Exactly how is personalization operationalized with the design & delivery of open courses?

A study was conducted to better understand how massive open online courses (MOOC) instructors adapt their courses to enhance or personalize MOOC design and delivery. This study explored the activities, tools, and resources that instructors of MOOCs used to improve the personalization of their MOOCs. Following email interviews with 22 MOOC and open education leaders, regarding MOOC personalization, a questionnaire was developed and completed by 152 MOOC instructors from around the world. While more than 8 in 10 respondents claimed heavy involved in designing their MOOCs, only one-third placed extensive effort on meeting unique learner needs during the actual design of that course and even fewer were concerned with personalization during the delivery of it. An array of instructional practices, technology tools, and content resources were leveraged by instructors to personalize MOOC-based learning environments. Aligning with previous research, the chief resources and tools employed in their MOOCs were discussion forums, video lectures, supplemental readings, and practice quizzes. Additionally, self-monitoring and peer-based methods of learner feedback were more common than instructor monitoring and/or feedback. Some respondents mentioned the use of flexible deadlines, proposed alternatives to course assignments, and introduced multimedia elements, mobile applications, and guest speakers among the ways in which they personalized their massive courses. A majority of the respondents reported modest or high interest in learning new techniques to personalize their next MOOC offering.

Keywords: massive open online courses (MOOCs), personalization, instructional design, open course, instructors

Interested in learning more? Check out the forthcoming publication.

Bonk, C. J., Zhu, M., Kim, M., Xu, S., Sabir, N., & Sari, A. (in press). Pushing toward a more personalized MOOC: Exploring instructor selected activities, resources, and technologies for MOOC design and implementation. The International Review of Research on Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL).

Abstract adapted from article

 

15 years of going in circles

During a meeting today it was brought to my attention that the issues revolving around technology integration remain the same, nearly 15 years after a call for conversation.  In 1999, Ertmer et al. described the role of technology in learning environment and proposed two frameworks of barriers that needed to be addressed for successful technology integration.  The same can be said for the integration of technology into research methods and qualitative research project design.  Funny how authors despite trying to have a cohesive conversation across disciplines, remain at the same place, as though the conversations haven’t shifted with the times or technological updates.  It seems as though conversations and research agendas are moving in circles.  All this got me thinking once more about users’ fundamental understanding of tools and what that can mean.

Conole and Dyke (2004) break down the notion of affordances when using technological tools in conducting research.  This concept encompasses an ontological approach, that talks about possible uses, and epistemological approaches, that revolve around intended or actual utilizations.

Let’s take for example a hammer: A hammer can be used for several purposes…perhaps you are using it to nail pins into a wall to hold pictures…or perhaps you are using it to weigh down your door as so it won’t close.  There are ideal uses you think of when someone mentions a hammer, those ideals are constructed based on your personal familiarity with the tool…what often escape us are the list of things one can possibly do with a hammer.

Here’s another: Quick think of a bird…

Can it fly? Most people think about flying birds when asked; but how does your mental model change when the first bird you think of is a penguin, kiwi, or emu.

When researchers discuss expanding the frameworks about technological tools, some “rather than elaborating on how any one of these ‘affordances’ could be relevant to a learner or a practitioner, the authors tend to indulge in a certain amount of hopeful expectation that affordances and abilities will simply emerge” (Boyle & Cook, 2004, p. 297).  This doesn’t seem too much of a concern and there aren’t persistent calls for more research, so perhaps it has fizzled down a bit.

After reading discussions about technological affordances and best technology integrations practice, I think the response remains the same; “It depends”

References

Boyle, T. & Cook, J. (2004). Understanding and using technological affordances: a commentary on Conole and Dyke. ALT-J Research in Learning Technology 12(3), 295-299.

Conole, G. & Dyke, M. (2004a). What are the affordances or information and communication technologies? ALT-J Research in Learning Technology 12(2), 113-124.

Ertmer, P. A., Addison, P., Lane, M., Ross, E., & Woods, D. (1999). Examining Teachers’ Beliefs about the Role of Technology in the Elementary Classroom. Journal of research on Computing in Education, 32(1), 54-72.

Uncertainty Principle, Education (research) Style.

\*\ ^_^  /*/  <– Do a little happy dance!

 

Before I was an educationalist, I was a researcher in the Sciences and we had this idea that whatever we created and “discovered” needed to be revalidated.  Basically when we were expected to publish results any lab should be able to replicate the results.  I grew as an experimentalist, under the guise and care of my faculty.

However, as I shifted gears, my paradigm and perspectives on research design didn’t move as fluidly.  Traditionally I have carried about a more, aligned, constructionist epistemological where I believed that meanings and understanding were influenced by surroundings. In qualitative approaches, in education, this generally means that social phenomena are engineered within social contexts.  And, while these phenomena may seem natural they are, in reality, influenced in design, artifact and constrained by the environment around them.

Think of a cell, yes like the kind in your body.  They change form when influenced by cold temperature or wet environments. Sometimes if you poke at them, they bounce back and sometime your interactions and puncture the fine membrane…and then you can clean up the mess. Researching in educational environments is kind of the same.

As soon as you start watching how someone is interacting with a system, they react to your inspection.  When you attempt to change a participants environment or try interventions, sometime it is merely the presence of the observer that is enough to solicit a reaction.

So then how are we, as research, supposed to create systematic research/date that is replicable?  Honestly, sometimes…most times, I don’t know.  I think the beauty of qualitative methods is that they give space for representing unique contexts as “whole pictures” often expressive from the perspective of the participants. However, often when reading research papers that take a holistic approach I question how the role of the researcher impacts the nature of the study.

This all reminds me of the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle, where you can’t measure both a particle’s position and it’s velocity in the same instance.  The simple act of trying to capture information is disruptive. In fact the more accurately you measure position, the more inaccurately you measure velocity (and vice versa).  The very nature of interventions is disruptive to the natural state of participants, even in educational research.  Some call it observer bias; others call it a threat to internal validity.

While there are methods and designs that can control for such things as the Hawthorne Effect they are more often than not, not incorporated into descriptive qualitative research design.  This measures are not taken because the researcher is meant to be a part of the interpretative instrument (s), but then how does that make this *waves hands around in the air* a) representative, b) accurate, c) maintain naturalistic integrity, and d) replicable?