Using non-Personal Computers for eLearning

In most of the developed countries many learners taking eLearning courses have their own computer and connectivity. However, the situation is drastically different in developing countries where computer and Internet penetration is low. In those countries communal facilities (such as telecentres, libraries, or even internet cafes) provide access to students who do not possess their own computers and/or connectivity. 

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23015607@N00/148160389/in/photolist-e6mVt-EM9mQ-EM9nq-EM9nu-EMfir-EMfiF-EMg4f-EMg4o-EMg4s-EMg4w-EMg4J-EMg5f-4miLQt-a1vUav-a1vTwD-a1vU8M-a1yMkG-a1yMom-a1yMdj-a1vTMz-a1vU9k-a1yMpL-a1vTTr-a1vTxH-a1vTkZ-a1vTCP-a1yLLN-a1vTPt-a1yLRs-a1yLHm-a1yMqS-a1yLM5-a1vU9D-a1yLTL-a1yMcq-a1yLTb-a1yM25-a1yLES-a1vTx2-a1vTqc-a1vTHn-a1yLMU-a1vU5D-a1vU2i-a1yM8q-a1yM87-a1yMa5-a1vUb6-a1yLNQ-a1vU7R-a1yLVJ

(Translation of the major text: The spread of the global village project - The services supplied to you: Internet facility, email, local telephone calls, international telephone calls, information and advice on finances for self employment, fax, photos, photocopy, information queries, computer classes)

Are we aware of the difficulties the students face in engaging with eLearning using these communal facilities? During my PhD research I talked to many students (enrolled in either fully online or blended programmes) who were using communal access facilities to engage with the online component of their degree programmes. The paper Using non-Personal Computers for eLearning: Sri Lankan Experience published in the Journal of Education and Training Studies discusses the experiences of Sri Lankan students. I am delighted to have co-authored this paper with my advisers/supervisors: Prof. Andrew Adams - Meiji University Japan, Prof. Naz Rassool - Institute of Education, University of Reading, and Prof. Shirley Williams - School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading.

The paper discusses various issues faced by students such as: cost, excessive administrative procedures, logistics, connection quality and the list goes on. These centres have blocked access to some websites such as Facebook and YouTube claiming that it was a) due to limited bandwidth b) due to students using these sites for chatting, viewing videos etc. However, in my interviews I found students who wanted to use YouTube for educational purposes. They were designing a product and wanted to investigate other similar designs on YouTube videos. But because the site was blocked they could not access it. Sadly none of these students had home internet connectivity, which meant that they had no other way of accessing these blocked resources.

I am not going to spoil the fun of reading the paper by discussing it all here again. But I am going to end this blog with a quote from one of my interview participants who said
“Well if you don't have an Internet connection at home it is very difficult. In my opinion it is compulsory that one has a home Internet connection [in order to take up a course that uses eLearning]” (Translated to English from Sinhala).

We know that generally MOOCs use multiple learning spaces: YouTube videos, Slideshare, Blogs to name some. What does this mean in terms of accessibility to MOOCs? Even when MOOCs are free to enroll and learn, still these students who do have 'access' (in terms of motivation, access to internet - well partly due to restrictions, skills - to use computers for learning) do not have provision to fully engage in them. If these students who are using communal access centres wanted to study in a MOOC, would they be able to access the wealth of resources generated in a MOOC with these restriction in place? 

Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Adams, A.A., Rassool, N., & Williams, S.A. (2013). Using non-Personal Computers for eLearning: Sri Lankan Experience, Journal of Education and Training Studies, 1 (2), 152-158. http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/jets.v1i2.96

Planning and Creating a MOOC

I have taken part in 3 Massive Open Online Courses so far and have been thinking how much of an effort would the course creators have had to put into the course to get all the resources prepared for running a MOOC.

I am lucky to be in one of the teams at the University of Reading creating MOOCs to be offered under the FutureLearn partnership. At the School of Systems Engineering - University of Reading I am working in Prof. Shirley Williams’ team along with Dr. Karsten Lundqvist and Luke Micallef (from the University’s Digital Development team) to create a MOOC.

It has taken us a lot of time to plan this course.  We recently recorded the first video for our MOOC and I managed to capture a few moments on my iPhone.

This recording was done in the state-of-the-art filming studio owned by the University’s Department of Film, Theatre & Television. I was more than impressed by the facility but had little idea how to operate any of the equipment. Luke did all the technical stuff while Karsten was the ‘star’ in the video.

MOOCs: A systematic study of the published literature 2008-2012

Since their appearance in 2008, with in a fairly short time, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become a 'buzzword'. It was time for the literature to be systematically analyzed to provide an overall picture of the phenomenon. I together with Professor Andrew Adams (Graduate School of Business Administration,  the Centre for Business Information Ethics, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan) and Professor Shirley Williams (School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading, UK) took the challenge to systematically review the literature on MOOCs from 2008-2012.

At the same time we started this work, somewhere in October - November 2012, a call for proposals appeared for MERLOT Special Issue on MOOCs. Our proposal was not successful. Through our literature  search we found that the IRRODL (International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning) had published the highest number of MOOC related research papers during the period 2008-2012 and we were keen to finish our literature study and publish our work with them.

When we finally approached IRRODL with our paper we were delighted to hear that the journal was willing to publish our work. This was an important milestone for me personally because this was my very first full paper accepted for publication in a journal. Given the reputation of IRRODL, it was an awesome news. In July 2013 (just 3 months after we first submitted our paper) it is published and online in IRRODL's volume 14 (3).

Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Adams, A. A., & Williams, S. (2013). MOOCs: a Systematic Study of the Published Literature 2008-2012. International review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(3), 201-227.

In this paper we looked at all published scholarly literature on MOOCs that we could find from: journals, conferences, workshop papers, magazines and reports. Forty-five peer reviewed papers were identified and used as the base for this systematic review.

Because we only used journal papers, workshop papers, conference papers, academic magazines and reports, MOOC related discussions in Blog posts were not captured by this review. We have identified this as a limitation of  study. Blog posts always present difficulties for authors of reviews in determining the credibility of the posts. There are few studies on how researchers use blogs but the transient nature of blogs means that they are difficult to suitably include in a systematic consideration. When the same search terms used to find MOOC related articles for this review was used in Google Web search, it returned over 50,000 items; when used in a Google Blog search resulted in 570 results (December 04, 2012), but we have not analyzed these items in our paper.

Some quantitative highlights from the paper:

The first MOOC related paper was published in 2008, with again just one paper identified in 2009, seven papers in 2010, 10 in 2011, and 26 in 2012.

Looking at articles by the type of publication: the majority of identified articles were published in journals (17 papers), with a smaller number of articles appearing in conference proceedings and magazines (13 and 10 respectively).

Above graph illustrates the separation of articles by publication type and year. From 2009 to 2012 there is a gradual increase of the number of journal articles and conference papers. Notice that the first magazine article about MOOCs appeared in 2011 and the following year there is a fourfold increase!

There is much more qualitative analysis in this paper and I am not discussing it all here spoiling the fun of reading the article itself. You can find the article here.

Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Adams, A. A., & Williams, S. (2013). MOOCs: a Systematic Study of the Published Literature 2008-2012. International review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(3), 201-227.