QUARTER 2 - WEEK 2

MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERACY

Name of Learner: Grade Level:

Section: Date:
LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)

Background information for learners

From the development of the printing press to the advent

of the internet, the world has encountered small and big
changes, composed of both good and bad, which affected
almost every aspect of human experience. How we access
information, entertain ourselves, communicate, do
business, and learn are some crucial areas where the
internet, as a dominant and powerful instrument
nowadays, is significantly
making a difference. One of the major trends today in the field of education that
resulted from the introduction of this new technology is about online learning,
specifically called MOOC.

What is MOOC?
MOOC is an acronym coined by Dave Cormier in 2008 which he based on the course
introduced online by Stephen Downes and George Siemens in the same year.
However, it was only in 2012 where this development hit the roof because of the
three free courses offered online by Stanford University in 2011 which attracted over
160,000 enrollees worldwide.

MOOC is the short form for Massive Open Online Course or Massive Open Online
Content. It refers to the flexible approach of delivering quality educational experience
and content to any person at any preferred place and time through online platforms.
Participants of MOOCs are high school or higher education students, professionals,
unemployed, retirees and homemakers who do it for varied reasons like skill and
career advancement, college preparation, supplemental learning, and training. Some
participants get involved just out of curiosity or for the benefit and pleasure of
learning.
KEY FEATURES

MASSIVE – It can accommodate many interested participants or

enrollees that can reach up to hundreds of thousands.
OPEN – It means anyone can enroll because there are no enrollment
prerequisites and courses are mostly free.
ONLINE – It can be accessed only via the internet-connected devices.
COURSE – It is intended to teach a specific skill, concept, or subject.

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

1
 BENEFITS OF MOOCs

Learning can happen at the comfort and convenience of the participant. The
participant can track his/her progress and can learn at his/her own pace.

MOOC has discussion forums where participant can learn and work
collaboratively with others.
The participant gets information from networks of websites, pages, and other
platforms for a more dynamic and interactive learning.
MOOCs are comprised of varied learning activities like videos, worksheets,
projects, assignments, and quizzes to gauge learning.
The participant can get credit that can be of use in school (course credit), work
(promotion) and profession (CPD Units).
WEAKNESSES OF MOOCs

There is no real time communication between the participant and the

instructor.
There is no genuine human interaction.
The process of grading and evaluation is not as real and reliable as it should
be.
Learning can be slowed down by poor internet connection or absence of
needed devices.
MOOC courses are simplified versions of college courses so it cannot match
the level of the actual thing.
There is higher chance of dropping out because of language problem, structure
of the course, lack of meaningful interaction and motivation and sometimes
bullying that results from peer evaluation.

Today, millions of people are already familiar and have accessed with MOOCs
provided by many universities and organizations around the world. Thousands of
courses as well, have already become available through varied international MOOC
platforms like Coursera, Edx, Khan Academy and Udacity, among others. In the
Philippines, the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) has become
the pioneer institution to provide free varied online courses to Filipinos like
technopreneurship, business process management, Philippine arts and culture, oral
communication, and inter-local government cooperation, among others.

There are varying opinions about this new paradigm. Whether it will continue to
serve as answer to overcrowding, distance learning and augmenting formal learning
or it will cease and be replaced by another model in the future. Nothing is certain but
the fact remains that it has already transformed traditions on education and access to
information and has established that there are no limitations for anyone willing to
learn.

Learning Competency with code

Describe the impact of massive open online (MELC11 –Q2/Week2)

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

2
Activity 1: MATCHING TYPE
Match the descriptions in Column A with the correct word in column B.

Column A Column B
1. MOOCs have varying arrangement, style, and a. Open
b. Structured
framework. c. Insufficient
2. MOOCs have no enrollment requirements. d. Flexible
e. Free
3. MOOCs are designed to fit participant’s convenience. f. Collaborative
g. Massive
h. Self-paced
4. MOOCs contents are simplified and lacking in i. One-directional
depth. j. Online
k. Reliable
5. MOOCs build networks of learning among l. New
participants. m. Cheap
o. Universal
6. MOOCs can be accessed without cost. p. Offline
7. MOOCs allow their participants to track their
progress.
8. MOOCs allows large-scale and unlimited
participation.
9. MOOCs only works when there is internet connection.

