C o u r s e r a

Resource Guide

Center for Teaching

Vanderbilt University
 Table of Contents

Introduction to Coursera. 1
Setting appropriate learning goals. 2
Common considerations. 2
Backward Design. 3
Structuring online lectures. 6
Lecture formats. 7
Screencast with audio or video narration. 7
Screencast with in-class lecture footage. 9
Video discussions. 10
Common considerations. 12
Structure. 12
Interaction. 15
Resources. 18
Designing autom atically- and peer-graded assessm ents. 19
Four kinds of assessments. 19
Standalone quizzes. 20
In-video quizzes. 22
Programming assignments. 23
Peer assessments. 26
Facilitating (m assive) online learning com m unities. 32
Email. 32
Forums. 33
Organization. 34
Moderation. 38
Other forms of community. 40
Center for Teaching support for Coursera staff. 41

Cover images taken from Coursera courses, clockwise from top: “A History of the World since 1300,” “E-
learning and Digital Cultures,” “Machine Learning,” and “Heterogeneous Parallel Programming”

i
Introduction to Coursera.

The Coursera consortium hopes to bring high-quality online education to a wide popu-
lation of learners around the world.1 It is an exciting opportunity to teach thousands of
students, reaching a much larger, and potentially much more diverse, audience than
the traditional university lecture.

An online course with potentially tens of thousands of students is a very different teach-
ing environment than face-to-face or even “traditional” online courses. Teaching in
such an environment will require an instructor to think carefully about the design of the
course and the learning experiences of potential students. Teaching strategies prac-
ticed in other teaching contexts won’t necessarily translate well to the massive open
online course (MOOC).

This guide aims to orient Vanderbilt Coursera faculty in the new online-learning land-
scape by providing an overview of some “common practices” among recent Coursera
courses as of this writing (September 2012). For example,

• how do faculty define learning goals and objectives?

• how are video lectures structured?

• what kinds of assessments are used?

• how are (massive) online learning communities facilitated?

While these questions certainly don’t exhaust the topic of online learning — inside or
outside of Coursera — they do provide a first look into the considerations, and com-
mon ground, shared by courses offered on the Coursera platform. By focusing on
common practices, this guide hopes to be useful both to Coursera faculty at other insti-
tutions and to faculty considering other forms of MOOCs.

1
“Our Vision,” Coursera, accessed 17 September 2012, https://www.coursera.org/about.

1
Setting appropriate learning goals.

[…] we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been
available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will im-
prove their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in. (Coursera,
Our Vision)

The Coursera platform offers a learning environment vastly different from the tradition-
al classroom. What kinds of learning are appropriate in this context? And how might
we set meaningful learning goals and objectives for thousands of students?

Common considerations.

Coursera’s global community of learners represents not only a huge potential audience, but
also a vast spectrum of ages, language proficiencies, academic and professional training, and
cultural backgrounds (including attitudes towards teaching and learning).2 In their potential
size and heterogeneity, Coursera courses present challenges to setting appropriate learning
goals and objectives quite different from those encountered in a traditional classroom. How
do you teach a class with 10,000 students?

Across the disciplines, Coursera courses appear to share a number of common considera-
tions when developing learning goals and objectives:

• Concise, specific, and well defined goals and objectives help instructors to teach more ef-
fectively, and help students to better navigate the course, enabling them to make informed
decisions about how to work with the materials, activities and assessments, and forums —
perhaps in an unfamiliar medium, subject, or cultural context — to get the most out of the
course.

• Effective communication. Students might not know what to expect or how to succeed in a
massive open online course. Effective communication between instructor and students —
clarifying expectations and articulating goals and objectives, structure and instruction — is
essential to efficient, effective teaching and learning in the online context.

2
Jeffery R. Young, “Coursera Hits 1 Million Students, With Udacity Close Behind,” Wired Campus (blog),
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 August 2012, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/coursera-
hits-1-million-students-with-udacity-close-behind/38801.

2
Backward Design.
Understanding by Design, by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (ASCD, 2005), offers a useful
framework for designing courses in any teaching context, and it can be applied to work with-
in the challenges and opportunities of the Coursera platform. Their method, “Backward De-
sign,” begins by first identifying what students should learn from the material, before consid-
ering how the instructor might approach teaching it.

