Hybrid MOOCs and Dual-Layer/Self-Mapped Learning Pathways MOOCs: My Perspective on the Differences

A recent tweet from Aras Bozkurt highlights a question we often get about the work we do with dual-layer/self-mapped learning pathways courses (most often in MOOCs, but also starting to bleed over into traditional courses as well):

As soon as we started using the term “dual-layer MOOC” in 2014, people pointed out the similarities between that idea and “Hybrid MOOCs.” These are important points because they do share many concepts. However, there were some key differences as well. In my mind at least, there are some differences that exist along various continuums rather than hard divisions into two distinct ideas.

The original distinction between layers into “instructivist layer” and “connectivist layer” proved to be problematic, as many courses have aspects of both, and learners tend to mix both at different times (if given the choice) instead of choosing one or the other. So I think it is better to look at the distinction as one that focuses on who does most of the decisions of what to mix together in the course. If most of the decisions to mix together/hybridize the course content and activities lies with the instructor, I tend to look at those as “Hybrid MOOCs” because it is the MOOC itself that is a hybrid. Even if there are choices (“write a paper or create a blog post or Tweet a thread”) and some of those are connectivist in nature, if those choices are more restricted and designed into the course, I see it more as a Hybrid MOOC. If the learner is more in control of those choices and how they mix the hybrid layers together, I see it more as the dual-layer concept we tried with DALMOOC. Of course, the layer idea focuses on the design too much, so that is why I like to refer to those courses now as “self-mapped learning pathways” because the focus should be on the pathway that the learner maps instead of the layers.

This is a continuum, of course – with a completely instructor controlled course on one side (all possible activities, even social/connectivist ones, chosen by the instructor) and a completely learner-driven course (like RhizoMOOC) on the other end. The DALMOOC and HumanMOOC courses I worked with/co-taught lean heavily towards the learner driven side, for example, while YogaMOOC leaned slightly more towards the instructor-driven side. All of those mix elements of xMOOCs and cMOOCs together in different ways (with RhizoMOOC most likely technically existing off the spectrum because it was all community driven – but it makes a good frame of reference. In contrast, typical xMOOCs exist off the other side of the spectrum because they are all instructor controlled and usually not that complex).

Additionally, I think an important dimension to look at with these courses is one that would exist on a perpendicular axis that measures the complexity with which the course organizes or scaffolds the choice for learners. For example, courses like DALMOOC were highly organized and complex – with maps of course structure, activity banks, course metaphors for descriptions of what that structure looks like, etc. Other courses like the EngageMOOC were less complex in that aspect of the structure, with the linear content in place – but learners were told they could do various other activities as they liked. There was some structure there as well, so it was not as far down that continuum as the RhizoMOOC would be.

So you would probably end up with a grid like this for explaining where courses fell on these continuums – some courses would probably shift from place to place as the course progresses:

Note: there was no scientific method for where I placed the example courses above – I just took a guess where they seemed to fall by my estimation. Feel free to disagree. The basic idea is that courses that mix various epistemologies tend to exist more on a continuum than at defined poles. Hybrid MOOCs are what I see as courses that lean towards the instructor deciding what this mixture is, and/or what the specific choices for the mixing are. Dual-layer/learning pathways courses are those that lean towards the learner deciding what this mixture is, and/or what the specific choices for mixing are. Either type can do so in more complex or less complex ways depending on the needs of the course.

Further Reflections on #OLCInnovate

After last reflecting on a specific issue at the OLC Innovate, I wanted to dive into a few random reflections and then cover my session. In many ways, I have been getting burned out on conferences. Going to session after session of hit or miss topics and then straight to mixers in the evening can be a bit of a chore. Of course, I realize that many people that attend are like me – they have to present something in order to get funding to attend. So I recognize that sessions are a necessary thing for many people. It just gets hard to go to sessions all day long.

I have always wanted to do a dual-layer conference in the same vein as our learning pathways model: one option of structured presentations and another option of unstructured unconference time that attendees can mix and match to their liking. Or even a day of structure followed by a day of unconferencing. The OLC Innovate conference had some different options like that with the Innovation Lab – a place where you could roam in and look at anything from games to design thinking to improvisation. It’s not exactly a dual-layer design, but still flexible. Due to some lingering headaches, I wasn’t able to attend everything in the Innovation Lab, but what I did see was quite enjoyable. Some of the highlights:

  • Game Design. I wish I could explore game design more in depth, but the taste of it I got at OLC Innovate will probably drive me back into exploration even more. Keegan Long-Wheeler and John Stewart from OU both do an excellent job framing game design in education. Keegan chronicled their lab activities better than I could, so read his post for a better summary. Also see me playing Nintendo Switch as well as hear about our epic dinner adventures.
  • Improvisation and Innovation. My last post described how I was not happy with some of the framing of Innovation at OLC Innovate. The Innovation Lab was a welcome counter point to that narrative. Ben Scragg, Dave Goodrich, and many others showed us how innovation can occur in every day activities, using everything from improv audience participation skits to the most excellent blues guitar improv of Rick Franklin.
  • Legos. Yep, there were Legos at OLC Innovate. I played with them. I tweeted about them. Apparently my Tweet about Legos was honest enough to win me an award. I can now prove to any doubters that I am certifiably honest now :)
  • The Prophet of Innovation Doom. Who ever created this Twitter account is weird. They should probably be banned from OLC events for life. Or put in charge of OLC. Not sure which one yet.