10. MOOCs have little to no student-teacher interaction.

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

3
Activity 2: FACT or BLUFF

Watch the video on YouTube titled “What is MOOC?” by Dave Cormier through the
link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc) or read the transcript of the
video on the next page if you do not have internet connection. After that, evaluate the
statements as Fact or Bluff based on what is presented on the clip. Cross out your
answer. If the statement is bluff, write a corrected version on the space provided.

1. The Massive Open Online Course was created to connect people who share
similar interest in a particular thing or topic.
F B
2. The Massive Open Online Course is the only mode of learning available
online.
F B
3. The Massive Open Online Course is considered as a virtual school.
F B
4. The Massive Open Online Course does not consist of facilitators,
instructors, or teachers.

F B
5. The work created by participants in Massive Open Online Course can be
shared with others and they can all learn from it.
F B
6. Video materials are the only learning materials found in Massive Open
Online Course.
F B
7. In Massive Open Online Course, all learning materials are uploaded and
accessed in one central location.
F B
8. In Massive Open Online Course, a participant has no freedom or
autonomy over his actions.
F B
9. Massive Open Online Course brings together individuals who share
similar interest over a particular topic or course.

F B
10. In Massive Open Online Course, only the facilitator or teacher has the
authority to gauge the success of a participant

F B

Transcript of the video (Length: 4 minutes, 27 seconds)

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.
4
 What is MOOC?
Narrated by: Dave Cormier
Video by: Neal Gillis
Research by: Bonnie Stewart, Alexander McAuley, George Siemens and Dave
Cormier
The massive open online course is a response to the challenges faced by
organizations and distributed disciplines at a time of information overload.
It used to be that when you wanted to know about something you could do a few
things - you could ask someone, you could buy a book, you could try to figure it out
for yourself or you could call a school. If that school offered the course and the thing
you were trying to figure out, you could there and take it.

You could get access to information about a topic. An instructor at comb through
journals and books to pull the information together from a library. You might even
find others who are also interested in the same things that you are.

The MOOC is built for a world where information is everywhere. Where social
network is obsessed with the same thing that you are is a click away – a digital world.
A world where an internet connection gives you access to a staggering amount of
information.
This video will introduce you to how a massive open online course is one way of
learning in a networked world.
A MOOC is a course, it is open, it is participatory, it’s distributed, and it supports
lifelong networked learning. In one sense, a massive open online course is just that. It
is a course, it has facilitators and course materials, it has a start and end date, it has
participants, but a MOOC is not a school, it’s not just an online course. It is a way to
connect and collaborate while developing digital skills, it is a way of engaging in the
learning process that engages what it means to be a student. It is maybe most
importantly an event around which people who care about a topic can get together
and work and talk about it in a structured way.

The course is open. All the work gets done in areas accessible for people to read and
reflect and comment on. The course is open in a sense that you can go ahead and take
the course without paying for it. You might pay to get the credit through an
institution, but you are not paying for participating in the course. It is also opening in
the sense that the work done in the course is shared between all the people taking it.
The material put together by the facilitators, the work done by the participants, it is
all negotiated in the open. You get to keep your work and everybody else gets to learn
from it.
The course is participatory. You really become part of the course by engaging with
other people’s work. Participants are not asked to complete specific assignments but
rather to engage with the material with each other and with other material they may
find on the web.
You make connections between ideas and between you and other people. You
network. One of the outcomes that people get from the course are the network
connections they have built up through engaging with each other.
The course is distributed and all these blog posts and discussion posts, video
responses, articles, tweets, and tags all knit together to create a networked course.
They are mostly not found in one central location but rather all over
Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.
5
the internet, in different pockets and clusters. There is no right way to do the course,
no single path from the first week to the last. This allows for new ideas to develop and
for different points of views to co-exist.
It also means that one of the side effects of a MOOC is the building of a distributed
knowledge base on the net.
The course is a step on the road to lifelong learning. MOOCs promote independence
among learners, encourages participants to work in their own spaces and to create
authentic networks that they can easily maintain after the course finishes. A MOOC
can promote the kind of network creation that lifelong learning is all about. The
course part is just the beginning. And how can you go about finding one of these?
Well, news that a MOOC will be offered usually spreads on online networks, people
who have reputations for interesting skills or innovative thinking on a topic decide to
collaborate by offering an open online course covering that topic. Anyone who wants
to join in can.

