Abstract:

Given the need to move MOOC content away from the traditional educational media to interactive modular content, this paper presents the design approach and implementation in the Erasmus+ strategic partnership OBERRED (Open Badge Ecosystem for the Recognition of Skills in Research Data Management & Sharing) to design interactive micro-content for learning activities in a MOOC dedicated to Open Badges for Open Research.

The paper outlines the overall approach in the design of the MOOC and its content, which follows the principles of Competence-Based Design Approach and Constructive Alignment. The focus of the competence-based design approach is on defining and following learning outcomes which define what the learners are expected to do rather than on what they are expected to know or learn about. The key goal of the MOOC is to help learners develop a capacity to use Open Badges in the field of Research Data Management (RDM).

Massive quantities of available content and the question how to set learning objectives and select appropriate resources, brings a challenge for both MOOC designers and learners. Constructive Alignment is an approach in learning design which focuses on solving this problem by aligning learning outcomes to learning activities to assessment. The SOLO Taxonomy is used to map verbs in learning outcomes statements to levels of learning and learning activities with micro-content and to create the assessment criteria. The storyboarding technique is used to define and allocate learning resources to learning outcomes of the MOOC at three levels following different storyboard designs depending on the instructional design approach, e. g. expository learning, discovery learning, anchored instruction. To create the micro-content for the MOOC, available resources including already existing OERs, are drawn from the previously created list of resources, which describes each piece of content by name, type, licence, level, learning objective, didactic quality and media quality,

The design approach follows the aim of enhancing active learning and learner engagement. To achieve these goals, the micro-content is created with H5P, which is a free and open-source toolkit for creating learning resources (HTML5 packages). H5P is used to design interactive micro-content for learning activities in the MOOC. Micro-content created with H5P is made available as OER under Creative Commons Licences. A variety of content formats is used to make the content interactive and engaging. These formats include interactive videos and presentations, hotspots, timelines, quizzes, flashcards and drag & drop.
H5P content can be easily shared across multiple learning management systems.

The OBERRED MOOC is created in the European MOOC platform EMMA and the micro-content created using H5P is created in WordPress. The paper describes the implementation of the micro-content in the MOOC giving an insight into the practical production of content in WordPress and display of content in the MOOC platform EMMA.

The paper ends with the results of the preliminary evaluation of the interactive micro-content and recommendations for the design of interactive micro-content for MOOCs.

Keywords:

Microcontent, learning content, e-content, MOOC, online courses, learning design, constructive alignment, H5P.