to this kind of activity. By having them sit together
and discuss a submission was very successful for the course module, as it
prevented people becoming too narrow in their views and the discussion led to
deeper learning.

Because of the video/quiz combo the students came to the class better prepared
than the course team had anticipated. The discussions on the course were

MSc Digital Education

University of Edinburgh, 2014

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