«Blending MOOCs into face to face teaching»
Su WhiteUniversity of Southampton
Abstract
Universities are investing increasing amounts of time in the development of online courses in the form of MOOCs. At the same time, there appears to be an enormous appetite amongst learners for this more flexible and informal approach to learning. Seeking to maximise returns on investments in MOOCs, individual academics are looking to see how they can integrate their quote “free for all” online learning resources, with more formal face-to-face educational offerings. Furthermore, teachers are seeing potential gains to be made by incorporating MOOCs that have been created outside their own institution into their teaching programmes. This presentation will briefly present some observations of the experience of blending MOOCs into formal teaching. It will discuss the strengths and possible weaknesses of such an approach and propose a framework for designing and implementing this type of blended learning.
Bio
Su White is an associate professor researching MOOCs, Educational Innovation and Web Science Education. She is based in the Web and Internet Science Group within Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton. She supervises a broad group of PhD students interested in MOOCs and Learning, and is the co-director of the MOOC Observatory co-located in WAIS and the University’s Institute for Learning Innovation and Development (ILIaD). As well as focussing on MOOCs, Su’s research interests encompass associated Web Science and Education agendas of Digital Literacies, Learning in a Connected World, Open Data for Education and perspectives on STEM Education and Web Science Curriculum. Su began researching the intersection of change and innovation in Higher Education the early 1990s.
