MOOCs are Massive Open Online Courses, they are educational materials arranged in to a course aimed for a specific learning objective that have unlimited scalability and are available online, available without need of pre-requisites (Haynes 2015). MOOCs available from the key providers, like Coursera, Khan Academy and EdX, are usually courses designed and produced from industry experts or academics.
Hosting a site with a large database that can handle large volumes of students can have issues and costs. In relation to management and maintenance, the large numbers of students one needs to implementing mechanisms for student support and feedback along with a plan for marking assessments on a ratio of many students to few administrators. A MOOC can be a gateway for huge scale communication and collaboration between learners that can be utilised to cope with the scale via peer review, assessment and support. An open course is not fulfilled just by being online, the course needs to be designed to reduce barriers for the user, even if not everyone interprets open in MOOC to mean ‘available for all’. To be totally open all languages would have to be catered for, all internet bandwidth considered, completely free and enrolment without any discrimination. This is a difficult label to attain however, compromises and using tools available can help find a balance between cost, user needs and course design. The course, resources, tuition and assessment should be hosted online; supplying direct links to online resources and choosing small browser friendly resources can help to reduce the strain on the servers. Assessment and completion certification can be online, however for some course providers there is optional additional offline assessment, if it awards credit from a university. A course is forms a series of classes or study module on a subject, typically leading to an exam or qualification. There are many variations depending on your design, tailoring delivery, content and assessment. The online platform adds new opportunities for expansion but also adds limitations. The exam or qualification can be a difficult element in online distance learning however, there are many ways to test and verify a student knowledge and engagement.
MOOCs differ from Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in the way the learning resources are utilized. VLEs are platforms to assist in blended learning, resources to support classroom learning, where without classroom learning the learning objectives could not be fulfilled with the resources on the VLE alone. MOOCs are packaged and presented to be a complete whole, the resources and information provided linking the resources produce the course in its entirety and will fulfil the objective as a package. One could argue that a course without assessment is not a complete course, and many MOOCs do not supply assessment, or even criteria for self-assessment. VLEs provide a platform for expert/teacher and student to hold supporting course material digitally, but the VLE is presented as part of a whole.

Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (Yuan & Powell 2013) recently reviewed MOOCs and found many benefits that they can give if utilized properly. From an educator’s point of view, they can be used by HEIs as part of the course provision by adopting blended learning, and their presence can be a trigger for discussion for universities to re-evaluate current pedagogy. From a business or revenue perspective they can be excellent tools for cheap analytics on course format, material and desirability; as well as being a way to promote the brand of the provider and connect with other companies and intuitions. Then for a learner’s benefit an archive of MOOCs or provider of MOOCs can allow students long distance, flexible learning which is available to enable people to become ‘lifelong learners’.

Many MOOCs are designed in an instructivist pedagogical approach which are known as xMOOCs, it makes sense it is a popular format as they are often direct adaptations of lectures or training courses; the polar opposite of are cMOOCs, these adopt a connectivist approach that are collaborations between users to share educational material and usually depend on peer review (Haynes 2015). Even though these are prominent design approaches there are many more which people have discovered and experimented with, however due to the level of customisation the format allows most MOOCs become a hybrid of different types (Anders 2015).

Teaching philosophies and styles create different pedagogical approaches to teaching, format and content; instructivist and connectivist mentioned are two of the most common approaches but there are many more. JISC (Mayes & de Freitas 2004) outline a few e-learning theories and approaches.
Instructivist that comes from associationist/empiricist psychological theories with elements of behaviourism and connectionism (neural networks). Often assumed to be a teacher-centred practice, the focus is more on the structure and sequence of delivery of teaching. As a course designer, the components of a course, the tasks, are scrutinized and organised into sequences, with clear layout of pre-requisite dependencies and progression. The journey for a student through a topic would be a calculated release of the fundamental simple concepts then progressively being taught in a steady incline of complexity. The foundation of this approach is the building of associations in the mind, having the basics being revisited and connected to the more complex components with emphasis on reinforcement via feedback to strengthen the connections. This approach is the most traditional, with the structured content, continual monitoring and reinforcement to improve positive patterns of performance. Something to consider with this approach is it is very controlled, giving the student a set path and needs either personalised or automated feedback considered.

