Survey of Online and MOOC Course Design Plans & Practices

Report Highlights

The study looks closely at how 21 institutions of higher education design their online courses, blended learning courses and MOOCs. Participants include McGill, the University of Rochester, the Royal Institute of Technology, UCLA, Southern Illinois University, the University of Alabama, the University of Advancing Technology, the University of Manchester, State University of New York at Brockport, Victoria University of Wellington, the University of North Carolina Greensboro, the University of Glasgow and many others.

The 76-page report gives detailed data on how colleges are using classroom video, social media, “flipped” classrooms, short and frequent spot quizzes, peer mentors and other strategies to improve their online courses and MOOCs. It also provides data on the kinds and types of MOOCs in development, the timetable for their development, and how they are viewed by their institutional creators. For example, are MOOCs viewed as loss leading “feeders” to the colleges’ traditional or distance education programs.

The study gives hard data on the size of support staffs for MOOC and online course development and at assessment strategies for MOOCs and more traditional online and blended learning courses. The report helps its readers to answer questions such as: what kinds of cloud services and software tools are colleges using to build online courses and MOOCs? What are their budgets? If they are developing MOOCs what is the intended audience? What is the role of taped classroom lectures? Of social media? How are colleges trying to overcome the inherent inefficiencies of traditional college education?