Introduction
The twenty-first century, that is now
nineteen years old, came with the whizzing sound of digital clicks, which has
weathered the landscape of our education system as we know it. We find that our educational institutions
that we have lead, and developed had to move with the turbulence in Information
and Communication Technologies (ICT).
This has caused us to improve our levels of digital literacy so that we
meet the demands of the learner and teachers to provide a differential style of
learning to the classrooms. As
educational leaders, we should use our positions within our weather stations to
watch the trends and the issues the turbulence brings and find ways and means
in dealing with them.
Gratitude must be expressed to the Ministry of Education to stage this conference
for Principals, Deans, and Heads of Department who are present from the various
colleges and universities for them to become aware and reminded of changes the
winds brought and still are bringing to education, and how to re-scope the landscape
of our classrooms and teaching practice within our colleges and universities.
This began with the building of Instructional Technology (IT) labs, installing
internet and servers and the purchasing of equipment appropriate and sometimes
not so appropriate for both our teachers and students to use. That in itself came with another set of a whirlwind where a technology plan had to be developed and executed for the schools
to help educational stakeholders to be digitally literate in order to improve
on content delivery, student learning assessments and best practices in our
“Classrooms.” Now, our rafters are being
shaken again with a different kind of wind, which we truly cannot ignore. It is called Massive Open Online Classrooms
(MOOCs).
Description
During the 1990s, the puffs of wind
blew in the form of the Open Educational Resources (OER) which was viewed as
the staring process of MOOCs (Gracia, 2015 ).
The name MOOC that was viewed as an online course format was finally
developed and launched at the University
of Manitoba under the heading, “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge
(Liyanagunawardena, Adams and Williams, 2013). Zawachi-Richer, et-al
(2018) described MOOC as not an independent phenomenon from other areas of open
and distant, but has the potential to develop lifelong learning. David Cormier
was credited for this design when he and his team developed a twelve-week
online course in Canada in 2008 (Garica, 2015).
They also saw that it provided more opportunities for persons to gain
access to content and knowledge. Educase
(2011) describes MOOC as a platform for giving content for people to learn
online to just about anyone who is desirous of learning new things.
According to Loechx, (2016) the society
blew life into the MOOC movement by providing four pillars of existence: a)
technology – mobile ubiquitous cloud, b) culture – digital natives, c) society
– globalization, and d) economy – creative society. These pillars help to form the turbulence
that has been reshaping education by fully comprehending the movement of online
distance learning and how it reshape the education process. There are a few institutions that have taken
on the MOOC course format and so far, they seemed to be successful. Many times, we have seen their advertisements
online whenever we surf the web. They
are Coursea, Khan Academy, Udacity, and edX (Garcia, 2015). We have found that many of our administrative
staff have signed on to at least one of these platforms, participated, and are
now asking many our educational leaders to redesign our programmes to give others
an opportunity for more persons to upgrade their skills and
knowledge.
The design of MOOCs is said to be
offered on a weekly basis with an average offering of approximately six to ten
weeks in duration. With this comes short
lecture videos, supplemental readings, and assignments that are problem-solving
in nature (Garcia, 2015). Garcia, also
describes that there are forums where online discussions are had with the
facilitators moderating them closely and responsively. The beauty about this is that individuals are
given the liberty to do their work in a timely fashion unlike the traditional
system that we run and the learning atmosphere is relaxed, however, if one wants
to complete the course, they must participate. Here is where the turbulence comes, because the traditional way of
teaching in a face-to-face fashion becomes battered with the strong winds of
MOOCs. Chiecher and Donolo (2013) refer
to the shift of traditional delivery as moving away from the traditional mode
of teaching and questions whether or not certain “training needs” can truly be
met.
There is worry about the role of the
facilitator in the MOOC storm. Many
lecturers have been approaching our leaders about their employment and
expressed fear in using a new digital feature in teaching. There are fears that their purpose will be reduced if our
colleges and universities do embrace this breezy phenomenon in our
institutions, but their role will now
become of a facilitator by collecting, analyzing,
condensing and reflecting the actions of the learning participant when
submissions
are
made (Garica, 2015).
