A set of patterns for the structured design of MOOCs

Figures & data

Figure 1. Overview of the participatory pattern workshop methodology with auxiliary support toolkit (Mor et al., 2012).

Table 1. List of MOOC design patterns.

Pattern name	Problem space	Solution statement
Fishbowl	In a traditional classroom setting, learners and teachers will occasionally pause the flow of educational activities and discuss their experiences, expectations, concerns and any issues that have emerged. MOOCs do not have the capacity to entertain such interactions: learners are dispersed geographically, the numbers are too big for synchronous sessions and the teacher to student ratio is such that personal interaction is severely constrained.	Simulate interaction between teacher and students by broadcasting sessions in which selected students act as proxies for the cohort.
Provocative Question	Being present in a synchronous forum can count as participation but active engagement through some kind of interaction is not easy to engender. When you have a live chat room full of lurkers how to you spark activity? And by extension, how can you flow this into an asynchronous online discussion space.	Use a provocative question to help move live debate into student led asynchronous discussion within an online forum.
Chatflow	In an online environment, both synchronous and asynchronous discussions occur. In synchronous discussions it can become difficult for those learners who are unable to participate, as the historic context is often lost. This can limit a learner’s ability to engage with the discussion in a timely fashion as chat or forum posts get pushed down the list and effectively lost.	Use sticky threads in asynchronous discussion fora to help maintain the visibility of key conversations.
Sparking Forum Participation	It is important to help learners overcome their initial reluctance to post or visibly participate in discussion fora. Particularly when collaboration is needed, or co-creation of learning is desired, as well as where interaction serves a supportive social function.	Have learners build group artefacts that can spark discussion forum participation.
Sharing Wall	The large and diverse student groups engaging with MOOC platforms make meaningful discussion difficult because individuals may not get a response to their post. There is a need for a mechanism which will support the sharing of ideas and lead to meaningful discussion.	Use a shared social space to comment on digital artefacts to help coalesce large diverse groups.
Drumbeat	MOOCs are massive and so participants may not feel part of a community. Often they feel their voice is not heard, which may impact on their learning. In other educational contexts learners can have more regular and focussed contact with tutors that can help to overcome this problem.	Use a regular repeating pattern of communication to help establish a sense of community.
Crowdbonding	How do we catalyse the formation of groups from a diverse learner cohort where collaboration is needed, or co-creation of learning is desired, as well as where interaction serves for social cohesion.	Engineer discussion forum threads to encourage desired group formations.
Six Minute Video	You are aware that creating a full-length video of your lecture for online delivery is too demanding, from both a teaching and a student learning perspective. You cannot maintain your enthusiasm and passion for a full hour video and you know that student attention will drop dramatically at various points across a long single recording.	Maintain student attention during content delivery by keeping video material down to six minute chunks.
See Do Share	How do you introduce new concepts, tools or practices, in a way that would be accessible and meaningful, assess learners understanding, and facilitate the emergence of social constructs, with very limited resources and large number of students?	Use structured activities in the form of ‘see, do, and then share’ to make new concepts and practices meaningful to learners in a short time frame.
Knowing The Story	Knowing what to do when studying a complicated discipline at a distance is not easy. There is a meta-narrative to study which encompasses the idea of a journey and transformation. How does the learner understand this to his/her advantage? Inventing a ‘new’ story is not always a useful exercise and may bring the risk of learners becoming lost.	Mark out the beginning, middle and end of your learning journey to help the learner build a pathway through your course.
Bring Them Along	With an open course the diversity of participants’ previous knowledge is likely to be wide and highly variable. If you pitch at the wrong level you will lose people quickly. What can you do to bring along as many people as possible on the journey?	Use pre-introductory materials and pointers to help baseline your learners and increase course engagement.
Scaffolded Mooc	A lot of content already exists on the subject matter and time constraints mean that the amount of effort put into originating new content should be carefully considered.	Spend time to aggregate, evaluate and contextualise open educational resources to avoid reinventing content.
Checkpoints	In a social, non-linear MOOC the interaction between participants is essential to the success of the MOOC. However, participants approach activities in a different pace, and sometimes even a different order, making it hard to synchronise their experiences. Some participants diverge into independent explorations branching out of the MOOC activities.	Use clear breathing spaces to help synchronise the course flow and allow others to catch up and join in.
Adjacent Platforms	If a MOOC platform falls short in technical, quality or for other reasons, what are the available options to mitigate this. For example, in providing an alternative place to share resources or access to bespoke tools to create learning objects.	Use additional platforms to support a MOOC where the central platform’s functionality falls short.
Mooc Legacy	The legacy of a MOOC can extend the openness of a course beyond the assessment/closure point. Closing the course alters its ‘open’ status and therefore creates a legacy format for the course. This ameliorates this problem and facilitates better management of expectations for repeat sessions.	Create an open archive to extend the life of a course beyond its final assessment point or closing week.
Know Your Audiences	The open nature of MOOCs means that the barriers to sign-up are low and therefore virtually anyone can become a participant. Yet when we design a course we often have a particular type of audience in mind. With a MOOC that becomes a difficult task. How do we reconcile design with target audience?	Focus your course by using tools to find out who your learners are and what they bring to the learning journey.
Bend Don’t Break	In a MOOC setting, ‘flexible’ can potentially entail jettisoning the ‘massive’, the ‘online’ and the ‘course’, leaving just the ‘open’. How flexible can a MOOC be before it either disappears, or is spoilt? Which learners do you lose if you aren’t flexible, and what part of MOOC do you lose if you are flexible?	Be clear which parts of your course are flexible, and those that if changed will break your MOOC design.
Facilitating Large Groups	How can we manage large diverse groups to ensure easy participation, inclusivity and valuable discussion?	Use facilitators in discussion fora to help promote learner-learner interactions.
Induction	Learners need to understand how to make the most of the MOOC structure. Learners come from diverse backgrounds, often with very different expectations of and drivers to complete the MOOC.	Provide orientation and guidance to get participants started on a course by creating induction materials.
Engendering Teamwork	A successful MOOC requires a strong team behind it. Teaching the MOOC team to work collaboratively is vital and this includes academics, the learning design team, librarians, media production people and legal services.	Build, plan and structure the team to ensure successful MOOC development and delivery.

Figure 2. Design pattern mapping showing the overlapping design domains.

Table 2. MOOC design patterns organised by design domain.

Structure	Bring Them Along; Scaffolded Mooc; Checkpoints
Orientation	Induction; Bend Don’t Break; Know Your Audiences
Participation	Fishbowl; Provocative Question; Chatflow; Sparking Forum Participation; Sharing Wall
Learning	Facilitating Large GROUPS; Know The Story; Six Minute Video; See Do Share
Community	Crowd Bonding; Drumbeat;
Management	Engendering Teamwork (a meta pattern that covered the development and management of a MOOC team).

Figure 3. A six-step design model indicating an entry point for design pattern use.

Mor, Y., Warburton, S.,& Winters, N. (2012). Participatory pattern workshops: A methodology for open learning design inquiry. Research in Learning Technology, 20, 19197. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.19197.

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