This framework seems especially suited to the demands of an online course, in which instruc-
tion in a new medium could require a different set of goals and objectives, even when teach-
ing familiar material.

About “Backward Design.”

The “Backward Design” process proceeds in three phases: identifying desired results, de-
termining acceptable evidence, and planning learning experiences and instruction. Here
we will focus on the first phase:

I. Identify desired results.

First, you establish your learning goals for the course. What should students know, under-
stand and be able to do? And how do you prioritize and narrow down the content you want
to teach so it fits within the limited framework of the course? Wiggins and McTighe provide
a useful process for establishing curricular priorities. They suggest you ask yourself three
questions as you progressively focus in on the most valuable content:

1. What should participants hear, read, view, explore or otherwise encounter? This
knowledge is “worth being familiar with.”
2. What knowledge and skills should participants master? Sharpen your choices by con-
sidering what is “important to know and do” for your students. What facts, concepts
and principles should they know? What processes, strategies and methods should they
learn to use?
3. What are big ideas and important understandings participants should retain? These
choices are the “enduring understandings” that you want students to remember after
they’ve forgotten the details of the course.

Answering each of these questions will help you determine the best content for your course,
and create concrete, specific learning goals for your students.

3
Let’s take a look at ways a few Coursera courses have described their learning objectives.
First, we’ll consider one especially detailed approach to setting learning goals and objectives
by identifying desired results — both for the overall course and for each module within the
course.

→ “Introduction to Sustainability.”

overall:

know & do

week 1:

know & do

enduring
understandings

Of course, from the outside it is difficult to know precisely what an instructor intends when
designating learning goals — What should students only be familiar with? What should they
know and do? What are the big ideas? — or how this might translate into the classroom.
And it is difficult to assess the success of these goals without student input or student work.
However, the “Backward Design” framework does allow us to “reverse engineer” the steps
by which instructors might think through these goals and objectives.

4
 Now, we’ll look at courses that define goals and objectives on a week-to-week basis.

→ “Modern and Contemporary American Poetry.”

know & do

enduring
understandings

→ “Gamification”

know & do

→ “Algorithms I.”

know & do

enduring
understandings

5
Structuring online lectures.

We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of
students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hun-
dreds of thousands of students. (Coursera, Our Vision)

Coursera envisions making education available to a huge global audience. But how
are instructors to teach these students? What options do instructors have for present-
ing material in this online context?

Common considerations.

The Coursera video lectures seem designed to facilitate opportunities for interaction and
feedback within a largely traditional lecture format. Across the disciplines, video lectures:

• break up material into thematic segments of 8 to 15 minutes. Classes usually offer two
hours of pre-recorded video lectures per week. Rather than presenting material in a single,
long session — as it might be done in classroom lectures — video lectures break up the
weekly content into a number of thematic segments, which can be covered in 8- to 15-
minute chunks. This practice further allows instructors to define goals and objectives for
each segment, linking chunks not only thematically but also by developing knowledge,
skills, and enduring understandings.

• embed quiz questions. Most video lectures use embedded quiz questions to keep stu-
dents engaged and provide opportunities for information retrieval to enhance learning. In
some cases, students are prompted to answer questions correctly before continuing with
the lecture; however, students may also choose to skip the questions altogether.

• attach resources. Resources for each lecture unit are made available to students; this usu-
ally includes accompanying slides, subtitles, or written transcripts. Video lectures are also
available for download.

• establish instructor identity. Certainly instructor identity is every bit as important in online
learning as it is in traditional classrooms. Video lectures give instructors ample opportunity
to provide their own voice on a topic or on the lecture format itself.

6
Lecture formats.

Despite the variety of disciplines represented on the Coursera platform, the mode of presen-
tation tends to be similar and in the tradition of the teacher-centered classroom. Most
courses favor screencast lectures with audio or video narration; one course presents video
discussions.

Screencast with audio or video narration.

This is the preferred presentation mode in the majority of courses, across disciplines. Stu-
dents watch a mix of slides either accompanied by, or interleaved with, video of the instruc-
tor lecturing. The audio or video narration often appears to be filmed (or recorded) in an of-
fice or studio where only the instructor is present.

