FutureLearn Web Science MOOC

This was the first MOOC that I have taken on the Futurelearn MOOC platform.  I commented on the platform itself in my previous post, here I want to look at the course itself, and how it worked within the platform.

There was much interesting material in web science course, which looked at both the technical and the social aspects of the web, as it was led by professors Les Carr and Susan Halford.  I have known Les for some years, which may colour my view of the course.  

It was a shortish MOOC, six weeks, with each week looking at a different aspect of web science:

• The History of the web, in part looking at different types of history (techno-rational or socio-technical) as well as some of the key events and processes; asking questions like was it inevitable that the web emerged looking the way it does? and arguing that the free, open nature of the web (Tim Berners-Lee "gave it away") was vital to its success.
• Using analytics to understand what is happening on the web, and the limits that analytics imposes (as well as some other methods such as anthropology).
• Security and crime. 
• The web in democracy - how important, for instance, was the web in the Arab Spring of 2011 or the earlier revolt in Iran for instance.  I reviewed the book on Revolution 2.0 mentioned in the course.  This also raises questions of surveillance (barely addresses and as far as I could see not widely commented on in the discussion.  Also looking at open data and new ways in which data can be used once it is available to hold governments to account.
• "Digital economy" which looked at big data (how the web provides huge amounts of data and access to data that used to be effectively inaccessible (such as government data), the web in recruitment (how might your profile affect your success in seeking jobs) and retail.
• The future of the web, and especially the semantic web.

Each week started with an introduction by Carr and Halford , which was mostly helpful, though by week six I was tired of hearing that Les Carr was proud to be the first professor of web science at Southampton University.  The weeks also closed with a "discussion" between professors Wendy Hall and Nigel Shadbolt; the discussion is in quotes as it seemed to be cutting between two completely separate presentations rather than an actual discussion, which meant that they were not really building on each others ideas.  While these discussions were interesting a real discussion would have been much more so.

In between these where a variety of chunks which included videos, readings, discussions and a couple of exercises presented by a wide variety of people including lecturers and PhD students.  

I think that the course content had been well thought through, but the course structure less so.  How much this was a result of what FutureLearn could do (when the course was being built) and how much of this was down to the course leaders I cannot tell.  However, the course was extremely linear (start at chunk 1 and work your way straight through to the finish).  This may in part be down to the FutureLearn, as at the bottom of each unit there is next / previous; if you want to go elsewhere then scroll to the top, go back to the course menu and choose another chunk.  That is, it is possible to do them in a different order but it is not what the structure offers.  Also, apart from during the multiple choice tests at the end of the modules there was very little cross referencing (within or between weeks), and little encouragement to return to earlier discussions.

I feel that the return to earlier discussions is almost discouraged, as at the end of each chunk you mark it as completed (ie it is suggesting that there is no need to return). 

The other great weakness was the discussion, but I think this is due to the weakness of the tool.  You can make postings, and you can comment on the postings of others, but unless you go back to the discussions and trawl through them to find your postings it is impossible to see if they have been commented in.  There is no notification that someone has commented on your posting, which makes discussion very difficult though some of us did try.

However, in spite of the limitations of FutureLearn I enjoyed the course, and will try some others; though not many more until the discussion forum is improved.

FutureLearn

Having nearly completed the Web Science MOOC on FutureLearn I thought that it would be worthwhile passing some comments.  In this post I will comment on FutureLearn itself, and later I will comment on the Web Science course.

FutureLearn is not dissimilar to other MOOCs, it works smoothly and well in general, though they do seem to be using rapid development (or perpetual beta) as the delivery method with the result that some things do change as you go along (the ones I noticed seemed to alter where the discussion appeared).

As yet, and I accept that this is fairly early there don't appear to be any particularly interesting or novel features in the MOOC.  You register, choose the course and do it in a very linear fashion.

I like the clean, clear design which keeps unnecessary clutter out of the way, and that it works pretty well on my phone as well as on the PC.  I also like that there are discussions for each page, on that page so that the topic and the discussion are closely related to each other; although that does tend to discourage discussions which bridge topics (which topic should you post them against?).

However, I think that it has a long way to go before it becomes a really useful learning platform.  I suspect that many of the things that I am going to discuss are already under development, but here is my pennyworth of things for improvement.

The way that the system works is very linear, not encouraging returning to topics covered or relating to them to each other.  To me this is exemplified by having mark as complete for each section, the implication being that there is no need to return to this section.  I think this is particularly unfortunate as it discourages returning to discussions.

The week is broken down into bite sized chunks (or on this course in some cases nibbles), but there is no easy way of seeing where you are in the course (eg a progress bar along the top or bottom of the page).  Of course, I appreciate that could end up being part of the clutter that FutureLearn enjoys, but it could at least be an option.

My biggest problem is with the discussion tool itself, which discourages discussion rather than post and forget.  posts are not grouped or tagged in any way so that there can be a long list of postings which are either in reverse order of posting or just the most "liked" postings.  The result is that there is very little engagement with the discussion, with people making postings and moving on.  I haven't counted but I doubt that more than a tenth of postings have any comment against them.  Even if you do engage in an actual discussion there doesn't appear to be any form of push technology to tell you that someone has replied to your posting, so that you have to wander through all your postings to find out if someone has replied to them.  Yes, you can see all your postings for all courses on your profile page, but no way of knowing if anyone has responded and hence engaging in discussion.

There is also nothing to help build up a sense of community.  Other MOOCs that I have participated in have been very strong on community building, encouraging the use of other tools such as blogs and tweeting to support each other and share learning, but while one could invent a #tag for the course there is nothing in the course to support this (eg having the #tag listed on each page).

Finally, at the moment it seems to be rather feature poor.  As used in this course there is text, embedded video, links, appended documents, multiple choice questions and the "discussion forum" and that is about it.

I look forward to seeing some of the features as they are added.