In a MOOC you can choose what you do, how you participate and only you can tell in
the end if you have been successful just like real life.

Activity 3: THINK CRITICALLY

Take a look at the article published by Inside Higher Ed in January, 2019 titled “Why
MOOCs Didn’t Work, in 3 Data Points.” (Source:
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/16/study-offers-
data-show-moocs-didnt-achieve-their-goals). After reading, please answer the
following guide questions.

1. What information is contained in the article? Provide a short description.

2. What are the three presented factors that contributed to the supposed
failure of Massive Open Online Course?

3. What purpose of the Massive Open Online Course was not realized based on
the findings that through the years most enrolled students in the program
came from highly developed countries?

4. What could have contributed to the large number of MOOC enrollees not
completing their courses or dropping out from them?

5. Do you think the Philippines should adapt to this trend or innovation?

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.
6
 Explain your answer.

6. Based on the issues raised in the article regarding MOOC, what are the
potential challenges Philippines may face in implementing this new
paradigm?

Why MOOCs Didn't Work, in 3 Data Points

By Doug Lederman / January 16, 2019
MIT researchers document low retention rates, enrollment declines and general
affluence of students to explain why massive open online course providers have
largely ditched their original model.

It has become a platitude by now to say that massive open online courses largely
failed to achieve the promise many advocates saw to expand access to high-quality
education democratically throughout the world.

But now two researchers have provided the analysis and data to prove it.

In an article in Science entitled "The MOOC Pivot" (subscription required for full
article), Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Justin Reich and José A. Ruipérez-
Valiente strive to explain why MOOCs largely fell short of their purported mission of
transforming education worldwide, leading the top providers of the courses --
including Coursera and edX, which MIT co-founded with Harvard University -- to
focus instead on the more traditional role of helping colleges take their academic
programs online.

That trend has been well documented in the pages of Inside Higher Ed and "Inside
Digital Learning," as evidenced in articles such as this, this, and this.

What Reich and Ruipérez-Valiente -- director and a postdoctoral associate,

respectively, in MIT's Teaching Systems Lab -- add to our understanding of the
MOOC landscape are an analysis of data from all courses taught on edX by MIT and
Harvard from 2012 to 2018, which quantitatively back up what a lot of people have
suspected. The data cover 5.63 million learners in 12.67 million course registrations.

First, one of the big knocks against MOOCs since their beginning was the low rate at
which students completed the courses, even as defenders pointed out that many
students took MOOCs for knowledge or edification, rather than for a credential. The
critique stuck, nonetheless. And Reich and Ruipérez-Valiente show that completion
rates in MIT and Harvard MOOCs did not

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

7
increase -- and in fact fell, for all participants, those with a stated intention to
complete and those who paid to take "verified" courses -- from 2013-14 to 2017-18, as
shown in the graph below.
Among all MOOC participants, 3.13 percent completed their courses in 2017-18,
down from about 4 percent the two previous years and nearly 6 percent in 2014-15.
And among the "verified" students, 46 percent completed in 2017-18, compared to 56
percent in 2016-17 and about 50 percent the two previous years.

The fact that course completion rates "barely budged" despite "six years of
investment in course development and learning research" is problematic, the
researchers argue. "A strategy that depends on bringing new learners into higher
education cannot succeed if educational institutions cannot support learners in
converting their time and financial investment into completing a

course to earn a credential with labor market value," they write.

The edX data released by the MIT researchers also reinforces another critique often
leveled against the MOOCs -- that they did not, despite highfalutin rhetoric about
democratizing access to higher education, bring high-quality education to all corners
of the world.