As in classroom lectures, slides may also include videos, links, or annotations in digitial ink.

Vaccines Introduction to Finance

slide + video slide + video

Cryptography Introduction to Sustainability

slide + audio + digital ink video only

7
→ “Internet History, Technology, and Security” supplements the video lecture format with a
variety of audio-visual material, including archival footage, interviews, and filmed tours of his-
torical sites, for instance, Bletchley Park or the National Museum of Computing. The
Coursera platform seems ideal for introducing these kinds of “authentic materials” into
screencast lectures.

The National Museum

of Computing
Bletchley Park

Using the Michigan

Terminal System

→ “Software Engineering for SaaS.” Instead of providing video narration, this course presents
each video lecture as a screencast with audio narration. Weekly live “chat” sessions be-
tween the instructors supplement these lectures, giving them the chance to discuss course
updates and general housekeeping issues, like due dates or common questions.

lecture 1.3 weekly chat

8
 Screencast with in-class lecture footage.

Although very few Coursera courses choose this format, these lectures seem potentially more
engaging than the traditional screencast, as they incorporate real-life interaction between the
instructor and students. However, high-quality audio and video can be difficult to obtain in
classroom settings.

→ “Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act” makes the most of a dynamic lecturer by
including in-class lecture footage as well as screencasts. Each video lecture is an edited ver-
sion of an in-class lecture, often with embedded quiz questions synced to the in-class clicker
or discussion questions (see below).

week 3
“Growth in US health care costs I”

→ “Introduction to Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics” also films in-class

lectures to supplement screencast slides; however, with a focus on boardwork and little
filmed student participation, these lectures seem more like a “live” version of a screencast
lecture with digital ink annotations.

lecture 1.3, “Portfolio Returns”

9
 Video discussions.

Another alternative to the screencast lecture is a filmed video discussion. Although a varia-
tion of the filmed in-class lecture, this format models the discussion of ideas and most closely
approximates the structure of a discussion-focused seminar.

→ “Modern and Contemporary American Poetry.” In this course, each video features what
the instructor calls “a collective close-reading”: the filmed discussion of a single poem
among on-campus students, as facilitated by the instructor.

discussion 1 “Emily
Dickinson’s ‘I Dwell in
Possibility’”

The videos often focus on individual students as they work through aspects of the poem to-
gether.

10
→ “Listening to World Music” takes a slightly different track. Although the course features
standard screencast video lectures with video narration by the instructor, each weekly unit al-
so includes pre-recorded video discussions among course TAs.

These short discussions (ca. 5-10 minutes) model the comparative listening exercises students
are asked to complete in the course and help to guide students through the kinds of ques-
tions it might be interesting to think about when listening to a specific piece of music. The
discussions draw on the material covered in the weekly lectures, concentrating on unpacking
specific examples and case studies.

11
 Common considerations.

Here, we’ll look in detail at some of the common considerations shared by most Coursera
courses, no matter the lecture format.

Structure.

The lectures in Coursera are intended to present about two hours of material every week,
organized into 8- to 15-minute segments, linked thematically. Each chunk aims to address a
specific aspect of the weekly material, and gives the instructor an opportunity to define goals
and objectives not only for the course or the week, but also for each segment.

→ “Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation.” This course divides each weekly lec-
ture into a series of important concepts, which build on one another in a linear progression.

lecture 2

2.1 “Superposition principle” 2.2 “Geometrical interpretation”

2.3 “Measurement in an arbitrary basis” 2.4 “Uncertainty principle”

12
→ “Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World.” In this course,
every unit is structured similarly: beginning with an introductory “Before You Read” lecture,
followed by individual lecture segments that focus on one aspect of each author’s work. Alt-
hough the segments potentially build on one another, the structure is not strictly linear, in-
stead allowing students to watch the lectures in whatever order they choose.

unit one

1.1 “Before You Read”

reading together ...

1.4 “Natural Symbols and Psychology”

13
→ “Internet History, Technology, and Security” offers a slightly different approach. Given the
amount of supplementary material included in a typical weekly lecture unit — interviews, vid-
eo, and archival footage — the segments are thematically linked, but still allow a certain
amount of “choose-your-own-adventure” freedom to combine (and re-combine) chunks: for
example, students could choose to watch all of the archival footage before the screencast
lectures, or vice versa, without necessarily missing important information.

