Some reflections on the situation at FutureLearn as it's unfolded this week and thinking ahead - a thread…⬇️ 1/

#onlinelearning #edtech #highered #AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter Indicators haven’t been good for a long time - sadly and the recent news is the culmination of a business that consistently hasn’t been profitable. 2/

Notable news in the world of online education in higher ed - Open University has announced its intention to find a buyer for its 50% stake in FutureLearn #onlinelearning #edtech #highered 1/

https://twitter.com/sharplm/status/1577622031872524291

The other 50% is owned by SEEK - it will be interesting to observe whether a new investor will be forthcoming and whether in the short to medium term whether this will represent an upturn or a further downturn in fortunes. 2/

Should we be worried about FutureLearn?
#onlinelearning #highered

A thread 🧵⬇️ A few weeks back I wrote about MOOC platforms and about their potential future relationship with UK universities. It felt like an opportune time to do so 10 years on from the huge MOOC buzz of 2012. 1/

Interesting release from 2U on current financial performance but also interestingly on future direction which appears to be coalescing under the edX brand and further developing that as marketplace platform. Job losses also look likely #onlinelearning investor.2u.com/news-and-event… More on 2Us future direction - the new revenue share model is broken down with a minimum 35% that increases depending on taking marketing, support and content development services - with all these it rises to 60%. Fairly transparent proposition... 2u.com/latest/2u-unve…

Learning design is about designing and creating the best conditions for learning to result. It’s the design of experiences and those experiences come in different shapes and sizes. 1/ It’s about designing for people - which means it’s complex. I love this quote from Dieter Rams that speaks to this - “You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people”. 2/

Interesting report...some comments if I may as someone who has and continues to work in this space within universities, education more generally and with private edtech...1/

https://twitter.com/benpatrickwill/status/1360322203460513795

One of the actors that fails to get any kind of scrutiny is universities themselves who have complete autonomy as to the decisions they make about edtech. The silence on this and the general narrative portrays them as passive, obsequious actors with no choice...2/

If you’re a university or education provider then one of the key aspects of digital transformation is thinking about the role of an educator/academic in this changed state. For universities an academic is expected to be a good educator, good researcher...1/ ...keep up to date in their field and have numerous other responsibilities..oh and now be much more of a learning experience designer, a producer of videos and other media, a designer of a platform experience and it’s navigation, structure and other components of the UI...2/

I've been running sessions for educators adjusting to online teaching and many are facing challenges with live, synchronous teaching...here's some small ways to enhance things...1/ #onlinelearning #onlineteaching There are so many distractions when teaching via videoconferencing, including the video of yourself. We have a tendency to keep looking at ourselves, so hide this to remove an unnecessary distraction. 2/

Back in the first part of the year there was a lot of talk about UK universities partnering with Online Programme Managers (OPM’s) partly sparked by this article palatinate.org.uk/exclusive-univ… and the subsequent fallout. Much was lost in the noise...and misconceptions 1/ so far I’ve noticed 2 x UK universities partner with OPMs including a Russell Group (although I may have missed some). Really, I think these kinds of partnership are about a desire to reach a demographic of students who may not opt for the campus experience....2/

There’s always been opportunities for UK universities to meet the demand for learning beyond the narrow demographic of school leavers that tends to characterise who university is for. 1/ The opportunities are still there, particularly given the need for upskilling and growing international demand for education. 2/

Video is often the go-to for online teaching sometimes pretty unthinkingly as it’s the most obvious transposition of traditional in-person teaching...but don’t overlook text! 1/ Video can be time-consuming in many ways even when you have the best intentions...and from a learning perspective it’s a sequential medium that moves at the pace of the educator not the learner. 2/

Earlier in the year a distinction was made labelling the rapid pivot as emergency remote teaching, thus distinguishing from online education pre-COVID...1/ ..I’m not convinced that we’ve moved much beyond emergency remote teaching, despite many universities talking about how they’ll be offering high-quality blended/online education in the new academic year....2/

THREAD: Communication with the students you’re teaching will be so critical during this academic year. Here’s a few things to think about - it’s not too late! 1/ Communicate regularly ideally have set times/days i.e. Mon & Fri - so students hear from you regularly and there’s some predictable rhythm to it.

Those of us who advocated for and were involved in what was a relatively niche world of online education in HE pre-COVID-19 also have to acknowledge that the quality of a proportion of it....1/ wasn’t far off the simple uploading of lecture videos to an LMS, teaching via Zoom et al and sharing of documents digitally...2/

There’s no magic formula for blended and hybrid learning and how you design the melding of physical and digital but yesterday I gave a talk and highlight 3 principles / considerations..1/ 1 - Authentic and real world learning - ask what experiences and activities conducted in-person most strongly contribute towards authentic & real world learning...2/

Am considering what the future is for MOOCs tomorrow. Here's a thread with a small selection of interesting / notable articles...1/ One of the oft cited pieces is 2012 the year of the MOOC - nytimes.com/2012/11/04/edu… telling quote from @rayschroeder "How do we fit this into the structure of higher education today?" - Have we really answered that 8 years on? 2/

A helpful piece that highlights that online education is not the poor cousin in terms of learning. The primacy of the lecture is a problem but I’m not convinced by the narrative that all students....1/ wonkhe.com/lets-lose-the-… ...don’t like them, many do...nor am I convinced that lecture recording has emptied lecture theatres...this is really about learning and culture...teaching needs to be informed by evidence and students need to better understand and be convinced of proven strategies and...2/

Online learning will form a significant part of, at the very least, the first half of 20-21...unless a large proportion of teaching staff have experience in online teaching, the importance of instructional designers cannot be overstated...moving to teach online requires a 1/ ...big shift in thinking and some time is needed to think about and discuss that. Being able to speak with and discuss this with an instructional designer who has experience of designing online and blended learning and an understanding of how we learn is invaluable...2/

Many universities will be considering what technologies they need to deliver more blended/online education provision in the future...which is valid, but it’s also important to consider how you might streamline and reduce choice particularly when there are several versions..1/ of the same tool...the LMS is the most classic example, myriad feature requests and tool add-ons have lead to major product drift...this leads to problems and barriers to engagement and Hicks Law type problems for educators...2/

Oh my...the irony of this headline...first point - this is not an ‘experiment’ in online learning it is emergency remote teaching that bears little relation to carefully planned and design online learning

https://twitter.com/HEPI_news/status/1260442326960349185

Second point students are not digital natives....a point for which research wasn’t referenced unsurprisingly

A thread - Good piece exploring capability of UK universities to offer high-quality online learning in Sept. theguardian.com/education/2020… I would add a few things..... 1 - Derby worth a mention as a university strategically engaging in online education,