Constructivist pedagogical approach that comes from cognitive psychological theories. Teachers analysing curriculum information structures as concepts, while under the impression that the knowledge is gained as the student processes input into mental models. Constructivism is based on the idea that the mind builds mental concepts with the input gained from educational activities, adapting and shaping the constructs as new experiences unfold. As an approach the students would have lots of practical investigation of topics to form strong tested reliable concepts that are covered in the curriculum, the more exposure the stronger the mental concept. The teaching focus being on refining the metacognitive processes to improve memory and how the student constructs meaning and knowledge in the thoughts, while exposing the student to opportunities to test and develop their knowledge.

Communities of practice pedagogy comes from situative psychological theories. Focuses on how knowledge is circulated socially in the context of community practices, products of which will demonstrate the abilities of successful engaged participants/students.  This leads the goals and design of the curriculum and pedagogy away from granular inspection of tasks towards the overarching patterns of behaviour of successful practitioners/students. This change in approach may lead to more focus in nurturing the collaboration and avenues of facilitated learning instead of the resources, with the idea that a healthy community of peer to peer learning will mean rich and reliable resources will be hunted out, shared and critically analysed by well-equipped social learners.

Mehanna (2004) tested blended learning theory that is a mix of different elements from different pedagogies to suit the needs of the situation, staff and students. With thorough analysis of 29 strategies and pedagogic behaviours, 3 categories arose:  Cognitive, Meta-Cognitive and Self-System. Promoting a pedagogical approach to e-learning and teachings of complementarity blend of behaviourism and constructivism and cognitivism. Findings suggest eLearning can benefit from considering a range of pedagogies, supported by the strong positive correlation with students’ learning and the course outcomes.  These findings provided solid evidence that ‘blending’ different learning theories and pedagogies was practical and beneficial.

Margaryan, Bianco & Littlejohn (2014) address the lack of research into instructional theory and research regarding MOOCs. They indicate that most studies gathered data as qualitative opinions of participants rather than pedagogical or instructional experts or objective results. Their study covered 76 courses across a sample of different MOOCs; the design of each was then evaluated against the ‘first principles of instruction’. The ‘first principles of instruction’ are outlined by Merrill (2013) by synthesising the prescriptive elements of instructional design from different sources.  In response to pedagogical design theories Merrill (2013) states that the design and theories require foundations in ‘experience or empirical research to be valid’. Merrill’s research into many different theories and designs resulted in these predominant principles that emerged: 1) Problem-centred 2) Activation 3) Demonstration (show me) 4) Application (let me) 5) Integration. Merrill then goes on to explain some key theories that reflect and support elements of his 5 principles. Margaryan, Bianco, Littlejohn (2014) tested 5 additional principles constructed by Margaryan in 2008; collective knowledge, collaboration, differentiation, authentic resources and feedback. The findings of the in-depth analysis of the courses in respect of the 10 principles resulted in finding ‘limited evidence of first principles of instruction’, there wasn’t one that evidenced all 10 principles, out of 72 points none scored higher than 28; summarised as ‘instructional design quality of MOOCs is essentially low.’ The research covered comes as a product of overviewing many designs, theories, MOOCs and pedagogical views, as a core basis, to validate these the supporting studies should be addressed to verify them. The principles are founded in intellectual consideration and have been crafted in different ways, there is benefit in checking the physiological supporting evidence.

Problem-centred, is progressing through problem-solving tasks to towards succeeding at a real life, achievable task. Worth noting if problem solving is integrated into learning it is advisable to add or allow utilization of external memory aids, ‘Such tools augment our limited short-term memory and our limited ability to imagine manipulating problem elements.’ (Jeff Johnson, 2010)

Activation, utilizes the learner’s previous experience to use as a platform in which to attach new knowledge to; making it a tool to remember via recall. Same sentiment is the core to Piaget’s (1952) ‘assimilation’; which is when the mind develops a schema for an experience that then becomes the basis for similar encounters in the future. This platform then adapts and forms when this schema does not work, ‘accommodation’, then the new knowledge builds on and modifies the schema.