Larry Smarr History Through NSFNet

Dough Van Houweling Reflection on NSFNet

14
 Interaction.

Embedded quiz questions lend the Coursera video lectures an element of interaction that
provides students with immediate feedback on their understanding of key information. On
average, each lecture chunk contains between one to three interruptions for these “quizzes,”
which range from a single multiple-choice question to a series of two or three multiple-choice
questions, or a short brainstorming exercise. The embedded quizzes are not graded.

→ “Statistics One” embeds multiple-choice quiz questions at the end of each lecture chunk.

lecture 1.b.

→ “Machine Learning” intersperses embedded multiple-choice quiz questions throughout each

lecture chunk.

Supervised Learning

15
→ “Internet History, Technology, and Security,” like many Coursera courses, prompts stu-
dents to answer embedded quiz questions correctly before returning to the lecture. This is
not required, and students may instead choose to skip the question.

lecture 1.1 “History Through Bletchley Park”

→ “Securing Digital Democracy” uses the in-video quiz questions not only to test understand-
ing, but also to allow students to brainstorm and think creatively, applying the material pre-
sented in the lecture.

lecture 2.1 “The Living Voice”

16
→ “Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act” offers one of the more innovative uses of the
embedded quiz questions: the multiple-choice questions in the Coursera video lecture sync
with the clicker and discussion questions posed in the pre-recorded lecture. This gives stu-
dents watching the video lecture a chance to compare their answers with the answers given
by the students in the on-campus offering of the course.

clickers ready:
Week 1 “Access
to health care”
(pre-recorded)

discussion of results:

(pre-recorded)

17
Resources.

Coursera allows instructors to attach resources to their video lectures, including lecture
slides and transcripts, videos to download, and subtitles. Since Coursera courses are open
to a global audience — representing a wide spectrum of language proficiencies, ages, and
academic or professional training, to say nothing of preferred learning styles or cultural back-
grounds — these resources give students the option to work through materials at their own
pace.

This material is relatively uniform across courses, with certain instructors also making supple-
mentary material, such as spreadsheets, formulae, or vocabulary lists available to download.

lecture slides

Machine Learning, lecture II

subtitles

18
Designing automatically- and peer-graded assessments.

When you take one of our classes, you will watch lectures taught by world-class profes-
sors, learn at your own pace, test your knowledge, and reinforce concepts through in-
teractive exercises. (Coursera, Our Vision)

Exercises and assessments are central to the Coursera platform because they allow
students to practice concepts and test knowledge, often with nearly immediate feed-
back. But how do we develop assessments for thousands of students?

Four kinds of assessments.

Coursera currently supports four kinds of assessments:

• standalone quizzes are most usually assigned weekly to pair with the lecture material.
Quizzes are automatically machine graded and provide students almost immediate access
to scores, correct answers, and explanations. Some courses choose to limit the number of
attempts allowed on these kinds of assessments — specifying one, two, four, anywhere up
to ten attempts — while others allow unlimited attempts, encouraging students to continue
working until they answer all questions correctly.

• in-video quizzes are designed to complement the video lecture; scores are not recorded.
Rather, these quizzes give students the opportunity to test their understanding and receive
immediate feedback.

• programming assignments allow students to submit code or data, which is then automati-
cally graded. These assignments are often more complex than standalone quizzes and give
students the opportunity to apply and use the concepts introduced in lecture.

• peer assessments allow students to create unstructured output — such as essays, long-
answer questions, drawings, photographs, video, music, or collaborative projects — and
receive personalized feedback from their peers. However, peer assessments require both
detailed rubrics to guide evaluation and the good-faith efforts of students to submit origi-
nal work and to evaluate the work of (unknown) others attentively and constructively. Good
practices for facilitating peer assessment on Coursera are still very much under develop-
ment.

19
Standalone quizzes.

Standalone quizzes are the most frequently used method of assessment in Coursera courses.
Across almost all disciplines, weekly automatically graded quizzes provide students with a
quick “check-in” to test knowledge, get feedback, and further explanations of material.

