Last week I attended a workshop on MOOC (Massive open online course)  hosted by l'Université de Paris 7.

As the term has now become a catch-all for a wide variety of learning products, some time was given to defining some of the major trends, their innovators and the competitive scene. A wide range of products and organisations were cited and experiences shared around the major problem of economic viability.  All in varying proportions combine pedagogy, learning psychology, software, internet dissemination, graphic design and audio/video production.

At my desk, two models are in play.

In collaboration with colleagues at  ACIIC (at the University of Sydney, Australia), I am developing a platform and content for a Masters program module.

 It benefits from the rich social networking and remote delivery capability of the Internet. However, it is not massive and is only partially open.
The approach taken, while still relatively costly, can be self financing because it is being delivered on a fee for service basis that could be extended as a module to  courses in other Universities, gaining some economies of scale.
The platform is in three components:-
A registration,access, identification and security module written in php and using MySQL
Lectures delivered in real time via Skype or on demand via YouTube 
Student interaction and group task sessions coordinated in Wordpress.

The other model is an historic tale which may still have some resonances with contemporary issues of the commercial viability of MOOC strategies.

Back in 1985, before the Internet and its social networking and even Windows, a small group in Australia ( the Computer Learning Centre)  was established to explore the potential of the desk top computer as a learning tool. On hearing of the techniques that have now been applied to the self-paced individual modules that are being deliver in large volumes globally, it seemed to me useful to revisit this work. The principles of interactive presentation flow with variable pathways selected by tests and the remote logging of student behaviour and most of the current teaching approaches were conceived and incorporated in the CLC product.
The people involved were George Kelen, a cardiologist with experience in writing high integrity software for implantable medical devices; Ralph Tobias with a much respected history in the public service of commercialisation of technology and myself who funded the exercise and created the education methodologies. The product is described in this brochure .
From the Technical Specification one can see how today's needs in MOOC were anticipated and also how the limitation of the computers of the day were overcome to enrich the presentation of material.
In the light of today's viral take up of these techniques, one can ask why it did not take over the world.  The first reason was simply that in the absence of the internet its delivery scope was limited. The second reason, which listening to speakers at the workshop is still with us, is that the cost of producing presentation material to the standards expected by those exposed to the visual media, is incompatible with their perceived value of education.  Today, we are seeing models that overcome this by philanthropy, funding from mainstream education budgets, sale of ancillary components like books and charging a fee for accreditation.  What dis we decide to do?  We looked around for situations in which education had a high monetary value to someone, not necessarily the students.   At that time foreign companies bidding for government contracts in Australia were required to provide "Offsets" in the form or work done in Australia or the export of Australian production. One such organisation, Sperry Ltd. was a US computer manufacturer which provided the IT used by the State Rail Authority of New South Wales. They were given a license to use the product themselves. Jointly we used it to teach "Safe Working" to the SRA personnel and to control a simulator, aircraft style, to cut the cost of training train drivers.  The market was not ready and the three founders were drawn back into their separate specialisations and we chose not to go further. More than a decade later, AMP then the largest non banking financial institution in Australia fell foul of the industry compliance watchdog over the inappropriate marketing of certain retail financial product. An ingenious legal counsel negotiated with the watchdog a settlement based around the application of a similar computer training tool. By then networking in place in large organisations and he agreed to provide trainingg to all of several thousand employees in the correct presentation of this class of product to act as a model for the industry. Another example of a high perceived value for the training which provided the income necessary to invest in a high quality of presentation. Perhaps this still represents a viable route for some of the many hopeful venture start-ups in the MOOC space?

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Note:
MySQL, Skype, YouTube, Microsoft Windows and Wordpress are all proprietary products with copyright, licensing and reproduction constraints which are defined on their various Web pages.
Sperry merged with Burroughs and became Unisys during this period of collaboration.

Last modified: le 9 Juin 2013