Focus Ques- Impact of orchestration decisions

[Aashita Jain]

Orchestration plays a vital role in making a MOOC learner centric. The orchestration decisions taken by the course team are highly commendable. These decisions have definitely made a better impact on my learning and engagement.

Impacts of these orchestration decisions on my learning-

1.      Inviting course alumni as DFMs- I appreciate the efforts made by the moderators in answering the queries of the learners. The responses have been quick and elaborative. While reading these responses, we are also exposed to different other viewpoints regarding the same topic that broadens our area of thinking.

2.      Live Interaction- The idea of live interaction gives a feeling of classroom teaching in an online environment. Though timings of live interaction sessions are not suitable for many learners, the idea of floating a Google form to collect the queries and providing a link to later on watch the same session assure that no one is left behind. The effort made by the instructors in answering live queries as well as queries from the Excel sheet is praiseworthy.

3.      Active Involvement of the Instructors in the discussion forum- In a MOOC, the predominant mode of interaction between learners and instructors is discussion forum. This course has made me realize about the instructors’ ability to facilitate student learning by intervening in discussion forums. Through this post, I take an opportunity to thank Jayakrishnan sir and Gargi ma’am for their active participation in the discussion forum in order to steer some conversations, to clarify our doubts and to give an interesting angle to some existing posts in order to make us respond and engage.  

There are a few other points that I would like to consider-

1.      Giving reminders for Quiz Submission- Due to different types of quizzes and their varying submission dates, it might be difficult for some learners to keep a track of all the activities. A reminder can be sent a day before the final submission of the quiz.

2.      Designing a focus question in such a way that the learners are required to upload their LeDs and LbDs (created in Practice activities) in the discussion forum and are reviewed by their peers. Some group assignments can also be given to engage students.

This brings me to a question that how can groups be created in MOOCs?  (considering the massive number of participants and some of them might not be active in the course) Are there any tools available for this as well?  

[gargi...@gmail.com]

Hello Aashita,

All your suggestions are very good. 
Let me relate an experience we had with peer review of open-ended assignments like create an LeD. A rubric was given to aid peer review. There was lot of conflict among learners accusing their peers of giving unfair low scores.  

How do you handle that if you are the instructor? Think about it. 

I have talked of a possible way out in the video on LxI - types of questions for this type of assignment.

[Aashita Jain]

You are right ma’am. It can be a daunting task. Can moderators or TAs be given the task of evaluating the LeDs? In that way, it will be fair. The participants are free to comment on the LeDs or LbDs of their peers but the score given by the moderators can be considered for evaluation.

[gargi...@gmail.com]

Will be possible if it is an online course with participation of a 100 students. In MOOCs, we are dealing with students in scale of thousands. It becomes very difficult to grade open-ended assignments. One way maybe is remove the grades. Make it into a RQ where focus question is use rubric for self-evaluation & post which criteria did you not score well with reasoning. Worked fairly well in a MOOC of 11,000 teachers. Other solutions possible.

[Moderator Sandeep Patil]

Ashita ji, 

I had done a series of 4 MOOCs by Open University of Sri Lanka last year. The participants were divided into groups of 10 each. Each group member had to evaluate the submission  of 2 peers and comment on submissions of at least 3 peers. This presented a unique opportunity for the peers to learn from each other. It definitely presented a different and yet quite fruitful type of orchestration. 

[Aashita Jain]

Thank you Gargi ma’am and Sandeep sir for your insights. Assessment of massive number of participants is definitely a big challenge. Peer assessments and group assignments should be designed while keeping the scale in mind. After reading your experiences, I think if there are thousands of participants, it is better to make such activities non graded to avoid conflicts.The designing of the question/ assignment and providing benchmarks, rubrics or criteria for assessment is important so that the participants are encouraged to upload their assignments on the forum. Also, for graded activities, continuous monitoring is necessary so as to ensure consistency.

[Esa Bose]

I agree with Ashita Ma'am on the point that asking the learners to upload their self made LeD and LbD samples would be a great. This will ensure that learners have actually practised what they have learnt during the course tenure.