I’m working on a couple of MOOCs in health sciences. To get my bearings on this new subject area and find out what other MOOCs in the discipline are teaching, I’ve been looking at the content for a handful of healthcare MOOCs. I’ll probably audit the courses rather than working through all of the assessments and discussions, but this should help with the brainstorming process on our own project, in terms of the types of content that work well.
If you’re working on an open education project in health science, you might find them helpful, too. Here’s what I’ve found, so far:
Platform: EdX
Institution: Harvard
Duration: 6 weeks, 2-4 hours per week
Pacing: Synchronous
Enrollment: 10k+
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
Platform: FutureLearn
Institution: University of Cape Town
Duration: 6 weeks, 3 hours per week
Pacing: Synchronous
Enrollment: Unknown
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
Platform: FutureLearn
Institution: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Duration: 6 weeks, 4 hours per week
Pacing: Synchronous
Enrollment: Unknown
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
Platform: FutureLearn
Institution: University College London
Duration: 4 weeks, 2 hours per week
Pacing: Synchronous
Enrollment:
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
Platform: FutureLearn
Institution: University of Liverpool
Duration: 4 weeks, 3 hours per week
Pacing: Synchronous
Enrollment: Unknown
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
Platform: EdX
Institution: Karolinska Institutet
Duration: 6 weeks, 5-6 hours per week
Pacing: Self-paced
Enrollment: Unknown
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
Platform: Coursera
Institution: University of Manchester
Duration: 6 weeks, 1-3 hours per week
Pacing: Self-Paced
Enrollment: Unknown
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
Platform: Coursera
Institution: Case Western Reserve University
Duration: 5 weeks, 5-7 hours per week
Pacing: Self-Paced
Enrollment: Unknown
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
Platform: Coursera
Institution: University of Florida
Duration: 9 weeks
Pacing: Self-Paced
Enrollment: Unknown
What they’ve done well:
What could be improved:
The FutureLearn platform is superior to the others, in terms of the design and user experience. Most of the other platforms are fairly outdated and clunky, design-wise. I do wonder if it may be a little restrictive, from a course producer’s perspective, though. I like that it has a discussion attached to every learning step, as these seem to get used fairly frequently and serve to create a community of learners. Their existence will make more work for the course lead who has to monitor them all.
On EdX, I like that the videos have transcripts that run alongside them. The current voiceover text is highlighted, so it’s easy to keep your place. The more high-achieving students will skim through the transcript rather than watching the video anyway, so this helps to save them time. It also appeals to the students who prefer to hear information, and those who prefer to read it.
Overall, I’ve found these MOOCs disappointing in that they nearly all rely heavily on video and text. There are limited opportunities for active learning. I haven’t seen much in the way of interactivity or graphic explainers throughout the MOOCs, which is a real shame. The health science material would lend itself to highly engaging data visualisations and graphics, so there’s a big missed opportunity here. The web is an interactive medium, and this offers many opportunities for activity and personalisation. But in almost all cases, the MOOCs I’ve seen are highly reliant on the passive watching of video lecture.
It could be a symptom of the types of course I’m looking at, or simply the nature of academia itself, but there does seem to be a lack of diversity here. Too often, it’s a middle-aged white male in the talking head videos I’ve watched. I have other issues with talking head videos, but that’s another story! I do think there’s a responsibility here to make sure the faces of these MOOCs are representative of the global audience they are aimed at. I’d love to see more female course leads, a diversity of age range, and people of varied ethnicities.
Have I missed any health & social care MOOCs that you enjoyed? Are you developing one? Let me know on Twitter and I’ll update this list.
Recently, I’ve been enrolling in MOOCs and doing some research into how they are doing. If you’re not familiar with them, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are courses developed by Universities and made available for free, online. There are several MOOC providers — FutureLearn, Coursera and EdX are two of the main ones, where you can view and sign up for MOOCs.
There are several benefits to Universities in developing MOOCs. MOOCs are the greatest marketing opportunity that Universities have ever had. They raise the profile of the University and its faculty, giving potential students and the wider public a taste of what you can do. MOOC enrolment can be in the thousands – so it’s a great way to get publicity for Universities.
Some MOOC providers are now offering the option of receiving a certificate once you have completed the course. This is beneficial for students because they will have a record of their work that they can add to their LinkedIn profile and CV. It’s also good for Universities, as it makes it possible to raise some funds by offering MOOCs.
I created the Infographic above to give myself a quick reference on the state of MOOCs. I recently did a presentation on the State of MOOCs which you can view on Prezi.
Thanks to the following people and websites for providing the data: