Exploring Modalities: A Reflection by Team Awesome Sauce

Team Awesome Sauce are: Bobbi Donnison,  Krista Frate, Marshall Hartlen, Steve Minten, and Nicolette Young

After much discussion and mind changing, Team Awesome Sauce has decided to explore edX, both as a massive open online course (MOOC) provider, and as an educational app for Android or IOS. We will outline the beginning of our journey by using a classic k-12 learning modality: the know, wonder, learn (KWL)) chart. A KWL chart is a way to guide inquiry. It assesses what you already know, (in this case our collective knowledge of learning modalities) what we wonder/want to know about our topic, and finally what we hope to learn in pursuing the inquiry further. For the purposes of this post, we applied this inquiry organising strategy to three guiding questions:

1. What type of modality did we choose?
2. What question(s) would you like to pursue as you examine or experience the modality?
3. What background reading did you do to learn more about the modality? (Blogs, websites, library journal articles). Write a summary of what you learned.

In each instance a degree of expansion and explanation is included, which, it is hoped, will help keep all of us on track as we individually and collectively delve deeper into specific issues and aspects of our modality, and the instance of edX in particular.

What we KNOW about this modality/instance: What type of modality did you choose?

edX exists in the realm of MOOCs and is viewed by some as more exclusive than competing platforms due in part to the fact that the courses on offer are not necessarily free. It is also driven by prestigious US universities such as Harvard, and MIT lending it a certain degree of prestige and legitimacy as well. Similar to other MOOCs, edX offers the opportunity to upskill for employment, and offers a wide range of eclectic courses ranging from Civil War History, to R Programming basics. MOOCs are a relatively recent platform for learning, and edX is younger still, only coming online in 2012. Considering this relatively short time frame the range and quantity of courses they offer is impressive, as are the academic levels available: ranging from self paced tutorials on specific software applications, to micro-masters courses (the latter of which we will revisit in the wonder section). We ultimately chose this modality as it afforded further inquiry more readily across all of our diverse personal contexts, and was also supported by a mobile applications, which extends further, the opportunity for inquiry.

What We Wonder: What question(s) would we like to pursue as we examine or experience the modality?

In the shared economy, traditional means of monetising are disappearing in favour of pay per use subscription style services (e.g. Airbnb, Uber, Adobe Creative Cloud, Office 365). These services bypass the traditional economy in the same way that MOOCs bypass traditional education, but how can such an enterprise be economically sustainable? edX is backed by traditional universities, but the cost may be a minute fraction of what is available at the parent universities. If such platforms continue to gain traction, will they make the brick and mortar universities redundant? In wondering about this, we also question the legitimacy and quality of education received through such instances. Who will actually recognise an edX degree, and given the flexible pace and restricted access to university research databases, how can the quality of inquiry possibly compare to similar offerings in more traditional educational settings?

An obvious advantage to learning in this manner is accessibility. edX courses are available 24-7, restricted only by internet connectivity, but what other benefits are there to this modality? Cost is an obvious one, but again the question of quality persists, and what challenges do these observations present? From a pedagogical standpoint, we are curious to understand what constitutes best practice for course design and delivery? Current best practice traditional classroom teaching incorporates a variety of formative exercises to aid skill development and content knowledge, how does learning through a MOOC account for this and how does it engage the learner?

The opportunity to cater to individual learners seems vast, and we hypothesise that such modalities offer a decent coverage of content knowledge, but how effective are MOOCs at developing the soft skills of human interaction and collaboration, which are increasingly vital in the 21st century economy?

Finally, we wonder who this modality is targeting, and what uses are not currently being utilised, but that may be available in similar applications? If functionality is omitted, what is the rationale, and how does it make for a better learning experience. And perhaps most important of all, if qualifications become recognised as providing credit, how can edX be assured the student is the student?

What we Learned (so far): What background reading did you do to learn more about the modality? (Blogs, websites, library journal articles).

We explored the basic history of MOOCs and educational applications in general, and then browsed articles pertaining to edX in particular, including the site itself. We also investigated the app and ensured it was available on both Android and Apple devices for accessibility of the whole team.

“Today’s online learners require flexibility, and mobile devices are a solution to remove the barrier of a fixed time, place, and mode of learning. Tailoring online education to meet the needs of those who wish to learn “anywhere, anytime,” however, will be an ongoing challenge” (Hutchinson, Tin, & Cao, 2008). MOOCs, on the surface, appear ready to meet this challenge, but the question of feasibility may lie outside of their realm of control. Ultimately for such learning modalities to become truly advantageous, they need to be accepted by the 21st century economy. It seems that some progress is being made in this regard, as some employers who struggle to find candidates with the necessary skill set to be an effective employee, are turning to individuals who have completed coursework, through MOOCs like edX (Carapezza, 2017). With viability and legitimacy seemingly underway, MOOCs seem like at the very least a supplemental source of learning/upskilling. Team Awesome Sauce plans to continue learning firsthand the true value of MOOCs, edX in particular as we audit various courses currently offered.

References

Carapezza, K. (2017, February 15) These Top Schools Are Offering Big Savings On Master’s Degrees, But There’s A Catch. NPR Ed. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/15/504478472/how-to-get-20-000-off-the-price-of-a-masters-degree

Hutchison, M., Tin, T. & Cao, Y. (2008). Chapter 8: “In-Your-Pocket” and “On-the-Fly:” Meeting the Needs of Today’s New Generation of Online Learners with Mobile Learning Technology. In T. Anderson (Ed.), The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed., pp. 201-219). Edmonton, AB: AU Press.