Quizzes support multiple-choice questions that ask students to either choose the correct an-
swer or to select all answers that apply; fill-in-the-blank questions that ask for a short numer-
ical or free form text answer. Quizzes can also be randomized to enable multiple attempts
without repetition of questions.

Quantum Mechanics,
multiple-choice +
numerical short-answer

Quantum Mechanics
multiple-choice + numerical short-answer,
with feedback

20
 Cryptography
multiple-choice + all-that-apply,
with feedback

Introduction to Sustainability
short-answer

21
 Algorithms I, standalone quiz one
first attempt with feedback

randomized

Algorithms I, standalone quiz one

second attempt with feedback

In-video quizzes.

See above section on structuring online lectures.

22
 Programming assignments.

Like standalone quizzes, programming assignments are automatically machine graded to

generate both a score and feedback for students. These kinds of assignments ask students
to actively use their knowledge to create code or data, working with the concepts introduced
in lectures. Programming assignments may or may not be graded, as determined by the in-
structor.

→ “Machine Learning” pairs programming assignments with the weekly lecture material, asking
students to work through a series of exercises that allow them to practice implementing a
learning algorithm. The software and instructions provided enable students to check their
own work before submitting a solution. Immediate feedback gives students the opportunity
to revise and resubmit their answers as many times as they would like, up until the assign-
ment deadline.

programming
assignment,
week 2

programming
assignment,
week 3

23
→ “Algorithms I” also assigns weekly programming exercises that either ask students to im-
plement a data structure or algorithm from scratch, or to apply a data structure or algorithm
to solve a problem. The course provides detailed directions for each assignment and allows
students up to ten submissions, with feedback on correctness and efficiency provided after
each attempt. Only the highest score is recorded.

programming assignment, week 2

24
→ “Introduction to Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics” offers an introducto-
ry programming assignment designed to familiarize students with languages (like R) that will
become important in future work for the course. The assignment asks students to use data to
create plots, drawing on the material covered in the first week of video lectures. The assign-
ment is not graded.

programming assignment, week 1

25
Peer assessments.

Peer assessments are both an exciting innovation that facilitate greater student interaction
and engagement, as well as a sometimes-challenging problem for instructors and students.

Unlike automatically machine-graded quizzes and assignments on Coursera, peer assess-

ments require a good-faith effort on the part of each student not only to submit original work
in the proper format (e.g., with proper citation) and the proper language (usually English), but
also to then anonymously evaluate the work of others attentively and constructively. The
piece that seems most often missing is not good-faith effort on the part of most students; ra-
ther, it’s that many (or even most) students simply do not have experience in evaluating the
work of others.

steps in peer assessment

Detailed rubrics are one way to help bridge this gap. Coursera enables both quantitative (a
drop-down list of scores) and qualitative (free-form text) evaluation. Even with detailed ru-
brics, peer assessment — in this iteration of Coursera — is decidedly hit or miss: when used
well, it can be a valuable tool to provide personalized feedback; when used poorly, it can be
perfunctory, unhelpful, or downright abusive.

Coursera does offer courses the option of including peer-assessment training, which would
allow students to first practice evaluating a limited number (three to five) of instructor-graded
submissions, using a rubric. To pass the training exercise, the student’s grades would have
to fall within an acceptable range, as defined by the instructor. In more traditional teaching
contexts, these kinds of training exercises could be an important component in helping sup-
port students as they learn to assess the work of their peers. However, it does not appear
that any Coursera courses to date have tried out this approach to more explicitly training
peer assessment.

Self grading offers another optional method of evaluation, and a further point for compari-
son between an individual’s work and the work of others in the course.

26
→ “Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World” models a typical
approach to peer assessment. The course asks students to “enrich the reading” of their
peers through short essay reflections on the reading. Students are then randomly assigned
three to five essays to evaluate anonymously based on form and content, using both a quan-
titative (1-3 points) system and qualitative feedback.

assignment,
unit 1

evaluation of form

evaluation of content

27
→ “Listening to World Music.” This course presents a similar approach to peer assessment,
asking students to respond to a weekly essay question that draws upon the material covered
in the video lectures and TA discussions. Students are then given three to five randomly as-
signed essays to evaluate anonymously.

