Presentation by Brandon Muramatsu, Jeff Merriman and Cole Shaw at the Learning with MOOCs Workshop in Cambridge, MA on August 13, 2014

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BACKSTAGE
What’s Behind the Curtain
Brandon Muramatsu, Jeff Merriman & Cole Shaw
MIT Office of Digital Learning

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The Problem
• MIT Faculty are investing heavily in content
development (notes, videos, assessments) for edX and
OCW delivery.
• Ideally, MIT should manage these resources and make
them available as needed to our community for re-use.
• Solution must…
–Support integration with edX, OCW and others
–Be adaptable to new technologies and market products
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Current Development Workflows
3
Stellar
Course
…
Course
Site
Other MIT
Support
Faculty
ProductionMIT Course
Class
Only
MITx (edX)
Production
MITx MITx on
edX
MIT Course for edX
OCW Course (Scholar)
OCW
Production
OpenCourseWare OCW
…
MIT Course
MIT Course from Stellar
MIT Course from Prof.

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Possible Future
4
MIT Digital Learning
Infrastructure
MIT Content
Repositories
…
MIT
Courses
Context
Experiences
MIT Course on
Stellar
MIT Context+
Repositories
…
OpenCourseWare
MITx Course on edX
New Destination

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Proposed Solution – Backstage Services
• “Headless” content services with published
APIs
–REST, Python, Java
• Key applications using these services
• Support a developer community
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Backstage Core Service Suite
6
Videos
Assessments
Videos
MIT Educational Content
Related Services
Assets
Applications
Learning
Objectives
• MC3
VCB
Producer
Assessment
Tools
MIToces
PRISM

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Producer – Asset Management for Reuse
• Motivation
–Support content reuse in MITx (edX) content
workflow
–Ease content search and integration
–Explore alternative authoring tools for edX delivery
• Status
–Proof-of-concept being tested
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Producer and Backstage Services
8
Videos
Assessments
Videos
Assets
Learning
Objectives
• MC3
Online Course Platforms
Producer

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Assessments
• Motivation
–Manage, share and author assessment items
–Track usage and IRT data across assessment offerings
–Implement APIs for taking as well as managing/sharing
• Status
–Proof of concept drag-and-drop authoring tool (demo)
–App to Embed Assessments (QTI assessment items)
–Physics Question Bank (PQB) under development
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Assessment Backstage Services
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Drag and Drop edX assessment
item authoring
Assessments
Videos
Assets
Learning
Objectives
• MC3
Assessment
Authoring

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Video Concept Browser – Browse Video by Concept
• Motivation
–Enable better use of whole-class lecture video (60-
90 minutes) by segmenting by concepts/topics
–Pre-production for MOOC courses
• Status
–App to browse lecture videos by concepts (demo)
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VCB and Backstage Services
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Assessments
Videos
Assets
Learning
Objectives
• MC3
VCB
Navigate course video by concept
or learning outcome

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Discussion Questions
• How are you reusing course content?
– Between MOOCs
– From existing sources, LMS/VLE, OER, etc.
– What tools are you using?
• Are you tracking data about asset effectiveness?
– E.g., Did learners have difficulties answering a particular question
correctly? Did learners skip materials? Etc.
• Does your course include learning outcomes and
transparently link outcomes with content and assessments?
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BACKSTAGE
The End!
Brandon Muramatsu, mura@mit.edu
Jeff Merriman, merriman@mit.edu
Cole Shaw, cjshaw@mit.edu