Demonstration to give guidance towards application, solution and relevant resources. Liang et al (2007) verifies that recognition is easier than recall; active demonstration is better than description or block of text to memorise. Jeff Johnson (2010) gives 4 elements that impacts our ability to learn from experience: generalization, influence from friends and family, objectively learning from own actions and overgeneralization. The 3rd element explains that you cannot see or recall the cause and effect of you own actions, so to bypass this issue seeing someone else perform the action will make the cause and effect more evident and easier to learn from.

Application, the recall of material and use of the knowledge towards different situations and examples, putting what is learnt into practice while instructor progressively reduces aid. Jeff Johnson (2010) states ‘Even insects, mollusks, and worms, without even an old brain—just a few neuron clusters—can learn from experience’ so acting on knowledge is the most natural way to learn.

Integration encourages the sharing, exploration and utilisation of new knowledge as a natural part of their lives. This principle is reinforced by neurophysiological studies showing memories activate neurons which in turn can trigger to overlapping neurons; this can be seen using ‘electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy (fMRS) (Jeff Johnson, 2010). The more overlapping of neural pathways, by associating your knowledge with other memories, means it is easier to trigger, meaning easier to recall. Neural pathways can be easier to trigger due to having many over lapping or connecting pathways or by re-triggering the pathway multiple times. By taking knowledge learnt and implementing it with new scenarios, associating it with new people, objects and events, the neural pathway for memory of that event is not only revisited but connected with other pathways.

Collective knowledge, the open sharing and amalgamation of learning materials, consumed and provided by the learner. Weinschenk (2009) proves that you learn information from people you relate closely with better than sources you are not familiar with, so we can derive from this that learning is improved if the knowledge is sourced from your peers, friends and family. Jeff Johnson (2010) states that overgeneralization is a natural way to learn and build on previous knowledge however he says it’s important to not generalize on just one example, or from atypical examples. Collaborative pool of knowledge can encourage many variations on examples to ensure generalization is formed with sufficient input.

Collaboration, working together with peers inside or outside the course, to cooperatively complete learning objectives or tasks. Weinschenk (2009) proves that friends and family impact how well we learn and what we learn; this shows that if you relate closely with your peers then learning with them and from them is an effective tool. Considering this it may be efficient to bond with peers prior to learning or group people with similar interest and traits to improve learning.

Differentiation, variation in resources and pathways to provide choice to suit different learner goals and needs. BBC Active outlines that this choice of pathways is to accommodate different personalities, preferences, capabilities and temperaments of students. It’s understandable that choice of resource delivery and teaching method is quite empowering for the student to tailor to their needs and preferences. Differentiation helps fortify the signature nature of MOOCs as highly accessible, which comes from the Open element.

Authentic resources, real life applicable, relatable examples and resources. Relatable examples allow learning material to utilise pre-existing strong neural pathways by connecting the new concepts to old memories (Johnson, 2010); these associations become stronger and easier trigger, causes the new information to be revisited frequently reinforcing neural networks improving memory. This can also bring in emotive associations which can be positive or negative reinforcements; e.g. if you learn a math problem with examples about buying ice-cream, then the happy memories of ice-cream may be triggered when solving those math problems

Feedback, expert guidance, support and moderation of work. Hattie & Timperley (2007) devised four levels that influence feedback’s effectiveness, task level, process level self-regulation level and self level. Task level feedback can be instruction to validate their conclusions, encouraging the student to search for more supporting information to their work. Process level feedback is the student’s processing of information, or learning processes to help them shape their ideas and articulate intent and meaning. Self-regulation feedback level, building reflection skills and confidence to tackle a task. This can have huge influence on autonomous efficacy, regulation, and giving the student positive self-beliefs about themselves as learners. Self level feedback can be personal compliment to the student, often unrelated to performance. After thorough review of many sources and studies Hattie & Timperley (2007) came to find feedback gives direction and baring to the receiver of the feedback as the giver implies expectations and guidance. Feedback was found to increase effort, engagement and motivation leading to an increase in cue-searching and reduction in discrepancies.

