What would a MOOC be like if the BBC made one?

This post is completely of the cuff. I haven't had a search around on this one, its just something that's been buzzing around in my head.

I've been taking a few MOOCs recently, lets face it who hasn't dipped there toes in to get a feel of the experience. Out this comes many questions, but one is about old media an new media, old broadcasting and new social engagement with media. It's not escaped anyone's attention the phenomena of tweeting while watching TV. It's Newsnight on BBC being a typical example. This is a new mass social experience of media and interaction. Lets not focus on the detail of the quality of that experience, because it is a live programme, the reaction to it on social media from the viewers has to be instant, which can make it difficult to sustain concentration and analyse at any great level. Old media and broadcasting is not in conflict with this audiences desires to interact, but it's far from perfect.

What would be better, is debate and discussion happened over a longer period, and the various streams of information were less distributed over different platforms and discussion spaces.

Now there are many design faults within the MOOC platforms yet to be solved, but the experience of listening and reacting to content is far slower and more contained that the example above. What would a MOOC be live if the BBC made one

1. Content would be far more creative. Like it or not, unis are not great at producing sophisticated content, the visuals are a little stayed, the joke awful, the budgets just a little too small. 

2. It would super inflate the interest in the general public of engaging in this kind of educational experience as MOOCs my provide. It's still a niche market, by the BBC have always had a remit to educate.

3. The chosen topic would be overwhelmingly populist, and disregard the academic approach to knowledge and fields of study

4. There would be a few errors in there, the BBC are getting better, but the academic rigour would just not be there

5. It wouldn't happen because of there fears of control over the discussion spaces, public broadcasting has distanced itself over the years from social media, particularly ones that encourage debate. A fall out this would mean, more quiz elements than discussion and losing the whole meaning of the process.

6. Certification. There is no university of the BBC, so would anyone else step in to offer a badge of the area being studied. Open Uni would be ideal, and I'm sure somewhere the discussions have gone on.
7. Licencing, open content is still very difficult for companies particularly the BBC to adapt to

Never the less it's an interesting idea. The gap between old and new media is growing, leaving most large media corporations desperately exploring ways to reconnect with some audiences.

But if we turn this on its head, if all a MOOC is, is a space for collective learning and a badge to follow, are there not other spaces where this is already happening. Is the MOOC just offering a poorer experience to the wider social Internet?

If it did happen, what would be the first subject, I'm thinking cake baking, how about you?

Wikipedia staff session

This post is about a session I am running with staff on Wikipedia. I have called it  . . .

Wikipedia. friend or foe

Title: Wikipedia – wisdom of the crowds or confederacy of dunces

This session will provide you with an overview of the wild and wiki world of the Wikipedians. It will dispel a few myths, discuss the recent research and explore the recent moves by academics to create Wikipedia assignments. There will be a little hands on editing of Wikipedia too.

If you can’t make the session – I recommend this paper

Learning Chronobiology by Improving Wikipedia

JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL RHYTHMS; AUG, 2012, 27 4, p333-p336, 4p.

This paper shows a possible way to incorporate Wikipedia within a summative assignment. It provides evidence of the motivational and learning effectiveness of the process and all the assignment details to allow others to use the same process. http://www.nslc.wustl.edu/courses/Bio4030/wikipedia_project.html

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edselc&AN=edselc.2-52.0-84864628701&site=eds-live

The aims also include the demonstrating the ways in which social media and many other forms of social interaction allow opportunities for teaching practice to engaage, either formally e.g. let's make an assessment out of this or informal, lets discussion, analyse and explore this together. In the session I intended to:

1. Start with introducing a wikipedian, describe how wikipedia works from their perspective, eg. workgroups, looking after pages
2. Then show a particular group of pages that are from their subject area. I'm in the arts faculty. One of the pages was created by the wikipedian just discussed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_in_fashion. I'll talk about the 'talk' area of pages and 'history' and their relation to discussion and debate. Also the ways in which wikipedians display areas of concern in the page, e.g citation needed, and other warning signs. 
3. I'll finish of with an example of assessment using wikipedia to hopefully lead into a discussion about innovation within teaching practice.

This is a very short session, so I might not get time to mention all the wiki research. What follows are some interesting links that have helped me prepare.

Facts and figures
From Townsend (2013) (apologies to wikipedians!!)

• 17M registered users.
• most are male, internet experts, childless
• 5000 of these are active users
• 1459 administrators within the system who are super users and step in to arbitrate over content
• Administrators can block users or limit edit rights to some pages. 0.05 articles are blocked
• 10% of authors – 90% of the acrtiles Ortega (2009, p. 106) in Shen (2013)

Research / Analysis

Rosenzweig's (2006) is the most notable study looking at the validity of the entries. 25 US historical figures where research in 3 different resources, eg two encyclopedias and wikipedia. Wikipedia was better than one and close behind the other. He critises the writing style of its choppiness.
But also see Nature 2005 article what compared accuracy and moved the debate from rejection to reluctant acceptance. Britannica had 3 errors per entry wiki 4

Shen (2013) conclusion is wikipedia is so huge power, control and hierarchy have to grow. Therefore it is not a true display of 'the wisdom of the crowds'

Systemic Bias - really interesting veiwpoint from a set of slides here

And the geographical location of page edits - http://www.zerogeography.net/2009/11/mapping-geographies-of-wikipedia.html 

References

Shen, XL,What leads students to adopt information from Wikipedia? An empirical investigation into the role of trust and information usefulness. BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY; MAY, 2013, 44 3, p502-p517, 16p. 

Roy Rosenzweig, "Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past", June 2006
Giles, Jim. “Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head.” Nature 438, no. 15 (2005): 900–901.
Townsend, S. Wicked Wikipedia? Communities of Practice, the Production of Knowledge and Australian Sport History. International Journal of the History of Sport Apr2013, Vol. 30 Issue 5, p545 15p.

Flipping OERs

I know they are supposed to save academics time, but the cataloging and technology involved in their creation renders them almost useless. I have been trying to encourage staff to use them for several years, but unless those staff are very capable with IT, they have endless problems.

They are
Difficult to view unless you install them
Some of the more complex ones are not compatible with the latest browsers
The data bases could also be improved, they are growing unwieldy and difficult to identify anything useful