How do we engage with and support participants?

[wikey]

Once all the content is drafted and the platform is selected, there is the question of how we are going to directly interact with course participants. What kind of interactions do we anticipate between participants and those running the course, who is going to have those interactions, and how do we support those interactions at scale if we get 100, 1000, or 10000 participants?

This includes any role course operators are supposed to play in re/viewing the work that students do as part of the module assignments and any efforts to support students who are having trouble.

Starting this as an issue because there are so many different ways to approach the issue. If there is already an agreed upon plan for this then it may just need to be surfaced so that new participants coming to the project can see those as options for how to contribute time/effort.

[wikey]

Given the number of potential audiences for this material and the different goals some of those audiences will have for participating in the MOOC, one option is to look at a hybrid MOOC where we work with a collection of schools and other institutions that want to set up local study groups, workshop series, hackdays, etc as ways of participating in the MOOC. In that distributed model the central MOOC becomes the shared curriculum while the direct interactions are mostly moved towards sources of support and advice close to the user. This is the model advocated for by the P2PU folks after their experiments with self-run MOOCs.

One of the biggest advantages of this sort of model is that it opens the first run of the MOOC up to experimentation and the use of multiple formats to reach multiple audiences. Groups that are already introducing Python/R/git are going to have a very different take on Open Collaboration than folks who have never seen the command line. Other groups are going to be able to get a lot from the Open Data and Open Access sections even while still using point and click analysis tools. These groups may even have different products at the end of their participation: a github DOI of project files in one case, a certificate of training completion from the university's Teaching and Learning center in the other. Whichever of those groups you happen to be in, the other group members and the people organizing that group are probably the most likely places to get support on additional MOOC topics not covered by your particular group events or with general open science support after the MOOC ends.

I think we could productively combine this sort of strategy with the general communication one by running a MOOC pilot where we reach out to trainers, librarians, open science ambassadors, software carpentry instructors, and others we know at institutions who are doing this kind of work.

During that trainer pilot we would ask the trainers to:

a. go through the material,
b. help improve 1+ section of it,
c. design an event template for the crowd they normally work with using some of the material from the
MOOC, and
d. (optionally) plan/publicize a schedule of local events to assist individuals on campus who want to
participate in the general MOOC.

That way we spread the word about the MOOC, get additional expert feedback on the material, generate a set of ideas for how to present the material in a local setting, and get some people on the calendar running these sorts of events during the time frame when the global MOOC will first run.

[Protohedgehog]

Any thought on this, @wikey? :) https://howto.p2pu.org/

[wikey]

I think their "learning circles" approach is a strong one and reflects years of trying to get these kinds of distributed courses together. That is a big inspiration for the kind of distributed group approach I'm in favor of for this MOOC. My personal experience with P2PU as a platform is that there is not really a community there. I think the EdX and just the existing website are going to be more effective at reaching the open science community.

[Protohedgehog]

Thanks for the feedback, @wikey! It looks pretty good for a first stab.. :) https://opensciencemooc.github.io/course-in-a-box/modules/5.%20open%20research%20software%20and%20open%20source/main-1/

[wikey]

That is pretty shiny. I've got nothing against the group, who seem like good folk, or the static site templates. I would just consider them as more of an element in a publishing tool chain rather than an existing community or a platform for outreach. The various edX and other MOOC-branded platforms have active communities that might find this course only because you set it up there and they provide some course-ware like tools and capabilities, even if just for simple things like quizzes. I agree that you can and absolutely should do that on a self-contained static site, but that seems like a separate question from the outreach strategy.

[Protohedgehog]

Ah yes, so we do have a comms/outreach strategy, and are going to work with university organisations (in the EU initially) to help deliver the program into graduate schools. I'm in the process of establishing some sort of committee to help with this too.

So, I guess this is all about creating an entirely new community around the MOOC then? I'm kinda happy with that, I think.

