Expect MOOCs to Get More Personal

When the word “massive” is part of what you are, as is the case with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), it’s hard for others to think of how it can be a personal educational experience. The idea begins to sound like an oxymoron. People unfamiliar with taking a MOOC might conjure images similar to Ben Stein’s classic scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: a droning lecturer (in the case of MOOC learning, on video) while hundreds of thousands of MOOC students snooze, drool, and massage their eyelids trying to stay awake and focused.

When MOOCs first came to prominence a few short years ago, a large part of the focus was on scale. Much of our energy was spent figuring out how to take classroom experiences that accommodated – at most – about a hundred students and make them accessible for numbers into the hundreds of thousands.

Today, millions of learners all over the world have access to some of the greatest courses our universities and institutions have to offer. Students anywhere can now learn from the world’s top professors and industry experts in just about any subject imaginable.

As MOOCs have evolved, they now offer a more personal experience for students. What we’re finding is that students really enjoy the interactive self-paced technologies like short videos that you can pause and rewind, virtual game-like laboratories, discussion forums, and instantly graded exercises. Referring to the Sal Khan-style videos I used in my Circuits MOOC, a student once wrote me saying he felt as if I was sitting next to him scribbling a personal tutorial. These technologies are only expected to continue to evolve, and learning will further personalize, offering multiple pathways to navigate courses that fit specific learning styles, needs and speeds.

Now that we are three years into MOOCS, we are encouraged to evaluate our gains and look to the future of personalization for MOOCS. Today, MOOCs offer freedom and democratization of education. Students have the choice to pick their own teachers, coursework, and their own educational path. And, we’re finding that creating smaller social and collaborative groupings within a MOOC can further tailor and personalize the learner experience.

Here’s how we plan to make MOOCs even more personal:

Cohorts and Teams

One major step in social groupings is creating what we call “cohorts.” A cohort is a group of learners taking a larger MOOC that share a distinct private experience. These cohorts or groups can be professionals in a specific industry, like teachers, or members of a specific corporation. A cohort might also include alumni of a specific university, for example, or members of a trade association. Special experiences within a cohort can include a private discussion area, industry specific content, or customized services such as hand grading. For example, the ColumbiaX course The Civil War and Reconstruction taught by Eric Foner features both an alumni and an educator cohort.

Cohorts can also span multiple courses that appeal to the specific needs or interests of a given group, and provide a clear pathway to an identified goal shared by all members.

As a bonus, working alongside other learners from related organizations, those who share similar goals, creates opportunities for networking and the creation of interpersonal connections.

Additionally, we’ll be launching teams soon on edX. Much smaller than cohorts, teams work like study groups do in schools and classrooms. A small group of two to five learners works together on projects, shares insights, and solve problems. Working with teams offers additional opportunities to create an even tighter network.

The team-level communication and collaboration tools provided within MOOCs work in ways that are already familiar. Today, just as online communities communicate virtually around issues and news, and remote colleagues work together, so too can teams collaborate on projects and complete exercises as part of MOOC learning. Study buddies help motivate, enrich the experience and make learning more fun.

Personalized Learning - “Choose Your Own Adventure”

The holy grail of learning is personalized or adaptive learning. This form of learning is what you might experience from an excellent personal tutor who is able to tailor your individual experience. In many ways, adaptive learning can be compared with those old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. At each step in the learning process, the user is given multiple options that satisfy his or her level of comprehension, style or direction. They may all lead to the same place (mastery of the material). but the path can be very different and structured for a particular learner.

MOOCs have more progress to make, but they will get personalized in the not-too-distant-future. One early example comes from the Geometry course from SchoolYourself. In the very first lesson on lines, rays, and line segments, students had trouble understanding how to name lines and rays with multiple points. It became apparent that many students thought that a three-point line could only be named using the two outermost points, or the two leftmost points. Seeing commonly made errors, the creators of the course added branches of personalized feedback for all the common misconceptions, responding to specific errors in more personalized ways. As a result, this is now among the top-rated lessons based on student feedback.

Technology has the potential to create personalized experiences at scale with an efficiency that is unimaginable. It is easy for computers to use tree structures to take learners into various branches depending on their skill level. The journey can be adaptive as the computer can assess which branch to take depending on the accuracy of a learner’s answer to a question. If the answer is correct, then take the advanced path, otherwise take the review path.

Fascinatingly, we can also use AI, big data, and crowdsourcing techniques to learn from the large numbers in MOOCs and optimize for the individual. This approach is not unlike what Netflix uses to recommend movies for you based on the watching habits of others like you. Imagine if many learners are observed to give the same wrong answer through a common misconception, they can be steered in the right direction through a strategically placed hint.

Through it all, the MOOC is your patient teacher. Learners can rewind for clarification or pause to reflect on a topic without ever disrupting a class or missing vital information. Students can ask questions at any point in the discussion forum built into the lessons, opening their thoughts and comments to a supportive, readily available global community.

The next great frontier in the MOOC landscape is not vast, but tiny. It’s up to us, the MOOC builders and providers, to continue to support and tailor the tools for every one of you and make what is massive something that can also serve your individual needs.

Dear readers, in which ways would you like to see MOOCs get more personal?