The international reach of Kent’s research and teaching has been extended by its first MOOC (massive open online course).
The K-MOOCs course on Functional Programming with Erlang was piloted during May 2015 and attracted participants from 50 different countries. A linked series of three masterclasses has resulted in 10,000-plus online clicks in just one month.
Beacon Project
The pilot course was part of the K-MOOCs Beacon Project – one of 12 chosen to celebrate Kent’s 50th birthday – to explore the feasibility of the University offering MOOCs to showcase our scholarship and research to a global audience.
The project was put forward by a team including Professor Simon Thompson (from the School of Computing) and Mark O’Connor and Jane Carne (Unit for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching).
Simon explained: ‘MOOCs are online courses that are free and open to anyone anywhere in the world. They’re set to play a key role in both continuing professional development and the student classroom experience and we wanted this project to explore options for offering MOOCs at Kent.’
Discussion with K-MOOC hosts: Francesco Cesarini, Simon Thompson and Joe Armstrong
How did it work?
The pilot course was led by Simon, with input from industry experts including one of the creators of Erlang programming language, Joe Armstrong (Ericsson) and leading Erlang consultant Francesco Cesarini (Erlang Solutions). Mike McCracken from Georgia Tech in the US was also on hand to offer practical advice based on his university’s experiences.
The pilot MOOC included a mix of videos, interactive material and homework and was available throughout May and June 2015. The MOOC also incorporated three video masterclasses in Erlang, created using studio facilities in the School of Engineering and Digital Arts and made available as standalone resources in July 2015.
Simon: ‘It was gratifying to see the level of interest and the number of countries represented – from Australia to India. We limited participant numbers to 500 to ensure the pilot was manageable, but we could have gone way above that.’
Positive feedback
Positive feedback and lessons learnt from the pilot MOOC are now being fed back to the University’s Executive Group, with recommendations including working with academics across the three faculties to create additional MOOCs.
Mark: ‘Part of the pilot was to demonstrate that it’s not just about creating a MOOC, but a valuable resource that we can reuse to enhance for example, campus teaching.’
Simon: ‘MOOCs can really enhance the experience of students on campus – and there is already evidence that they could become a reason why potential students choose us over another university.’
Mark: ‘It’s all about showing off what’s good at Kent and underlining our distinctiveness. It’s also a way of the University giving back to the community by sharing its research and scholarship – with the potential to do an enormous amount of good.’
Getting involved
Details of the K-MOOCs project.
Want to know more about the pilot K-MOOC, and how you can get involved in the future?
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