[BieTanjade]

The way that communities in and around MOOCs are going right now, I would absolutely support a two tong strategy: * Focus on deliver content to a wide audience on providers with a big marketshare (e.a. Coursera right now is 33 milj people), possibly even several platforms (Edx, Futurelearn). You can also employ the help of the MOOC search engine site MOOC Central to direct traffic. * Create a permanent community outside the MOOC platform that services all your community needs (because the MOOC platform will not). You can direct learners from the MOOC to your community in relatively easy fashion (announcements, readings in the course).

…

________________________________ From: Jon Tennant [notifications@github.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2018 8:28 PM To: OpenScienceMOOC/Main Cc: Bie, T. de; Assign Subject: Re: [OpenScienceMOOC/Main] How do we engage with and support participants? (#12) Ah yes, so we do have a comms/outreach strategy, and are going to work with university organisations (in the EU initially) to help deliver the program into graduate schools. I'm in the process of establishing some sort of committee to help with this too. So, I guess this is all about creating an entirely new community around the MOOC then? I'm kinda happy with that, I think. — You are receiving this because you were assigned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#12 (comment)>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/Ad5TnAtr6tTNBFhXuXQ0_jQOiAgMX3KBks5uVYvOgaJpZM4VW6kf>.

[wikey]

Absolutely. Market within platforms for the audiences but keep your own independent web presence.

Working with academic institutions to get the MOOC content out there seems like a great path. My impression is that what that will look like in practice is the institutional ambassadors will either 1) simply advertise on campus for the public MOOC on whatever platform or 2) they will adapt some of that material and incorporate it into their existing training and workshop offerings during the year.

I think there is significant benefit to be gained by treating (2) as the goal because the live workshops will increase active participation, those participants will have local support, and because having these skilled ambassadors adapt the MOOC material will result in lots of new material that can be shared with other institutions who want to get involved.

If we want these kinds of ambassadors to engage with the MOOC material and adapt it for their institutional workshops/study groups/etc, then it could be really effective to engage them in a separate run-through of the material as preparation for launching the content globally. Think of it as the Open Science MOOC version of a data/software carpentry trainer session. We get folks from the institutions to participate over a semester in reviewing the content, expanding the content, and building some adaptation of that content that they might want to run locally. All of that material gets shared back with the other participants and everyone is now primed to run local events and support local participants in the following term when the newly polished Open Science MOOC launches for global participation.

[jgmac1106]

This again is why I think plain HTML copies of MOOC content is the best way to get the content out there to as many universities as possible. Be platform agnostic. HTML can go into any LMS out there. So what ever platform you choose try to make an HTML and possible markdown copy available.

Be careful of mission scope. Teach the class in the open. Remember Massively modifies open, not size.

Worry about developing ambassador programs later.

If you do it right you don’t need a program. DS106, CLMOOC CK08-14 #RhiZO15 these classes have no formal ambassador programs but live on.

Though do be aware that many of these are driven by celeb culture. Whether it’s Harvards cop science class, or big names in an industry…

Building guest lectures with recognizable figures may improve content and outreach.

It isn’t an ambassador program it’s “Community is the Curriculum”

(Originally published at: http://jgregorymcverry.com/6316-2/)

[Protohedgehog]

@wikey You read my mind! So yes, those two options are what I was thinking of too. And having institutes be able to define their own 'pathways' based on subsets of the MOOC modules as needed. And yes, I was hoping on setting up something like a monthly MOOC hackathon/workshop/sprint where users/learners/trainers could come together and adapt the content to suit their own needs too. As all the content is open, it could be as easy as forking the relevant repos and going from there. Any thoughts on a service that might help to streamline that service would be great! I think having local units working on things like this, with the option of remote participation, would be awesome.

@jgmac1106 Thanks Greg! Yes, the content is available primarily in markdown and iPython notebook format atm, but the transfer to html from that is fairly simple, I think. Thank goodness for pandoc. These are all wonderful points to consider too, thank you! :)