MOOC module "How to Survive your PhD" : my reflections at the end

As regular readers may know, I have been taking part in the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) from the Thesis Whisperer of the ANU in Canberra, Australia*, (and her able colleagues who were course moderators) all about how to survive your PhD. I wanted to share my reflections at the end of the course, because this is the first MOOC I’ve ever studied for. I daresay that they are not all alike: have you also studied through a MOOC? What was it like for you? Leave me a comment, below!

Almost all the way there!

I made it through all the course reading and video materials, I listened to all the live-chats (not always at the live time, but I watched them all!), I contributed to all the forums and completed all the tasks. I even prepared and submitted a final assignment. I failed at the last hurdle of peer assessment though, because I mixed up my dates/timezones and left everything to the last minute… so no completion badge for me, I look rather selfish for not peer assessing and I won’t contribute to completion statistics for the course. I am annoyed with myself but I know how hard I worked and about all the other things I have had on my plate this autumn term. Never mind: I gained from my learning and that’s where the true value of a course lies. And my assignment: well that’s not wasted effort either, because it’s going to be something that we can actually offer, through Piirus. Watch out for news of it on this blog!

I can also heartily recommend this course, should it run again. It is suitable for PhD students, as a forum for peer support, and also useful for anyone who supports researchers, whether as a supervisor, a librarian, a partner of a PhD student, or in any other capacity. The course is full of insights into the emotions that PhD students experience, at various times in the course of their candidature, and even if you have one yourself, you may have forgotten what some things were like, and almost certainly every PhD student has a unique journey.

A MOOC is not just about videos

The LSE blog features a post on MOOCs which reflects on how learning from video does not stick. Which is perhaps why it’s so important to read from the reading list too, to interact with other students, and to reflect on your learning. Blogging here has helped me with my course reflections each week, as well as preparing the final assignment which (in my case) focused really on one main theme from the course that I found particularly inspiring.

Interaction with others on the course: forums

In the aftermath of week 5 on loneliness on the MOOC, I reflected that there are a number of ways for MOOC students to connect with each other: the edX software for the course has a discussion board and it’s a part of the course that students post there, but these boards are difficult to navigate through. There are (or have been!) thousands of course participants and you certainly can’t keep on top of all of the forum threads. The advantage is that they are always there for you to browse through and reply to one or two comments, or leave your own comment, throughout the course. This is where I made my feeble attempts to encourage or support other course members, but I don’t think that the forums were the best place to interact. The livechats and Twitter offered other opportunities for interactions, though. I think that for many, the opportunities for interaction with peers was a really important part of the course, and there were Facebook groups and other participant chats that spun-off from the official channels for the course. If you’ve taken part in a MOOC, how did you interact with others and how did that work for you?

Live-chat

This was an opportunity for real live interaction! The weekly live sessions themselves are designed to be interactive, and even if you could not be there live, if you had read the course materials in time beforehand then you could use the forums to raise issues and ask questions: course moderators picked up on issues from the forum threads (a big job well done moderators!). The live-chats were at a reasonable time for me, but the problem was that I already had meetings or visits scheduled in, on most occasions. So I relied on the recordings a lot and missed a little bit of the sense of community and camaraderie that you can build through taking part in live events. Still, my hopes for a MOOC weren’t too high in that regard. In the live-chats, comments popped up on screen as well as love hearts from those viewing it in Periscope. There were live spoken reports from moderators about what was happening with the Twitter hashtag too, so there were opportunities for those of us viewing chats within the edX site rather than in Periscope, either through the forum beforehand or on Twitter.

MOOC students are usually at the disadvantage of never meeting the teachers face to face, but those who were also at the host institution*, the ANU, were invited to come along to the actual live chat event in week 5, for pizza and nibbles!

#survivephd15

There’s been a really healthy Twitter hashtag for the course. Another of my regrets is that I didn’t really have time to really engage with the chat on Twitter, about the course. However, for those course participants not on Twitter or struggling to engage there, the Storifies from course co-ordinators have been really helpful, summarising tweets around the themes. Participation on Twitter was a bit of an optional extra in the sense that it was not a requirement of the course, except that it really would have helped me to feel more connected with other students, if I could have found the time.

How much time does it take to take part in a MOOC like this?

This was one of my learning points from the course. I think that you need to spend at least 3 hours a week on it, doing all the minimum reading, completing the weekly tasks, dipping into the forums and of course, watching the live-chat, whether live or not. You also need to allocate an extra 3-6 hours for the assignment and peer marking in the final week/s of the course, and if you really want to benefit from peer support as a PhD student, then you may want to dedicate more time to it each week. It will be possible to complete the course in less time than I propose, but for me that is the minimum commitment to benefit from all the valuable materials that are prepared for you. As someone who also teaches, I know that I have a responsibility to learn when I am a student: the responsibility does not only lie with the instructors! I learn best when I take notes and reflect, and this blog has helped me with that.

MOOC’s are a great and concise way to learn something new and to meet others involved in research around the world. Although, this community of learning is digital in nature, it’s a great way of having a forum for peer-assisted learning, development – something at Piirus we are always looking to support.

*Correction made after comment. ANU is not in Melbourne, as originally, incorrectly stated, but in Canberra!

Do you want to blog here about a course that you think Piirus blog readers would be interested in? You can propose a guest blogpost for us!

Image credit: mer chau, 2013, [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr

Comments

Katie says
November 24, 2015 at 10:20 pm
Thanks for lovely feedback on the course Jenny! I’m one of the moderators so I hope you don’t mind me leaving a comment. I’m so glad that the sense of camaraderie and fun we had doing the live broadcasts was evident for the audience. I agree completely with your comments about the edX forums – they were the weakest point of the course, to be sure. I will add that it is not too late to get your certificate for the course though, if you tick off your completion of all the weekly modules you can still earn one 🙂
(And one tiny note of correction: the ANU is actually in Canberra, not Melbourne! I know Inger previously worked in Melbourne but is not in Canberra.)
Thanks for your thoughtful posts throughout the course!
- Jenny Delasalle says
  November 25, 2015 at 9:55 am
  Thanks for your comment Katie! I’ve made a correction to the post, so we can avoid others being influenced by my confusion about ANU’s location 🙂 I really appreciate the work that you and the other moderators put in, because I know it must have been really difficult to keep up with it all. It was good to have so many different opportunities to access the course conversations and to connect with other course participants. Well done for supporting so many people: you did yourselves proud!
Katie says
November 24, 2015 at 10:20 pm
Thanks for lovely feedback on the course Jenny! I’m one of the moderators so I hope you don’t mind me leaving a comment. I’m so glad that the sense of camaraderie and fun we had doing the live broadcasts was evident for the audience. I agree completely with your comments about the edX forums – they were the weakest point of the course, to be sure. I will add that it is not too late to get your certificate for the course though, if you tick off your completion of all the weekly modules you can still earn one 🙂
(And one tiny note of correction: the ANU is actually in Canberra, not Melbourne! I know Inger previously worked in Melbourne but is not in Canberra.)
Thanks for your thoughtful posts throughout the course!
- Jenny Delasalle says
  November 25, 2015 at 9:55 am
  Thanks for your comment Katie! I’ve made a correction to the post, so we can avoid others being influenced by my confusion about ANU’s location 🙂 I really appreciate the work that you and the other moderators put in, because I know it must have been really difficult to keep up with it all. It was good to have so many different opportunities to access the course conversations and to connect with other course participants. Well done for supporting so many people: you did yourselves proud!

MOOC module “How to Survive your PhD” : my reflections at the end