Now for my session at OLC Innovate. I was a bit nervous about this one. This year would be my fourth presentation along the topics of open learning and learner agency (the first two were at ET4Online and then the next two at OLC Innovate). The past three years were successful mostly because I knew many of the people coming to my sessions already, and I knew they were generally in favor of my work. It is easy to joke around, get audience participation, and go off on tangents when you already have that rapport with the attendees. Plus, the first two years I presented with my regular co-presenter Harriet Watkins. Last year Harriet was at my session even though we weren’t able to present together. This year, Harriet and many of the people I was used to presenting with or to were not going to be there. My security blanket was gone. Additionally, even most of the people that were there and that I already knew (like Keegan and John) were presenting at the same time. So I went into this session not knowing who would show up (if anyone) and even if they would want to participate in the discussion or laugh at my corny jokes.

Luckily, I had a great time. I would say that it was even my most interactive session yet. We had a great time digging through the practicals of designing a course that allows learners to self-map their learning pathway. And they asked some really hard questions. I like it when that happens. I had a line of people afterwards asking me questions. Someone even told me I was one of the few truly innovative presentations at the conference. Take that ELI! :)

(ELI rejected a presentation on the same topic a few years ago. I’m still a little bitter about that I am told.)

My only regret about my session is that special situations outside of work made me too busy to connect with Virtually Connecting to bring them into my session again. I did that last year and it was a blast. Keegan was a part of that last year and his blog post backs up how good of an idea it was to bring them into my session. Of course, it was thanks to Harriet, Rebecca HogueAutumm Caines, Whitney Kilgore, Maha Bali (I even practiced pronouncing her name correctly over and over again and then was too busy or sick to be in VC), and others with VC that made it so successful last year. Hopefully next time!

Here were some highlights from the session that will apply to future posts I am sure. Sorry that I didn’t capture names well enough to give credit to these ideas – if you said one of these let me know and I will update the post!

  • Competencies. My goal was to talk about how to convert objectives to competencies, because that is what I usually have to do with the instructors I am used to working with. The attendees at my session were coming up with great competencies already. What did they need me for? They even brought up several topics that were difficult to have in both competency and objective formats. They weren’t giving me a free pass, that was for sure. The best kind of questions are the hard ones that expose problems with your ideas.
  • Open Rubrics. While discussing the need to have less detailed rubrics, one attendee pointed out that learners could even create their own rubric. In other words, it would be a rubric with the conditions and criteria blank, for the learner to create in a way that allows them to prove they have learned the content or mastered the skill or whatever it may be. This was an idea brought up last year, but in a more general form of allowing learners to grade themselves. This is a more concrete idea that would lend itself more to situations where grades are required.
  • Gamification. Some one mentioned that in many ways, self-mapping is like creating a game out of one’s learning journey. In the Game Station at the Innovation Lab I was re-introduced to Twine. Twine is “an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories.” Teacher could look at creating their neutral zone and pathways options in Twine. Learners could use Twine in place of something like Storify possibly. I need to get in and play with the tool some, but I like the idea of looking at a self-mapped pathway as a game.
  • Real Heutagogy. Someone actually came to the session because he knew the term “heutagogy.” This is good, but also scary. Would my idea live up to scrutiny by someone that actually knows a lot about heutagogy? Apparently, it did. He liked it. That is a good sign.
  • Visualizing Pathways. There was a lot of interest in visualizing the pathways that learners take. My mock-up of what that could look like sparked that. We need to find ways to create visual representations of this, because I think it could actually help instructors gain insight into what is happening in their courses. Are there certain points where all learners come back to the instructivist option? Or maybe flee it to the connectivist option? Would those be places where the instructor is exerting too much control? If the learner could see those patterns, would that tell them something they maybe have missed? Is there something happening out in the less structured pathway they are missing? Learner self-analytics: it could be a thing.

There is probably more that I am missing, but this is getting long. As others have said, the conversations and connections were the real gold of this conference. If I get to go again in the future (you never know where the budget in the State of Texas will be at that point), my focus will definitely be on the Innovation Lab and the interaction times. And, of course, the OLCInnovateSnark Twitter Tag as well :)

Creating a Self-Mapped Learning Pathway

One of the questions I get about learning pathways (on the rare occasion someone actually reads this blog and ask a question) is “when we give learners the option to chose between instructor-centered options and learner-centered options, how do they record what they are doing?” Sure, learners could blog about what they do, but that often ends up being a narrative about the pathway they create rather than an actual visual representation of the pathway itself. A blog post is great in many ways, but I think people are often wonder if there is something different.