Now that “Listening to World Music” has ended, the course site has made examples availa-
ble for each assignment, illustrating the steps in the peer-assessment process.

Results are featured at the top of the page,

followed by instructions to students for completing the assignment.

28
Students are then provided with a rubric for evaluation,

and space to submit their essay.

29
Finally, students are able to read how they were evaluated, both quantitatively

and qualitatively.

30
→ “Introduction to Sustainability.” While most courses that use peer assessment focus on
writing assignments — for example, essays or reflections — this course offers students the
option of using their knowledge to create a local sustainability project, which will be graded
by their peers at the end of the course.

project description

The course also includes a preliminary grading rubric, to help students plan, develop, and
discuss their project ideas in the forums.

grading rubric

As these examples demonstrate, the conversation about good practices for facilitating peer
assessments is far from over; rather it’s a discussion to be continued as Coursera further de-
velops and refines this aspect of the platform.

31
Facilitating (massive) online learning communities.

When you join one of our classes, you'll also join a global community of thousands of
students learning alongside you. (Coursera, Our Vision)

The Coursera discussion forums potentially give students access to the huge “global
community” of learners in each course. How does Coursera cultivate this community?

Email.

Coursera emphasizes email as the “primary and most wide-reaching” method of communica-
tion between instructor and students. Almost all Coursera courses send personalized, auto-
mated emails upon enrollment, then follow up with “preview” emails and a weekly overview
of “what’s been happening” once the course opens, as well as special announcements —
changes to the course, platform issues, etc. — as needed.

Email is a relatively simple way to engage students and provide what Coursera calls “extreme
clarity”: that is, to make learning goals and objectives, expectations, structure and instruction
as clear, consistent, and accessible as possible.

Statistics One,
special announcement

Introduction to Sustainability
weekly update

32
Forums.

Forums are, on the one hand, one of the most exciting aspects of the Coursera platform; on
the other, they are often also one of the most frustrating to use. In the current iteration of
Coursera, forums quickly become unwieldy and difficult to navigate simply because of the
sheer amount of material generated by so many students — at an incredible rate of
speed. Can you imagine trying to use the OAK discussion boards with 10,000 students?

Despite these challenges, students generally seem eager for the kinds of connection, com-
munication, and community that the forums would ideally facilitate. The nature of the
course often also defines the nature, or scope, of the forums:

1. in less discussion-based courses, for example those in Computer Science, forums function
more as virtual Q & A sessions,

2. whereas in courses that invite some form of debate and discussion, for example in the
Humanities and Social Sciences, forums attempt to approximate conversation, often
through weekly assigned forum discussion questions.

Across disciplines, the most successful Coursera forums — those that foster interaction
through a relatively high rate of relevant posts, respectful discourse, and instances of sus-
tained, productive exchange between students — tend to be:

• highly organized. The instructor provides a high level of structure, organizing the forum
into a number of detailed sub-forums tailored to the course. Sub-forums are essential to
corralling the active discussion threads produced, for example, by assigned weekly forum
discussion questions.

• regularly, visibly moderated by the instructor. Whether or not the instructor, or TAs,
read every thread, some form of regular, visible participation helps to keep threads mostly
on-track, mostly cordial, and relatively free of anonymous abuse. Again, moderation often
occurs in conjunction with specific, assigned forum discussion questions.

33
Organization.

Distinct sub-forums allow students and instructors to more easily navigate to relevant con-
tent, questions, or problems. By filtering the massive amount of material generated by stu-
dents, sub-forums help to facilitate more meaningful, less “noisy” virtual conversations.

Forum icons enable instructors and students to further categorize individual threads.

pinned (staff ) unresolved (students)

approved by instructor (staff) instructor reply in thread (staff)

Forum guidelines, posted at the top of each forum page serve to remind students of good
practice, good form, and good organization in the Coursera forums.

However, above and beyond these platform-wide conventions, the framework for organizing
forums and sub-forums is surprisingly uniform across courses and disciplines, roughly break-
ing down into dedicated sections for introductions, general discussion, content questions,
assignment questions, platform questions, study groups, and, when offered, weekly topic
discussions. Although the categories might change slightly, the method of organization —
by topic, rather than by week or thematic chunk — remains consistent.

