Over the weekend, the International Association of Medical Education held its e-Learning symposium in Glasgow. Unsurprisingly, a large focus was on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), with both keynote speakers focusing on this area.
Professor Allison Littlejohn (Chair of Learning Technology and Academic Director of Learning & Teaching at the Open University) talked about her research on professional learners. Autonomous learners tend to use MOOCs strategically in relation to specific work-focused problems or areas of interest, while non-autonomous learners are more likely to complete MOOCs and work through them in a linear fashion. This has profound implications for the way we view ‘success’ in a MOOC – the completion of a MOOC is only one indicator. This reinforces a point made by Dr Amy Woodgate at a recent ELESIG Scotland meeting.
Dr Stephen Downes (National Research Council of Canada) talked about the theory of connectivism in relation to the MOOC Ecosystem. Based on the theory of social constructivism, connectivism focuses on collaborative learning through online networks. Downes looked at the nature of learning networks, from the very small (neural networks) to the very large (the MOOCisphere). At this top level, MOOCs are just one part of a complex ecosystem of learning resources and networks that hundreds of millions of learners use for their education. This nicely complemented the concept of ‘blurred learning’ voiced by David Cook (Mayo Clinic, USA) – the idea that the boundaries between face-to-face and online learning become even more dissolved as learners draw on a broad range of learning resources and opportunities.
As part of a collaborative study with the Royal Veterinary College, I presented the results of an international benchmarking survey of veterinary students’ digital literacies. This revealed inequities of internet access and device ownership between different geographical regions, with students in some continents being more dependent on mobile internet access and Open Educational Resources (including MOOCs) for their learning than others. This has significant implications for the way we design online learning resources and the way we think about open education.
The University of Glasgow was very well represented at the conference; Dr Sarah Meek discussed the role of peer review in the Cancer in the 21st Century MOOC and Dr Jo-Anne Murray talked about distance learners’ perceptions of the Second Life virtual world as a platform for communication. There were also a number of presentations from our university on virtual anatomy education using e-tutorials incorporating 3D digital models, by Jenna Woods, Amy Manson, Emma Andrew, Nimra Zaidi, Craig Humphreys and their respective colleagues.
Other highpoints for me included a presentation from Maastricht University by Dr Daniëlle Verstegen on their forthcoming MOOC on Problem-Based Learning which seeks to engage learners in the PBL process, working in groups. Another highlight was a talk by Dr Steve Gallagher (University of Otago) about measuring engagement in online learning (DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2873.7767). Based on the work of O’Brien and Toms (2008), Gallagher developed a survey incorporating different dimensions contributing to overall student engagement. This would be a great staff development resource for brainstorming ideas around the design and evaluation of online learning, and I plan to write a follow-up blog post on this once Steve’s work is published.
Tweets from the event (#amee_els) have been curated using Storify and you can follow the main conference this week through the #amee2015 hashtag. The symposium abstracts are also available online.