Currently, there is no tool that does what I would like one to do to cover everything in the process:

  1. Create a map of the learning pathway that one plans to take
  2. Collects artifacts as one follows (and adjusts) that pathway
  3. Adds a layer of reflection on the learning process that explains why choices were made and artifacts were created.

Blog tools can do this, but you have to scroll through multiple posts to see all of these elements, or set out a lot of ground rules on how to make one blog post to contain all of this. Again, those blog posts can be useful in many ways, but also still not completely cover the process in the best way possible.

At this point, there is really nothing that could do this “the best way possible.” However, if it were me, I would use a combination of a blog, Storify, and Hypothes.is to create the three steps above. Here is how I would accomplish that. I will use a hypothetical example to illustrate.

[Note: Storify was shut down after this post was published, and the main replacement for it – Wakelet – does not work with Hypothes.is annotations. This is stored here as a record of and idea with exports from Storify stored on my own server]

First, I would create a blog post that basically lists out the learning map I plan to follow. For example, let’s say that I am in a class on Artificial Intelligence and my task is to map out my learning pathway for the first unit. I would create a blog post that lists out thew steps I plan on taking, for example:

  1. Read chapter one from the textbook
  2. Read the Wikipedia article on Artificial Intelligence to learn about recent developments.
  3. Check Google News on AI for recent news stories.
  4. Read this blog post I found on AI and comment
  5. Tweet my thoughts on AI
  6. Join the #AIChat on Twitter
  7. Create my own video on AI to satisfy the Module 1 competency on AI

Alternatively, this list could also be placed at the top of a Storify about this module, followed by the next step. Or the link to the Storify could be placed in this blog post after this list. My link above has random links I found through Google, but those could also be more specific links if this were a real class :)

For those that are interested, here is what the example list above looked like in Storify (you can see later that it ended up looking different in the end):

In an ideal world where a pathways tool exists to do this for me, a Storify-like tool would exist that allows instructors to pre-populate a blank map with instructor suggested content, assignment bank options, scaffolding tools (for those not used to self-directed learning), and some generic social networking/connectivist options off to the side for learners to drag and drop into an interactive map with clickable links to whatever is needed.

Next, after the map is created, I would use Storify to create evidence of the pathway as I follow it. Technically, you could also use a blog to do this. I like Spotify because it makes searching social networks easy, and the drag and drop interface makes it easy to arrange things as you like. Of course, you can do that with cut and paste on a blog post, but I still prefer the way Storify pulls it together. Not to mention how you can embed or export your creations. You may like something different – that is great. Whatever works for you is great.

You can look at the mock-up of my learning pathway from Storify, or see the embedded version below:

Back to the ideal world, if the pathways tool existed, it would have something that looks a lot like Storify as a layer on top of map that existed. People looking at the tool could easily switch between the two to see the map the way that it was planned and then the pathway as it played out in real life. Or maybe the two would exist on the same page, with UX design elements that indicate what artifacts match with which map item, where map items were dropped, where map items were changed, where new ideas were added, etc.

Finally, I would reflect on the pathway process and why I made the choices that I did: Why did I choose this option? Why did I choose to create these artifacts for those options? Why did I add this option? Why did I abandon this thing that I mapped? And so on.

This again could be a blog post as well, or an addition to an existing map post. However, I would prefer to be able to give short explanations of specific choices, ideally where the reader could see exactly what I was talking about. Something like Hypothes.is annotating my Storify artifact pathway. The great thing about Hypothes.is is that I can explain specific parts of my pathway while pointing at that pathway, and it is a social system that would allow others to comment/reflect on my work as well.

If you have Hypothes.is installed, you can see the example annotations I made on my example Storify above by going to the page. If you don’t have Hypothes.is installed, you can try this page to see if the annotations appear there for you (click on the yellow highlighted text).

Annotation would also be a built in part of the pathways tool in the ideal world that I envision. Instead of installing a separate tool like Hypothes.is, learners could just click on any part of their pathway and add a comment like they would in Microsoft Word.

All of this is just one example of what I would do if I was a learner in a self-mapped learning pathway (aka dual-layer or customizable modalities) course. I actually had a lot of fun creating the examples, so I hope to use these ideas myself sometime soon. Most of what I have blogged about in the past on this topic was focused on the design and theory of these courses, but all of that needs to fade into the background to decrease design presence in a course with this degree of learner choice. The focus of what learners need to see is something like this that focuses on how they self-map their own learning pathway. Hopefully I will explore all of this in my OLC Innovate session next week.