When, puzzled about
the value of MOOCs, I carried out a very simple experiment – by enrolling on a
MOOC in my capacity both as academic and entrepreneur..
What I now think of as ‘My MOOC’ is an experience that has
transformed the way I think about online learning and given me huge insight
into the experience of my students. But before I declare myself a convert or a
malcontent, I should start with a bit of background.
I head up the Centre for Entrepreneurial at Cambridge Judge
Business School and our emerging flagship course is the Post-graduate Diploma
in Entrepreneurship (www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk). The PGDE is the only one of its
kind (the old adage that you can’t teach entrepreneurship is still alive and
well) because we firmly believe that excellent entrepreneurial skills can, and
should, be learnt in the academic environment. This kind of learning (in the
main, we use entrepreneurs to teach entrepreneurs) can help new venturers to
avoid a lot of mistakes, as well as helping established entrepreneurs to turn around
or enhance their existing business.
As our clientele for this course are necessarily an
international bunch, we offer most of the Cambridge PGDE programme online, to
allow them to do it from wherever they are in the world and to continue to run
their business while they study. Since I did my own education long before all
this sophisticated online learning, I have often pondered what the experience is
like – especially for a busy entrepreneur (as I have been myself). When MOOCs
came along, I pondered even more about the efficacy of online learning until at
last, looking for something to do during a recent sabbatical, I decided to find
out what all the fuss is about and enrolled on one myself.
At first, enticed by the thought of performing really well
on something I knew lots about, I considered the range of excellent courses on
offer from big US Universities on topics like innovation, entrepreneurship,
strategy and leadership. But then it occurred to me that my experiment really
called for me to go out on a limb and try a subject completely foreign to me.
Why? Because if you are a manager or a technology specialist or a member of a
family business – what must it feel like to enrol on a course on
entrepreneurship? As there is only this one PGDE on offer – it must feel
entirely alien at first to the people enrolling on it from around the globe. So I chose something that felt alien to me – a
6 week MOOC from the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham - on
Hamlet! It’s on the www.futurelearn.com
platform.
To the extreme hilarity of my children, who instantly
offered me Letts notes and patronised me mercilessly with offers of help, I
embarked on something I had never read and which is positioned in the minds of
most non-arts people as a secondary school bit of torture. I dutifully prepared by buying the play and
reading it – when the ensuing headache would let me! Hamlet is one of the longest plays and
getting into it was tough. However, Week
1 on my MOOC passed with great excitement until I reached the first multiple-choice
quiz.
This was a terrifying moment when I realised that I absolutely
had to get it right or crash and burn in front of my hawk-eyed offspring, who
were circling like cute vultures, waiting for me to fail. Luckily, I managed a
five out of five for the test and progressed into the following weeks. More and
more drawn in, I threw away the aspirin and learnt, enthralled, about the play,
its context, the actors, nuances of interpretation, the never-ending centuries’
old debates about Hamlet and his motives. I especially enjoyed how it it took
me off on fascinating tangents, like diving into Youtube where there are some
wonderful ‘to be or not to be’ speeches. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7TgTb_0wsg
The most serious challenge posed along the way was a peer
reviewed 500-word article. It took a while
to break through the blank page on a subject I had never written on, but the
‘peers’ were gentle on me and it proved one of the most rewarding things I did.
The many quizzes were easy enough – but I needed the multiple attempts the
programme offered!
What did I take away
from the MOOC? It was like opening
presents at Christmas as each module unfolded and I educated myself about a
fascinating subject far from my usual sphere. This is one of the nice things
about online learning – the sense of achievement as you effectively motivate
and educate yourself. It also gave me a whole new topic for dinner
conversations!
As for MOOCs – their time has come and academic Institutions
had better embrace them. We are still on
a hype cycle with MOOCs and their demise is already being predicted, with
articles about how severe the drop-out rate is. I don’t know what the drop-out
rate was on my Hamlet MOOC – But I know I’m sold. The key things I loved were
the fabulous content with excellent delivery; the easy navigation; the good
quality discussions on the platform – i.e. a good peer group - and, at 6 weeks,
it was just the right length.
Downsides? There is still work to be done on the discussion
forum. I am not convinced that the current platform makes this easy; you have
to scroll through hundreds of participants or you end up only seeing the top 5-
10 posts and might miss an excellent post that’s too far down. Some of the quiz
questions and the written assignment came as surprises – there were a few
complaints about that. But, even with glitches, it was already hundreds of
times better than not having access to some of the top people on Shakespeare,
helping you to navigate a course on Hamlet, and without having to go anywhere
or do anything other than sit in my lounge in my slippers.
And so the moral of the story is – MOOCs work if they offer excellent,
well-considered content, access to some of the top minds on the subject, a high
quality peer group and a well-designed platform. If these fundamentals are in
place, students will forgive stray errors. Perhaps in the end in was no
surprise to find that, no matter what the delivery mechanism - whether it’s
books or MOOCs - content is still king.
After all, it’s what has been keeping a weird play about a neurotic Prince set
in Denmark consistently in the top most read and watched for four centuries.
That Will Shakespeare – he knew a thing or two about keeping
an audience on line.
