Wednesday 24 June 2015

Free report Continued Professional Development for teachers & #MOOC #CPD

Dianne Laurillard edited a report on "the Anatomy of a MOOC for teacher CPD" which can be downloaded here. In this 34 page report she looks at a MOOC that was provided by UNESCO and partners to enhance CPD of teachers by using a particular MOOC aimed at that subject.

The report provides an executive summary, describing the set-up, demographics, evaluation, lessons learned, and the pedagogical as well as financial value. It also provides a look into the approach to teaching and learning, design and development processes, various measures of success (more quantitative view and branding).

Quckly sharing the 10 take aways highlighted by the report:
1.The certification provided by these courses for professionals does have value (8.2). 2. The provision of collaborative learning functionality on the MOOC platform is an urgent requirement, via both the grouping function and the shared production activity (7.2). 3. Peer review is highly valued for activity of doing the review, rather than for receiving a review (8.3) 4. A pedagogic approach that orchestrates a default sequence of linked and focused collaborative learning activities is highly valued (8.3). 5. To maintain the value of peer review and collaboration within an on-demand environment it will be important to help academics continue orchestrating this process so that it continues to work (8.4). 6. We need flexible pricing to assist participants from emerging economies (8.4) 7. We need a less problematic technical authentication process to increase both reach and revenue significantly (8.4). 8. The term ‘registration’ is not equivalent to ‘enrolment’ in a normal university course; instead ‘engagement in week 1’ should be used as the only reasonable equivalent (8.5). 9. Fee-paying undergraduates are subsidizing free education for highly qualified professionals, and we need ways of ameliorating that situation (8.5). 10. We need further technical development to create learning analytics that will support automated or semi-automated assessment for non-scientific subjects (8.5)

And the report concludes with: "The overall experience of both course team and participants on this CPD course was overwhelmingly positive. The course team had the opportunity to learn a lot more about online teaching and learning in this new environment, and also learned a great deal from the participants. Their contributions on the Padlet wall, the Diigo site, and Scoop-It, for example, will be valuable additional resources for later runs of the MOOC. It has proved to be a true experience of the coconstruction of knowledge, as such courses should be."