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It can be difficult for some to tell the difference between an online course and a MOOC - a Massive Online Open Course - but there are differences. Primarily these differences fall into two issues: audience and access. Often an online course, if created by an institution is meant primarily for students and there is some kind of access barrier; like requiring a institution login. If the course is not made by an institution the difference is more likely to be related to payment. Access to a MOOC requires no payment (although some may debate this). Sometimes, you will find that MOOCs will allow you to audit a course for free (consume the information) but if you want the certificate of completion, you will need to pay for that. This post is aimed at helping those who would want to create a MOOC for their subject. Definition of MOOC A MOOC is an acronym for a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and this means (is, by definition) that they are: Online courses accessible with computer and internet connection Accessible barrier-free (no need to wait to be accepted by an institution, no pre-requisites, no fees, etc.) Open to anyone (the numbers are not capped) 8 Main Considerations for Creating a MOOC There are a lot of different decisions that need to be made before the first paragraph of your course is made but do not let that stop you from pursuing creating a MOOC if you really believe that it is something that the audience wants and needs. MOOCs are very good at being an introduction to a specific topic that may lead learners to deeper investigations into the topics they cover. 1. Audience Determining who the audiences are for your MOOC is one of the first decisions you need to make. This will determine how you write it, the visuals you use, the interaction that might be wanted, what kind of assessments you need, etc. During our research, we found that the audiences of MOOCs have shifted over the past decade - away from the education market to professional learners looking to achieve professional and career growth. This is because of the need to constantly adapt to the changing job market. Once you have determined your audience(s), make sure to begin to think about marketing. How does your audience want to learn about this course? Doing research into how they use social media, how they usually consume (online) courses, where they “gather” is so important for your course to actually have an impact. 2. Platform There are many platforms out there but most of them have been developed by engineers centered around functionalities rather than the needs of the users’ experiences. Many of these platforms have settled into a very familiar setup - left hand accordion navigation with text, videos, or photos in the centre-right position. The open-source platform that was utilised for the Service Design Sprint MOOC and it has been created and is developed in the University of Helsinki. This makes the platform local and meets many of the requirements surrounding data processing which can be problematic with some of the other, even more popular, platforms. The learning curve for this platform is quite reasonable and it is quite adaptable. 3. Content Writing in a tone that you would like to be taught in and that the content requires is important. One of your first content decisions will require you to decide if you will include videos or not. Some courses are just text based like the Service Design Sprint course is. Others determine that video should be the delivery method. If you decide to create videos you will need to determine how they will be produced and, if there are updates in the future, how you will update them. For us one of our decisions was that having a text-based course would be easier in the long run to update and iterate when needed. Video, while undoubtedly more engaging, involved many people and many skills when an update or an iteration on the content needs to happen. Another decision that you will need to make for the content is how academically rigorous will it be and adjacent to that, how will you use references/cites in the course. You will always want to make an accurate and factual course but you also need to balance that with the experience the user has. This means readability, understandability, clarity, etc. This again will depend on the audience that you defined earlier. If people will primarily use the course as a stepping stone to the next level, then it is important to reference well and thoroughly but if your goal is to have people understand the topic and implement the learnings fairly immediately, academic referencing can be done in a less distracting way so as not to interrupt the flow of learning. 4. Accessibility Accessibility can be seen from different perspectives, from a disability perspective, to a timing issue, to where it exists online. Accessibility in terms of being useable by all is another big decision and may need an additional specialist that can help design for accessibility. A good UX/UI designer will know how to make the course better accessible to everyone. The timing of the course is an early decision you need to make and there are two choices: the course will open and close on certain dates or it will be continuously open. This impacts how people find and do your course. And finally, where your course will live online. This depends on the platform that you choose and will determine if you have direct access to update your course or if you need help from the platform to make those changes. 5. Visual identity Visuals are an important part of a course. As mentioned, the course we created was text based and while this was a deliberate decision, it also meant that we needed to really consider the visual element we wanted to add. The balance we needed to keep was one of engaging but not distracting. Visuals that added to the content but that did not take away from it. The human brain “processes visual content 60,000 times faster than text”1. This is why visual elements help process the information and can also be a distraction. It is very important that any visuals used reflect the concepts that you are trying to communicate in your content. Otherwise, the student may wonder how it relates and think that they are not understanding properly. This becomes a huge distraction. 6. Interaction Will the students interact with a lecturer? Will the student interact with each other? If they interact with each other, will this course be done in cohorts? There are many questions to answer in terms of interaction as this will determine how much time it will take to administer at any given time. For peer-to-peer interaction, it often requires a 3rd party platform to add that functionality. So you need to see what options the platform that you are using - whether this is built-in or if it requires you to connect the two systems somehow. This functionality would also require moderation and interaction by the lecturer as it is likely that there will be questions that cannot always be answered peer-to-peer. For student/lecturer interaction, including certain kinds of assessments (see below), this is also a discussion that needs to be had with the platform provider. 7. Credits For institutions in Finland, recording credits is an important funding consideration. Credits are also important for any students who wish to take the course. But not all participants in a MOOC will need credits. What they might all want is a certificate of completion. For some, this is recognition enough. But your user research will tell you what your audience would like and need. For a MOOC, students (whether at your institution or another Finnish institution) are not necessarily the main audience for a MOOC. This makes credits not as clear cut a decision. There will be some set up time for creating pathways to obtain credits but if you know the process, it isn’t too difficult. 8. Assessment The assessment will be determined by the audience you are serving. It will also depend on the platform that you have chosen. There will be limitations in each platform to the types of assessment that you can do. One of the bigger decisions that you need to make is whether you want students to submit text responses for assessment. The outcome of open text is that there will need to be someone who reads, assesses, and returns those. It may also be possible to set up a separate assessment process for those who want to take the course for credits or if you want to include the MOOC inside another course that you are teaching. Since not all people will want or need actual ECTS credits, requiring them to participate in more rigorous assessment may be a deterrent to their participation. This is just something to keep in mind as you make these decisions. Creating Metropolia's Next MOOC These 8 guidelines were the outcome of the most recent MOOC created at Metropolia - Service Design Sprint (in English) or Palvelumuotoilun sprint (in English) - with a Ukrainian version under development. The creation of this MOOC was part of the project that saw funding become available because of Helsinki Region’s designation as a European Entrepreneurial Region (EER) through Uudenmaanliito 2021-2023. From Metropolia’s perspective, it aimed to create access to knowledge about modern business development to local small and middle-sized entrepreneurs (SMEs) in the post-covid recovery period. But we can take the lessons learned from this project and create a collection of MOOCs on various subjects at Metropolia. By making your course more accessible and relatable, both content-wise and visually, more people will complete your course and be inclined to pursue the topic more. Impact like this is what all course creators are looking for. It is the kind of learning that will help RDI teams to spread their knowledge to the surrounding society and possibly have an impact even beyond. Author Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. With a Bachelor’s from Canada, a Master’s degree from Sweden, an MBA in Service Innovation & Design from Laurea, and her AmO from Haaga-Helia, she is interested in purposefully designed experiences that are centred around the user. Don’t be surprised if she knocks on your door to talk about learning co-creation methods through intensive learning experiences. Source Thermopylae Sciences & Technology 2014: Humans process visual data better (t-sciences.com)