[T.e.l.l. January Summary] Busting Through the Maze: Building and Supporting our First MOOC

Contributed by Keith Webster, RRU

Sharon Hu and Ian Linkletter presented a TELL session on the MOOC they recently helped produce at the University of British Columbia. Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education is a course designed to give teachers the ability to incorporate “indigenous ways of knowing, content, perspectives and pedagogies” into their teaching. It ran over 6 weeks and enrolled 8316 students (5335 from Canada).
One of the key themes in the talk Sharon and Ian gave was the great amount of work from a variety of people that went into producing the MOOC. Sharon and Ian were two of a development team of 8 working on this course. They were guided by an advisory group of 6 and worked with 12 contributors. Much of the development work involved the creation, sourcing and integration of videos to support each unit. A Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach was taken to support the diverse student demographic, which featured many that were new to MOOCs as well as many with problematic internet connections. UBC has run this MOOC twice, most recently taught by Dr. Jan Hare with teaching assistants Sara Davidson and Anita Parhar.

There were many lessons learned around this MOOC. Of particular interest was the assessment design that used peer assessment supported by a video walk-through, sample assignment and rubric. Ian and Sharon found that this assessment style was successful. Evaluations indicated that instructions were clear and everyone received feedback, though the feedback could have been deeper.
The session provided many interesting insights that could inform course development on a more pedestrian scale. Well-structured peer evaluation could become a valuable learning and assessment tool in many courses, while the detail and planning involved in the development of the course would be welcome in any large learning design project.
See the session recording and other links below to learn more about this session.
Course Site
https://www.edx.org/course/reconciliation-through-indigenous-ubcx-indedu200x-0
T.E.L.L. Session Recording no longer available
PowerPoint Slides