This talk was given at a multiplier event organised by the University of Wolverhampton as part of the MOONLITE project (refugees, languages and moocs). In this presentation I share the experiences and approaches used to design one of the first MOOCs allround, and the first MOOC focused on mobile learning. The presentation looks at pedagogy, technology, community and impact of the course.

1. MobiMOOC: a
community
MOOC on
mobile learning
Inge de Waard

2. MobiMOOC – the facts
Facts Pedagogy Community
Organised
chaos
Technology Unexpected

3. MobiMOOC: what &
when
 A Massive Open Online Course on
the topic of mobile learning
 Pedagogical experimentation:
the format, and the course roll
out
 Using mobile tools (whenever
possible)
 Organised in April/May 2011 and
September 2012
 English as course language

4. MobiMOOC:
why
Mobile learning went
global by 2011,
including tools
(iPhone for Moodle)
Lack of centralized
information on mobile
learning => need to
cluster Open
Educational Resources
Part of a network of
active mobile experts
Personal: I loved
mobile learning, and
believed it was a way
to learn across the
globe, each for our
own benefit as well
as for the ‘greater
good’

5. MobiMOOC who
 1 organizer: Inge de Waard
 1250 learners, 17 facilitators (all volunteers), 9 weeks, 14 mLearning topics
 109 memorably active learners (contributing to the course multiple times)
 Organised online: all preparations, and the course itself

7. Topics covered
 Introduction to sustainable mLearning (Inge de Waard)
 Planning a mobile learning project (Judy Brown)
 Ethics and mLearning (John Traxler)
 mLearning theory and pedagogy (Geoff Stead)
 Global mLearning (John Traxler)
 Corporate mLearning (Amit Garg)
 Activism and community mLearning (Sean Abijian)
 Train the mLearning trainer (Jacqueline Bachelor)
 mLearning for development (Niall Winters & Yshay Mor, Michael Sean Gallagher)
 mLearning health (Malcolm Lewis)
 Augmented learning (Victor Alvarez)
 Gamification and mLearning (David Parsons)
 Leading edge mLearning (David Metcalf)
 Performance support mLearning (Clark Quinn)
 mLearning in K12 (Andy Black)

8. General approach (one week)
 One week focuses on one mLearning topic (simple to complex)
 The facilitator (mLearning expert, with specific expertise in one area)
provides links and resources related to the topic (PDF’s, documents, movies,
audio files, mobile tools) => syllabus
 the facilitator gives a virtual classroom session on their topic of
approximately 60 minutes (live, with Q/A). All sessions recorded & listed.
 Discussions on topic through Google groups.
 At the end of each week a mail covering highlights.

9. Pedagogical choices
Facts Pedagogy Community
Organised
chaos
Technology Unexpected

10. Pedagogical experimentation
 Two different learning paths (linear and tree-like)
 Using a set of mobile tools which learners needed to navigate through
 Offering learners to work on their personal mobile project
 Providing an award (500 $) for winning project (simple gamification)
Week 1 Week … Week 6
Introduction
mLearning
curriculum
Augmented
reality
Gamification
Train the
trainer
Community
action
mLearning
health

11. Creating and clustering Open Educational
Resources (OER) on mobile learning
 For years the MobiMOOC content was OER, and universities have been using parts of these
resources in their mobile learning curricula.
 Companies offering tools failed, so tools were stopped (e.g. wikispaces)
 Time moves on, so OER get dated.

12. Pedagogy – approach and motivation
 Using a connectivism approach: i.e. offering content across platforms
 Strong interaction between facilitators and learners
 Using course badges (lurking participant, moderately active learner,
memorably active learner)
 Offering a signed-by-all-facilitators certificate (for free)

13. Pedagogy: personalisation
 Learners had input into the content that was discussed
 Personal mLearning template for their personal mobile learning challenge:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYdM4tyj_Z4V7yu-
XPuMu0vc91XlviGoWGcXKPscmqo/edit
 Using a tree-like course roll out

14. Gathering the community
Facts Pedagogy Community
Organised
chaos
Technology Unexpected

15. Finding people to facilitate parts of the
course
 All volunteers from my network
 Per week a different facilitator/s focusing on a specific mobile topic
(introducing mobile learning, mobile learning curriculum, mLearning as a
community action tool, teacher training through mobiles, gamification with
mobiles, augmented reality…)
 Actively searching facilitators located in different parts of the world (New
Zealand, US, Spain, Canada, South Africa, UK, Belgium)

