Teaching with MOOCs: Possibilities and Experiences from the national Austrian MOOC platform

Abstract

MOOCs are not necessarily developed for teaching in higher education (HE), nor is their usage in higher education. Nevertheless, this contribution presents several possibilities and experiences from the Austrian national MOOC platform iMooX.at. The presentation will introduce the MOOC platform. Then it will include (a) different formal usage and teaching designs, (b) reasons and experiences to open-up own teaching to others with the development of a MOOC and (c) challenges and requirements to use an external MOOC for own teaching, such as open licenses.

iMooX.at (Ebner, 2022) is one of the six European MOOC platforms and is part of the European MOOC consortium (EMC). This consortium follows the idea to bring university courses to the public, to the labour market or to other educational institutions. With other words, we aim to make education more flexible and accessible by cooperation. iMooX.at was founded in 2014 by Graz University of Technology and the University of Graz with the goal to make university knowledge accessible to the public. Therefore, all courses at iMooX.at are using a Creative Commons license and serve as so-called Open Educational Resources (OER). As OER, the MOOCs can broadly be used by others. So, the iMooX team gathered a lot of experience how to use MOOCs in different learning and teaching scenarios, driven by possibilities towards opening education.

We identified and will present seven different scenarios and examples for MOOC usage (Ebner et al, 2020). In this talk a short introduction about the platform and MOOCs in general should be given. Based on several studies about our MOOCs, using learning analytics, surveys, and other study designs, we will share reasons and experiences with MOOC in and for teaching. For example, students can meet people from other fields, background, and countries within a MOOC, which enriches the learning experience. And “inverse blended learning” can support the intensity of learning and collaboration within a MOOC. As iMooX courses are open licensed, the MOOCs can as well be integrated in lecturers by other teachers and institutions.

To summarize, the presentation will give insights how (future) higher education might look with MOOCs and their integration, when produced in high quality and as OER: MOOCs are helpful to improve learning and teaching, especially if those courses are used by different universities or for cooperations (e. g. joint lectures) between them. OER-based online courses are flexible, can be used timely independent and are easily accessible for a huge mass of learners.

References

Ebner M., Schön S., Braun C. (2020). More Than a MOOC—Seven Learning and Teaching Scenarios to Use MOOCs in Higher Education and Beyond. In: Yu S., Ally M., Tsinakos A. (eds) Emerging Technologies and Pedagogies in the Curriculum. Bridging Human and Machine: Future Education with Intelligence. pp. 75-87 Springer, Singapore.
Ebner, M. (2021). iMooX - a MOOC platform for all (universities), 2021 7th International Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEEIE), 2021, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/ICEEIE52663.2021.9616685

Full text

Teaching with MOOCs:
Possibilities and Experiences
from the national Austrian MOOC platform
10.11.2022 | A Unite!-Ed Future
Teaching and Learning Unite! Conference 2022
Adj.-Prof. PhD Martin Ebner
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License.

MOOC?

Massive Open Online Course
MOOC

MOOC
M = „massive“ = for many
O = „open“ = From free access to
Open Educational Resources
O = „online“
C = „course“ = structured

http://imoox.at

https://emc.eadtu.eu/

http://imoox.at

A MOOC can simply described as an
open online course based on videos.

Seven Learning and
Teaching Scenarios for MOOCs

Precondition: Any content is an
Open Educational Resource

Type 1: the conventional MOOC
a pure online course for many users

Type 2: the Pre-MOOC
an online course as preparation for a following
learning event

Type 3: the Blended MOOC
a MOOC that is integrated in between several
face-to-face learning events

Type 4: the In-Between MOOC
is a special form of type 3, where the
MOOC is in-between two face-to-face-events

Type 5: the Inverse-Blended MOOC
a type of MOOC which is enriched by
face-to-face meetings and events

Type 6: the Flipped MOOC
a MOOC is used to flipped/inverted classroom concept:
the MOOC prepares parallel for the face-to-face phases which
are focussed to discuss, train or apply knowledge

Type 7: the Lecture MOOC
is accompanied by online activities in the LMS
of an educational organization, which allows e.g.
additional non-public discussions and tests

https://elearningblog.tugraz.at/archives/11381

Best Practices

https://arqus-alliance.eu

https://imoox.at/course/cblmooc
https://imoox.at/course/BordersMOOC

https://imoox.at/series/electronix
MOOC series

https://moochub.org
German MOOC aggregator

https://microcredentials.at

OER-MOOCs facilitate access to
education in an innovative way
and allow for new forms of
teaching and learning

iMooX is part of UNITE!

https://emc.eadtu.eu/
Interested?
Contact us:
office@imoox.at

Graz University of Technology
EDUCATIONAL !
TECHNOLOGY
Graz University !
of Technology
Martin Ebner !
(Educational Technologist)
http://elearning.tugraz.at
martin.ebner@tugraz.at
Slides available at:
This work is licensed under a !
Creative Commons Attribution !
4.0 International License.
@mebner
http://elearningblog.tugraz.at
Yes, we care :-)