The Principles reviewed highlight ones verified by scientific and psychological research are Demonstration, Integration, Collective Knowledge, Collaboration, Authentic Resources and Feedback. It has been advised for the principles reviewed and other pedagogical and design guidance to not use principles in isolation. The principles which have been verified can be combined and paired to not only ensure that when used they are used together but also to enhance the effectiveness of the impact when implemented. If a list of 10 principles are given then a reader may pick and choose which to use and which to ignore; to combine them, thus shortening the selection a reader may be more inclined to utilise them all. Reviewed the principles are consolidated into: Authentic Relatable Demonstration, Collaborative Integration (which in digital implementation will encompass Collective Knowledge) and Feedback. These the construction of these 3 principles come at the sacrifice of limiting the components implementation, but for the purposes of enhancing experience of each for the user the combination is justified.

There are different ways to tackle the design of a MOOC, from using formulas that a lecturer would use for a HEI setting to letting it grow organically from the community. Clive Shepherd (Hubbard 2013) covered exposition, guided discovery and exploration. Exposition is the top-down expert to novice information flow of knowledge. Guided discovery is a framework and signposts are set to set a path to certain learning objectives. Exploration is where an objective is set, but then little or no guidance or constraints are given to the learner.

There are considerations for teachers to make in creation of online courses which are advised that also support the principles chosen. Starkey (2012) adapted the ideas of Shulman (1987) covering comprehension, enabling connections, teaching and learning, reflection and new comprehensions. Ensuring subject key concepts and principles and the subject methodologies are considered. The staff have routes in which to review student progress records, while having resources that encourage students to make and share their own connections that they make within the content; the course should enable the exchange of knowledge between peers. Evaluation and feedback with tailored assessment and review methods, adapted to reflect the class culture and needs. Reflection on the course and design decisions in regards to performance, professional advice and student feedback, these reflections should also consider new ideas about the subject and academic research of best practices.

In undertaking the task of designing an online learning system, especially a MOOC where there are huge demands as the ratio of pupil to educator can be excessive requiring a “distribution of labour” (Wiley, 2002). MOOCs being massive and open means potentially unlimited number of students, this leads to a requirement of implementing automated feedback and utilizing peer review processes. Automated feedback is limited, although suitable for clear cut multiple choice questionnaires and giving badges or positive messages for progression like “Well done! You completed section X” there is not much room for specific constructive feedback.  Some topics such as sciences can be boiled down to right and wrong answers, however the use of multiple choice questions can lead to cheating the system as the student can guess or use deductive reasoning. There is a way of using fairly accurate automated marking through machine learning ‘Automated Essay Scoring’ (AES) that Balfour (2013) reviewed in comparison, explaining that a computer is fed 100 example assignments which have been marked to use as a basis for marking the others automatically. This is a desirable implementation for MOOCs, but only in the right circumstances, able to mark assignments on mass reduces the work load for the staff however it will not be able to evaluate the quality of the writing, just the context; limited feedback to the content itself will not help develop the understanding of the concepts and remove the option for proactive discussion of the marking. Peer review/feedback/assessment can give personalised feedback and reinforcement, this can be allowing discussion, review comments, collaborative group work or peer assessment where students mark other students work formally. For formative assessment and feedback there are many informal formats in with peer assessment can be implemented, then instructors need to find creative ways of encouraging the discussion. Summative being the measure of proficiency and usually counting towards certification there needs to be education of marking and standards. In peer assessment, the student must learn how to mark, understand the mark scheme/rubric, build critical analysis skills and learn how to give constructive feedback, that are all useful skills. Practice in marking and learning the content so to be able to mark to a high standard ensures the student learns as they mark, being able to reflect and build their own ideas with exposure to others. There should be carrot or stick with peer assessment, either part of the grade/assessment/qualification is the ability to do peer-assessment or content/marks/certificates are withheld without adequate participation.