Planetary Urbanisation is a five-week online course investigating the global challenges presented by planetary urbanisation. This university as developers, have embedded the course in a first year Geography undergraduate module as a mandatory requirement. As a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), the course is more broadly targeted at lower-level undergraduate students across the Universitas 21 (U21) network of universities. The first run for U21 was completed in December 2016, the second run starts in April 2017 and the course will be opened to the public in May 2017.
Planetary Urbanisation is divided into five weekly topics. Each topic is introduced through a short video by one of the course team, which outlines key concepts and situates the material for that week in the context of the course as a whole. The team created seventeen videos covering the five topics. To help students who are not native English speakers or who are hearing impaired, the videos are sub-titled. Transcripts are also provided.
To facilitate learning, the videos are complemented by reading activities, comprising abstracts from policy reports, short journal articles or newspaper reports that help the students to investigate topics in more depth and apply them to specific contexts. Discussion steps enable the students to exchange ideas with each other and with the academic team. They are also crucial in helping students to consider how their lived experiences compare with, and are in contrast to, the experiences of other students in different parts of the world. Short formative quizzes help students to self-assess their progress. Each week ends with a summary video and preparation for the next week.
The course was designed so that students could take it in their own time and at their own pace. One topic was released per week to help with time management. It is often difficult to get students to engage in MOOCs. To help to meet this challenge, the lead educator and a moderator actively participated in the comments and online discussion. For the university’s own Geography students, the MOOC was blended with face to face activities in class which helped to increase engagement.
Topics: Global challenges in Higher & Further Education , Topics: Innovations and design in online & blended learning
