Research data and MOOCosystems

GPR data from Portus - Jessica Ogden — GPR data from Portus – Jessica Ogden

I’ve spoken at a number of events recently about what I see as the potential for joining up MOOCs in order to create shared curricula. I have for example cross-referenced material in the Archaeology of Portus course to Coursera and Brown’s Archaeology’s Dirty Little Secrets course, and to the Coursera and Yale Roman Architecture course.

In the coming weeks we are going to be encouraging more reconstruction of Portus by learners, and wouldn’t it be amazing if some of the learners on the FutureLearn and Monash Creative Coding course (that started just now and looks fab) began making creative responses to our Portus material as the two courses ran? You’ll see in week five of our course how we use procedural modelling (related to the generative programming described on Creative Coding) to visualise alternative versions of the shipsheds at Portus.

Learners on our course have also cross-referenced to these and to other courses, including discussions of Shakespeare’s references to the Roman world and Roman Emperors in the FutureLearn and Warwick Shakespeare and his world course. This kind of cross-referencing is currently a little limited by the technology – whilst we can provide deep links to specific pages the authentication on the platforms means that mashing-up (to be very old fashioned) of the content is not easy. But it won’t be long. I can certainly envisage the markdown text that lies behind our course being curated into another hybrid course. Whilst I can imagine some resistance to this on the basis that we have all put a lot of effort into structuring coherent courses with a clear progression (of course the reason for the linear structure employed on many MOOC platforms) I can also see the potential in anyone else producing such a linear narrative but blending content from a variety of original courses. Similarly I can imagine courses growing organically, and interlinking in far more creative ways, as other OERs have been for many years.

One way I think such a MOOCosystem (insert sickened air quotes at will) could flourish is by shared or linked research data. An emphasis on open scholarship and in particular open publication and open research data is never far from the MOOC. In preparing our own course we had to consider the publication environment within which our research had been disseminated previously, and also the possibilities for innovation in the future. What excites me most about the next year is the chance for us to share much more of our research data from Portus and feed this back directly into the course. The Archaeology Data Service will be key to this as we deposit our final archive with them, and we have been in discussions for a while about how best to cross-reference our research data to conventional as well as on-line publications.

We just started week three and Kristian Strutt has created an [Advanced] step that allows learners to process a small sample of our geophysics data. By the time the course runs again we anticipate that learners could use this same approach to process, interpret, share their interpretations and comment on others’, but with access to all of the geophysics data from the project. In turn learners will be able to read more of the existing published material (we are working towards more open publication, using both green and gold models in the future and with respect to some of our previous publications), itself linked to the research data behind it. In the next iterations of the course one can envisage the data that are being shared deriving from other related research projects and associated with many courses, each with cohorts of learners enriching the data through their activities.

Of course none of this is revolutionary but as a first time MOOC-educator I am only now starting to realise the immense power of this interconnection of data, publications and open learning. And I still think, as I stated in My Archaeologist is an App, that such an interconnected learning system requires more able, research-led educators rather than less. Glueing all this together, tearing it apart through critique, and taking learners on a journey through heterogeneous resources will always be a challenging and creative task for which academics are well qualified. Putting data at the heart of these courses alongside open methods is going to turn everything upside down.

I really hope you enjoy week three.

7 Responses to "Research data and MOOCosystems"

Felicity Brwon says:

June 2, 2014 at 11:39 am

Graeme – I found this really interesting, thanks for posting. Open data, connectivity between different courses and materials and flexible interdisciplinary approaches that allow for butterfly minds (as mine is) as well as linear learning progression would be brilliant. I understand institutional proprieties (and costs) and concerns but – – –
1. Graeme Earl says:
  
  June 5, 2014 at 8:55 pm
  
  Hi Felicity. Thanks for the comment! Butterfly minds – I’m going to borrow that :-) I get the sense that this is all on the way. The real MOOC community (I’m only a newbie) and the OER and general education technologies communities have of course been developing and evaluating exactly these models for ages. But I think the mooc “hype” has really opened a lot of doors.
  
  And as I have mentioned in previous posts and on twitter and the platform, you really have to be involved in one to appreciate the process and in particular the generosity of the learning community (educators and learners and everyone else involved). A big positive in turn is that it would feel really churlish, and dumb, to then forget about all of that in other aspects of university life. Again, I have been slow to practice what I preach in terms of open data and open publication but things are moving quicker and quicker now. I think the multiple layers of open learning and research that are becoming more and more entwined are getting really exciting now, and the pioneers are being very gracious about it.
  
  I would be really happy if within a year I could see the Archaeology of Portus content embedded in learning in all sorts of contexts, and equally I will be encouraging my own students to bring courses from elsewhere to their own experiences. So in a year’s time you might be doing a course on Hadrian’s Wall, and then seamlessly skip in Portus and back out to a course on Latin and it might work. It might be a confusing mess to begin with but by providing linear routes alongside different learning styles can be supported. Similarly I really hope that the course takes on a life of its own through the additional activities and ideas spread via this blog.
  
  If you have a chance to watch Rome’s Lost Empire on BBC 4 on Saturday feedback how you would want the course and the programme to interact in the future. Thanks again for the comment. Graeme
Dave Hall says:

June 3, 2014 at 8:59 am

This is a fascinating article and it seems as if there are some interesting developments in the pipeline. This seems to give a new dimension to the arts and science debate from Week 1. Now for the question. Where the material is deposited with the ADS will any of this be in the form of Linked Open Data using RDF that Leif Isaksen referred to in his post. I feel that this Linked Open Data could become very significant and I thinking about cases of comparing how the official in charge of Portus and Ostria compares with say the Count of the Saxon Shore.
1. Graeme Earl says:
  
  June 5, 2014 at 9:01 pm
  
  Hi Dave. Thanks for the comment. Yes the ADS are doing extremely exciting things that impact on all aspects of this research-education intertwingling. Once the archive is lodged there will be various routes to make it more accessible. We plan on submitting a data paper for review by Internet Archaeology. Also the ADS have a SPARQL endpoint http://data.archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/page/ that developed from the cool STAR and STELLAR projects. And we have also discussed ways in which we can cross-reference extant and forthcoming printed monographs to the data. And finally any future papers that I produce on Portus will be openly accessible and linkable to the open data. All the best. Graeme
Brenda Burr says:

June 27, 2014 at 5:18 am

The thought that various MOOC courses could be interlinked through ‘advanced’ lessons would certainly be a wonderful outcome for learners and researches. The technology used in this course along with the talented staff should consider all possibilities in the future. Well done to you all for your creative and stimulating course.
Linda Shuttleworth says:

June 27, 2014 at 4:08 pm

I’m currently doing a Coursera course – ‘Deciphering Secrets: Unlocking the Manuscripts of Medieval Spain’ which begins where this course ends, with the decline of the Western Roman Empire, and looks at the Middle Ages in Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic Mediterranean. I’ve also taken another Coursera course – ‘Critical Perspectives on Management’ – where for the first two weeks we looked in depth at how the ancient city of Rome supplied itself with the food its citizens needed to survive, capitalising key markets and solving serious logistical problems to enable a vibrant trading network and grain market across the Mediterranean.

These would be two courses that I think would link well with your wonderful Portus course.
Lois Evans says:

July 1, 2016 at 3:59 pm

This week I completed the course “Archaeology from Dig to Lab and Beyond”; last year the course on Hadrian’s Wall. Interlinking the work of OU, television programmes and other Universities can only be beneficial for all. NB I am not an academic

Comments are closed.