16. Learner community
 Gathering learners by word of mouth (network)
 Ensuring learners connected with each other (e.g. interaction was enabled as
much as possible: setting up guidelines for communication, ensuring help was
available to solve tech problems)

17. MOOCs: Appropriateness & Affinity
Of active participants said the MOOC format was
appropriate for their learning communities
Of active participants connected with other
participants to collaborate on projects after
MobiMOOC
90%
42.5%
Accessed MobiMOOC via mobile77.5%
MOOCs: ubiquity through mobile

18. Organising idealistic chaos
Facts Pedagogy Community
Organised
chaos
Technology Unexpected

19. Getting the course
together
 Asking experts to join in this new
online adventure (facilitators)
 Building the overall schedule (based
on content complexity)
 Choosing the tools (trial and error)
 Word of mouth to attract learners
(through our network)
 Putting a lot of time and effort in
(outside of work)

20. Choosing tools:
researching available
resources
 What were the learners using?
 Learning affordances of tools
 Which tools were available
where?
 What type of mobile devices
were supported where?
 What tool would be appropriate
for which learning action (e.g.
twitter for learnchats)

21. Choosing the actual tools
 Wiki-page (wikispaces) as central course landing page
 mobile youtube for sharing webinars
 Slideshare for presentations
 WizIQ for webinars – all recorded
 Google groups for discussions and communication
 Twitter for learnChats and communication
 Google drive for documents (mLearning project template)
 Paper.li for updates of the course, and sharing blogposts
 Facebook community was made, but underused

22. Technological realities & challenges
Facts Pedagogy Community
Organised
chaos
Technology Unexpected

23. Building the course
environment
 Testing various tools, trial and
error
 Finding the right tools by asking
companies (WizIQ)
 Wikipedia page as a central
syllabus and course road map
(wikispaces stopped supporting
pages in 2018)

24. What made
MobiMOOC stand
apart from
current MOOCs?
 More organic in course roll out: less
structured
 Strong connection between facilitators and
learners
 More tailored to demands of the learners
 Using a project template to work on
 The experimentation with pedagogical
approaches (e.g. MOOCs in general – new
at the time, 8th MOOC worldwide)
 Do It Yourself punk approach, no budget,
all at the moment creation
 A mix of facilitators, no big university or
company behind it
 Resulting in Open Educational Resources

25. What didn’t work
 Using online discussion forums: lead to a lot of
spam mail to all participants, but we realized it
only once the course started
 The tree-like course approach did not deliver in
the way I expected, it diluted the learner group
(but I still feel there is something that could be
done if the learner group would have been
larger)
 Providing a fully mobile course (mobile was still
emerging)
 Eliminating chaos: tools were scattered, some
learners reported a feeling of chaos
 Muster the energy to roll it out a third time
(although asked)
 Course badges (the tech was not smooth, so
manual delivery)

26. Unexpected extra’s
Facts Pedagogy Community
Organised
chaos
Technology Unexpected

27. Impact due to timeliness
(and serendipity)
 5 research papers were written following a call for volunteers to co-author on
MobiMOOC (one lead, the rest adding and editing)
 An eBook was written (MOOC YourSelf, sold almost 2000 copies worldwide)
 Co-authors entered into research careers (multiple citations of papers)
 17 mobile learning projects were created and read by all, and a ‘winning project’
was chosen by the learners
 In Argentina a mobile learning R&D was set up based on project template
 A MedEdMOOC was organised by one of the participants (following MobiMOOC)
 MOOC awards were won by learners who replicated the approach in their
community

28. What did I get out of it?

29. In hindsight
A truly great experience, with amazingly many elements of current MOOCs already in
 Understanding the importance of timeliness
 The importance of network with mutual idealism
 The power of Just Doing It
 To do it, even if the odds are against you (no official support)
 Looking at MOOC evolution (platform delivery, scaling the format):
Realizing that the norm takes away part of creativity, but adds structure
 Best results: deciding to do it, and the community which arose

30. Connect
 Ingedewaard at gmail.com
 @Ignatia

31. mLearning template