34
→ “Introduction to Sustainability.” One of the largest and most active forums in Coursera, the
“Sustainability” discussion is structured by topic:

‣ Getting to Know Your Classmates

‣ General Discussion
‣ Content Questions
‣ Administrative Questions
‣ Course Material Feedback
‣ Technical Feedback
‣ Project Discussion
‣ Weekly Discussions

week 2 sub-forum

35
→ “Software Engineering for SaaS.” Even courses without an explicit discussion component
benefit from detailed structure in the forums.

In this course, organized forums make it easier for both instructors and students to access
feedback and address specific questions:

‣Welcome

‣General Discussion

‣Assignments

‣Assignment Solutions

‣Quizzes

‣Video Lectures

‣Study Groups

Assignment Solutions
sub-forum

Notice the instructor intervention: rules for the forum are pinned
(in a “sticky” post) in the top forum thread.

36
→ “Modern and Contemporary American Poetry” differs from the usual forum organization in
two key ways: 1. the course offers an “instructor and TAs’ forum” — where students cannot
post — dedicated to instructor comments and announcements; and 2. weekly discussion fo-
rums organized by poem.

‣ week 1 (chapter 1)

‣ general discussion

‣ instructor and TAs’ forum

‣ study groups

‣ discussion of previous chap-

ters

week 1,
sub-forum

Instructor and
TAs’ forum

37
 Moderation.

Visible moderation in the Coursera forums can take many forms: from moderating weekly
discussion questions to posting guidelines for specific sub-forums to actually engaging in the
forum discussions themselves. Less important than form, is the virtual presence of the in-
structor in forum discussions, especially in courses that invite and encourage exchange be-
tween students.

→ “Listening to World Music.” This course assigns weekly discussion topics, organized into
specific weekly sub-forums and moderated by graduate TAs.

week 6 topics,
sub-forum

In this thread, participation by course TAs not only keeps the discussion on track, but models
respectful, critical discourse.

→ “Introduction to Sustainability” takes a slightly different approach. In addition to assigning

weekly forum discussion activities, and occasionally posting himself, the instructor also high-
lights particularly relevant, interesting, or active discussion threads in his weekly course email
to students.

week 2 email

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→ “Internet History, Technology, and Security” approaches interaction and moderation in a
decidedly different way: outside of the Coursera platform. Although the course offers the
standard discussion forum format, the instructor also communicates with students on Twitter,
holds office hours when visiting various cities (so far, in the US only), and has a visible pres-
ence on the internet.

on twitter

in person

online

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Other forms of community.

Coursera allows for a great deal of flexibility and adaptability, especially when experimenting
with other platforms, such as Meetup.com, Google Hangouts, live video chats, Facebook
pages, or Twitter.3 With thousands of students, personal face-to-face contact is limited and,
in most cases, simply impossible; however, Coursera leaves plenty of space for instructors
and students alike to try out different combinations of global, online, and local communities
— incorporating only those methods and platforms that they find most effective and most
suited to achieving, and communicating, learning goals and objectives.

Here again, the conversation is still very much in progress. As Coursera continues to refine
its platform and Coursera courses continue to test out new forms of community, there will be
much opportunity for further discussion about facilitating local and global communities in the
online context.

3
Ben Pokross, “Students in Free Online Courses Form Groups to Study and Socialize,” Wired Campus (blog), The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 August 2012, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/students-in-free-online-
courses-form-groups-to-study-and-socialize/38887.

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Center for Teaching support for Coursera staff.

Coursera is a new endeavor, and one that continues to evolve. Indeed the sets of
choices regarding learning objectives, content presentation, assessment, and interac-
tion are still being developed in this emergent teaching environment.

To help Coursera faculty explore their options for teaching in this new setting, Center
for Teaching senior staff are available for consultation throughout the course design
and implementation phases. We’re eager to help faculty think through any aspect of
their Coursera courses.

Our consultation services are covered by our confidentiality policy, providing faculty
with a safe space to explore this new teaching frontier.

To arrange a consultation, contact CFT director Derek Bruff

([email protected], 322-7290).

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