The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm) offers a series of “Open Course” distance learning courses across six major academic content areas (i.e., Management, Science) and cross disciplinary and specialty areas. I chose to review two courses from MIT’s Sloan School of Management because of variations in design and learning tools offered across the two courses. Course one is entitled “Competitive Decision-Making and Negotiation” (
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-067-competitive-decision-making-and-negotiation-spring-2003/index.htm) and course two is entitled “Optimization and Analysis for Manufacturing” (
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-066j-system-optimization-and-analysis-for-manufacturing-summer-2003/). Design differences across these courses are evident immediately as the MIT homepage presents a list of thirteen course characteristics that pertain specifically to resources and more broadly to aspects of the learning experience that impact student engagement. The User-Interface (UI) of the course characteristics was particularly effective as the homepage prominently presented the thirteen characteristics in a legend with meaningful icons. The legend was followed with the corresponding “icon” included as the first piece of data included about each course in a vertical listing of courses by department. This design format provide students with clear and repeated information about the course characteristics that inform the decision making process based on student interest and learning preferences.
I personally believe that there is a balance that must be attained when designing courses that meet the student’s need and also optimizes the learning pertaining to the goals and purpose of the course. While debatable, it appears that Open Source courses are designed to be less “student dependent” because of a broader application to a wide variety of students in comparison to a learning solution for a specific population of learners/workers/employees. In this manner, open course distance learning appears to be closer to traditional courses offered in a college or university setting. In conclusion, from the very first experience with the MIT homepage, there is clear evidence that the designer has planned to provide the student with key technological information that delineates different types of experiences and resources provided in each course. One limitation is that there is no information defining the technological requirements (i.e., hardware, software, internet connectivity) for the student to complete each course based on the different resources and learning experiences. Further analysis of the specific syllabus did not identify these technological requirements.
Similarities and Differences
First, both courses achieve most of “Fundamentals of Teaching Online” outlines by Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek (2009) and three of these are worth note. As both courses attempt to “avoid dumping a Face-to-Face course into the web,” it becomes apparent the “Competitive Decision-Making and Negotiation course is at a disadvantage because it only employs “lecture notes” as a learning resources to students. In comparison, the “Optimization and Analysis for Manufacturing” course offers selected lecture notes, projects and Examples, assignments and solutions, and exams with no solutions. These differences may be reflective of real differences in a classroom-based course, but also appear to offer very different opportunities for student engagement.
Second, the issue of organizing the course and making the organization and requirements clear to the student were excellent for both courses. For example, the template for all of the MIT open courses were very similar and provided an informational and navigational column on the left that detailed the syllabus, calendar, and other learning resources for the course (i.e., lecture notes, assignments). Drilling down to all subpages across both courses revealed clear descriptions of what to expected and therefore appears to achieve the goal of organization and clarifying requirements. One meaningful difference between the courses was the use of a Mind Map in the “Organizational” course and none for the “Negotiation” course. The mind map was front and center on the “Organizational” course’s homepage and provided an excellent visual representation of the course. I suggest a comparison of these two courses for anyone interested in assessing effectiveness and impact of a mind map.
Active Learning
Overall, the “Organizational” course designed more opportunities for students to actively engage. While both courses integrate many meaningful applied activities, it was the inclusion of group projects in the Organizational course and the absence of these learning experiences in the “Negotiation” courses that separated the two. It should be noted that with a minimal number of course learning components, the Negotiation course has designed creative use learning components such as case studies and a post negotiation questionnaire that appear very beneficial to learning and active learning. Here again would be an example of a learning design that I would suggest to classmate for review.
References
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). The student and distance education. Teaching and learning at a distance: foundations of distance education (4th ed., pp. 165-175). Boston: Allyn & Bacon/Pearson.