There is one issue that the MOOC
whirlwind brings, and that is copyright.
So much content that can be constructed by many persons and this is the
topic of discussion from many of our educational leaders. Our colleagues from the universities abroad
who use MOOCs had initially voiced their concern. However, the American Association of
University Professors (AAUP) state that the professors who construct MOOC
courses own the rights to the material and do modifications where it is
necessary (Educase, 2013). Instructional
design and other resources are added to ensure quality and reliability. This is one area our institutions can be part of
the wind by ensuring that we form
linkages with the universities who offer MOOCs and be brave to create courses
that can attract audiences outside of the traditional face to face
setting.
Usefulness
of the MOOC to Institutions
Many systematic studies have
gone into the research of this persistent turbulence of
MOOC to find how useful this mode of teaching can be to our institutions
that we lead. Chen (2014) recognized
that there are opportunities for participants and institutions for more persons
to learn. Zawacki-Richter, O., Bozkurt,
A., Alturki, Aldraiweesh, A., (2018) thought that MOOC is a good way of making
learning easier, creating equality amongst the participants and that knowledge
is liberated to persons local and worldwide.
Although research has shown wherein the
early stages MOOC was placed in one platform, due to the turbulence it
caused, it developed and still
developing into a more formalized and financial potential for facilitators and
institutions to gain diverse benefits.
MOOC can become useful in our
institutions where digitally literate instructors of various disciplines can
design and produce instructional materials video clips/flip classrooms and
additional resources for courses and online programmes that they offer as a
high-quality package to their clients (Educause, 2013). With
that, the copyright concerns of content packages, especially when a person
transfers to another institution or retires would have to be looked at.
These are still strong questions asked, but
with quality assurance teams in place within institutions, those legalities
will be worked out just as other innovations that had come before us. In addition, whenever third-party sources are
used, that the requisite permissions have been gained and acknowledged so that
our institutions do not fall into legal issues with original content writers.
What is clear is that if the educational leaders plan carefully and collaborate
with other stakeholders, our own MOOCs can be as popular is Coursera, edX, etc.
Conclusion and
Recommendations
In this whirlwind of MOOC and its series
of turbulence, we as educational leaders can either get blown away, watch our
institutions become redundant
and irrelevant, or we collaborate and ensure that we stay grounded
and become part of the change in the way we teach and deliver our content. With each decade comes with “disruptive
innovations” (Christensen, 2013) where
a new set of customers from a traditional dimension transfers into a new market
and such is MOOC.
Fears are natural when innovations happen
quickly; however, with
collaborations and training sessions with resource persons, the
inclusion of MOOC into our institutions can increase the chances of student
intake and good quality education gained.
The inclusions of social media plug-ins
such as Twitter, wikis, etc, MOOC within our institutions can help to reshape
and improve the two-way process of learning (Garcia 2015).
Continuous professional development must
be done to ensure that a certain level of digital literacy must be maintained
in an ever-evolving technology-filled world.
Today, a new device can be created, and within two years, it is no
longer relevant. Professional
development will aid in our institutions be part of the cutting edge of digital learning and due to our
leadership, we can become paid consultants to other establishments who would
like to collaborate or partner with us.
It can even lead to us becoming content developers for private sector
institutions where copyrighted materials can be uploaded for their MOOC
platforms (Educause, 2013).
Our
institutions are facing the storms, we are adjusting to the weathering, we have
a responsibility to the students who we are “remixing” our approaches in order
for them to become
beneficiaries of quality education. In
one shape or form, we ourselves have been exposed to the winds while we have
pursued our studies, now, it has come to us in our educational weather
stations. Developing a good and ongoing
quality assurance team amongst ourselves, and with the input of other stake-holders, our institutions will not become rubbles in education but beacons in
the eyes of the world of students who are in the whirlwind of digital change.
Reference
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