[MUSIC] This is another case that is not uncommon today in the higher education environment. The case when the courses and instructor of an institution wants to teach a MOOC. It's very likely that you will find an instructor that will approach you and say, I am ready to create a MOOC, can you help me? And in some cases, I'm going to use an example of an instructor who has taught Fundamentals of Management for ten years and wants to teach a MOOC. The instructor will ask, can you help put that online? Doing a need assessment for the college course that will become a MOOC is not so straightforward as a need assessment for a similar course that will be part of a regular online program. When the move is from face-to-face to online, there are several things that need to be assessed and reviewed. But they are usually related to context, to resources, and the environment. Both courses, the face-to-face and online, are part of the university curriculum, and they are prepared for specific learning profile. When converting a regular course, either face to face or online to a MOOC, then you find that there are many unknowns, like the little information you have about the audience, for example. For starters, a MOOC is not part of a curriculum. And then converting a class to flipped or online, there is information about the context, the environment, and the learners that the instructional designers use to help to determine the tasks and design that will be more appropriate. For the design of a MOOC, the information about the learning context and the learning environment may not differ much from the information you receive from a traditional online course. However, the learner's analysis may be more of a challenge. The concept of the target population for a MOOC becomes way more broad. And identifying who are the learners, who is the target population, will require exploring new data sources that may not be available in the college or from the instructor. In a broad sense, you need to know, who are the learners? What do the learners that come to take this course want? What is their expectation? Why would they be taking a course like this? What's their motivation? Is it possible that different cultures may have different expectations of specific subjects? For example, management or leadership, those concepts may be very different in different cultures. Another thing to consider is, what do the learners like when they take courses like this? What type of activities or content do they appreciate? Another tough question is, what is their skill level? When the course is not part of a curriculum, you don't know who's coming to take this class, that happens in a MOOC. And so understanding what skills they need, or what knowledge, what competencies they need to succeed in this course may be hard. So how can you help with the design of the course to bring their skill level to help them succeed in the course that has been prepared? Another question is, how are the learners different from the regular college learner? So what are the things that an instructional designer can assume? In a business school, the information the business school has about the students who are in the business program, and in every course, is part of a preconceived curriculum or program. You can more easily estimate the characteristic of the learners in such case. In a MOOC, you have to use information about who are the people that take the MOOC. But you will find something like this in a wide range of ages, background, interests, cultures, and geographical locations. Then you have to work with what you know. You don't know how much about the learners, but you know you can get information from the instructor. You can get information about the course. You can get information about the course goals and the outline of the topics. And then you will be working with information that you have. So to start the data collection for your need assessment, in the case of creating a course in the MOOC environment, you will always follow what I like to call the four parts of data collection. You will interview. You will observe. You will study documents. You will look at research. And so you can interview the instructor for example. Ask the instructor, why are you teaching a MOOC? Who is this course targeting to? Why would a person want to take this course? How would the knowledge from this course make that person different for the student or the learner that did not take this course? What is this course going to give that learner that will make a difference? That is something that normally the instructor in a college course will not ask, because the courses are within the curriculum. That is different from a MOOC. So the other way to collect information about the instructor is to understand what is his or her teaching styles. How does the instructor approach the subject? What does he or she usually doing the process of presenting new content? What type of examples does the instructor use? How does the instructor connect theory with practice? How does the instructor present himself or herself to the audience is extrovert, is conversational, is controversial, like to tell stories. That information is going to tell you how you can design that course so that the instructor can fit his teaching style in this new environment. Also, you can study some course documents, like what are the goals of this course? how are this course achieved in a regular context? What activities are used to assess learning? And then are self regulated activities that were accurate to measure learning in this particular topic? The other place where you can collect data is from the sponsors, like the university. Why is the university in initiatives like this? You can also explore what other courses has the university put online to see what is there a MOOC strategy from the university? Another place to collect data is the environment. For example, you can find out, in research, information about the MOOC learners. You can explore closely the platform where the course will be hosted to identify its capabilities. You can interview teachers who have taught in the MOOC environment. What have they learned in the process of creating the MOOC? And what have they learned in the process of teaching a MOOC? You can also review documents that will tell you what type of pedagogical strategies work well in this environment. What type of pedagogical strategies help learning and assessment in this course or discipline? And last but not least is the learners. What are the universal truths that people from any culture or demographics would be interested in? What stories could motivate them? What questions could trigger then their interest in the course, or to learn more about this particular subject? What you see here is the learners in a MOOC environment. It's a typical dashboard from a MOOC, from a Coursera course. And here you can see the demographics, the difference. If you look at the image on the right, you see that the students, the learners, are spread all over the world. They come from different backgrounds, they will come with different preparations of the course. But these are things that you cannot easily estimate. The learners in the MOOC environment are very different from the audience you have in a regular university course, in almost every aspect of it. So planning a course, understanding the universal truths, the issues that are common in the discipline, no matter where the learners are from, will help you better engage learners and be motivated to learn and to transfer learning to their realities. So what are the universal truths that people from any cultural and demographics would be interested in? It may so happen that when you observe the instructor teaching the class, the instructor is giving example that are very local or very dependent on the instructor's culture. So when the instructor is preparing to teach a MOOC, it is important to bring up those examples and tell the instructor to think about universal truths or universal stories in which these examples can become a reality or that the learners can relate better to. The other thing that you have to think is, what activities would help basic learner and then more in-depth reflection. What questions or triggers would help learners share and communicate about the topics or issues raised in this course? This information will help you make decisions about the design of the course when you do not have a clear picture of who are the learners. The goals, expectations, and interests of the college and instructors will help you understand what needs to be highlighted in this course. The information about the instructor and the teaching style will help you make decisions about the materials, including the videos that will be prepared. The general information about the learner will help you make decisions about pedagogical strategies that will help learning increase motivation and retention. So in the case of creating a course in the MOOC environment, we have learned that MOOCs are very different from the audience you have in a regular university course, in almost every aspect of it. So planning a course and understanding the universal truths, the issues that are common in the discipline, no matter where the learners are from, will help you better engage learners. And be motivated to learn and to transfer to their realities. In this case, the need assessment made by the instructional designer helped the instructor better prepare for a global new audience. [MUSIC]
