Week Two of the Web Science MOOC has ended, and the MOOCsters move on from my material to Craig Webber’s week on crime and security online. So do I feel like Frodo and Sam in Return of the King, collapsing in relief as the sweeping gaze of Sauron moves of to another corner of Morder? Far from it – I really enjoyed the week, and I learnt a lot myself.
What definitely stood out was the level of engagement from the students on the course; the comments and discussions were full of interesting observations, questions and resources. It looked liked participation followed Nielson’s rule on inequality (the 90-9-1 rule), so that means that there were a vast number of people who didn’t contribute, but those that did not only demonstrated their own engagement with the course, but also provided great supplementary material for the others.
This participation was really varied, so for some it was a simple affirmation that they liked the material, or even that they found some parts challenging. Others put forward a view, or clarified some point of understanding. There were several things I wanted to link to in the course, but could not for copyright reasons, so my favorite contributions were when the students found these on their own, and shared them with one another. The Web working as it should!
The big lesson for me as an educator was how many people switch off when they see mathematics. In one of my Activities I had a number of fact sheets on network properties with equations in them, and even though the equations had explanatory text alongside them the reaction was very negative, with lot’s of desperate cries along the lines of “oh my God ! :( confused :(” and the more plaintive “help”. It seemed as though some people simply gave up at the sight of the mathematics, without getting far enough to realise that you could understand without it.
In response I wrote a plain English summary of each property in the main body of the article, deliberately away from the equations, and pointed them at the fact sheets for more detail. This seemed to work quite well, although some of the students clearly still found it challenging. I don’t believe it was the network properties themselves that were challenging (the Maths is basic: counting, summing, averaging, and fractions), instead it was the presentation that caused problems, both the equations and the specialist terminology. They simply could not see beyond the squiggles!
I also think that some of the teaching methods were alien to people. In University teaching we often present a point of view and then invite our students to think critically about it, this is not only a great way of learning about something, but also helps people discover the underlying assumptions and weaknesses. I tried to do this with Networks, pointing the students to several enthusiastic and evangelical resources about the power of network analysis, and then asking them in the activities and discussion to reflect on whether those claims were appropriate. For many students this worked just fine, but for a number it was clear that they took the resources at face value, and were left with incorrect assumptions about how far Web Science embraces these simplistic techniques.
I got a real buzz from the students working through my activities and visibly making progress, seeing comments that were clearly informed by the activity, and really well-considered, was the best bit of the whole experience for me.
In that respect running the MOOC (even for this one week) has been very rewarding. When you teach undergraduates face to face the amount of feedback you get from the class is minimal, you can glean some information from body language, questions and assessments, but you never truly get to see the student’s point of view. The MOOC is very different. In the MOOC you are party to the conversation, you see students directly struggle with certain material, and can watch understanding (and misconceptions!) bloom. It is only a sample of the student experience, but it’s still far more than you get from face to face teaching. Not only is this feedback more honest (and thus more rewarding when it is positive) but it is immediate, and it is directly associated with particular activities or resources. Having run through this weeks material once, I feel I understand the sticking points in both content and language, and a few minor changes for next time will make a big difference.
Putting the MOOC together has taken a lot of effort, but participating during the week did not feel like work. I really enjoyed seeing people discuss the material, and getting involved myself to answer questions. In fact checking on the discussions was quite addictive. I tried to resist intervening too much, as that deadens the discussion, but hopefully I got involved enough to reassure the students that they were not alone!
It has been a lot of fun, and I think that most enjoyed it (even if some won’t forgive me for the maths). And why not, learning about the Web, the single most important information artefact in the history of humankind, should be fun!
It’s why I’m here.