Data on the geographic dispersion of students in the MIT and Harvard MOOCs show
that they overwhelmingly live in highly developed countries. In 2017-18, the latest
year for which statistics were available, more than two-thirds of enrolled students
(68.7 percent, or 954,426 people) came from those countries categorized as having
"very high" human development, and roughly another third combined (15.9 and 14
percent, respectively) for those in the high and

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

8
medium categories. About 55,000 students, or 1.43 percent of the total, came from
countries in the "low" category.
Certainly 55,000 people got access to education they might not otherwise have had.
But "rather than creating new pathways at the margins of global higher education,"
the authors write, "MOOCs are primarily a complementary asset for learners within
existing systems."

The third and last major point the study makes is the one on which they most add to
our understanding of MOOCs. The data above on the extent to which MOOC students
stick with individual courses largely affirms what we already knew -- that most
students do not complete.

But Reich and Ruipérez-Valiente also share data showing how irregularly students
stick with MOOCs in general. While 1.1 million students took their first massive open
course in 2015-16, only 12 percent took a MOOC in the 2016-17 academic year.

And that proportion -- of first-time MOOC users who also enrolled in a MOOC the
following year -- has fallen every year since 2012-13, from a high of 38 percent that
year to 7 percent in 2016-17.

Reprinted with permission from J Reich et al., Science 383:6423 (2018)

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

9
The rest of the paper focuses on how the MOOC providers -- having failed, in the
authors' view, to pull off a dramatic transformation of higher education through
democratizing access -- are trying new business models in which they resemble more
traditional forms of change within higher education.

"The 6-year saga of MOOCs provides a cautionary tale for education policy makers
facing whatever will be the next promoted innovation in education technology, be it
artificial intelligence or virtual reality or some unexpected new entrant," they write.
"New education technologies are rarely disruptive but instead are domesticated by
existing cultures and systems. Dramatic expansion of educational opportunities to
underserved populations will require political movements that change the focus,
funding, and purpose of higher education; they will not be achieved through new
technologies alone."

Activity 4: CREATING CONNECTIONS

Conduct a simple survey among 5 individuals from your community or outside about
their experiences on online and/or distance learning using any approach convenient
for you (text, call, personal – observing physical distancing or messenger). By online
learning we mean that they at least have taken lessons, activities or assessments and
have interacted with their teacher/instructor and classmates on the internet.
Distance learning on the other hand means that they have worked on activities
provided by their teacher online and checks them for feedback with little to no real
time interaction.

Present the summary of your survey using a graphic organizer. Then, write a short
reflection about the result of your survey below the graphic organizer and submit
pictures to your teacher as proof of the survey you have conducted.

Ask your interviewee the following questions:

Name (optional)
Age
Status (working, student, unemployed etc.)
Topic/Concept/Skill Learned
Reason/s for getting associated with distance / online learning
Benefits attained from getting associated with distance / online
learning
Difficulties or problems encountered in getting associated with
distance / online learning
Would you recommend this alternative mode of learning to others?
Why?

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

10
Reflection: Write a 5-sentence insight about the activity and the information
gathered from the respondents.

Activity 5: MOOC-UP!

Pretend you are to enroll for a Massive Open Online Course. If you have internet
connection, go to the web, and explore for a possible MOOC that suits your choice
and fill out the Application Form-A below. If you do not have access, fill out the
Application Form-B. (Adopted from the MIL Teaching Guide published by the
Commission on Higher Education and Philippine Normal University.)

MOOC APPLICATION FORM - A

Enrollee’s Name
Grade Level
Email Address
Interests/
Hobbies
MOOC Platform
(ex: Edx,
Coursera, UPOU
etc)
Description of
the MOOC
Platform
Course Title

Course
Objective/s

Name of the
Teacher/s or
Instructor/s
Reason/s for
enrolling in the
course

Signature

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

11
 Date

MOOC APPLICATION FORM - B

Enrollee’s Name
Grade Level
Email Address
Interests/
Hobbies
Course/s
interested to
take online

Reason/s for
wanting to take
the course/s
online

Signature
Date

Student’s notes:
3 things I have learned about Massive Open Online Course
•
•
•
3 things I did not understand about Massive Open Online Course
•
•
•
3 essential values about life or human relationship that I have acquired from
learning about Massive Open Online Course
•
•
•

Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.

12
Note: Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times.
13