Inside Dal's first MOOC

A team of educators at Dalhousie has taken its knowledge and experience online in a big way to offer a brand new course — just don’t expect to find it on the traditional Academic Timetable.

Dalhousie recently joined a growing number of universities using the Internet to provide massive open online courses, known as “MOOCs,” which remove some of the traditional barriers (location, access, prerequisites) to learning.

Led by the School of Health and Human Performance and hosted on the Canvas Network, Dal’s first MOOC is a Grant Writing Bootcamp taught by Professor Blaise Landry. The five-week course focuses on grant writing for organizational funding needs and provides students with theory, practical application, and even a certificate upon successful completion of the course. It’s a component of a course titled “Recreation Facility Design and Operations Management” — a topic that’s of great interest to those who work or study in the field. The MOOC team builds course modules, uploads videos and monitors discussion boards, which help students interact with the content and each other.

“A lot of people find grant writing intimidating, and its just a way to give them some format and get them a little more comfortable so the next time they are writing a grant application they’re more confident in their abilities to do that,” says Prof. Landry.

Since its launch on Oct. 7, more than 1,500 students from Dalhousie and from around the globe have registered, a number that caught Prof. Landry off guard. “I had no idea what to expect when we did it,” he says with a laugh. “We thought we’d get 100, 200 people. To think we’d hit 1,500 people was pretty mind-boggling.”

MOOC philosophy

MOOCs move beyond brick-and-mortar institutions and provide an online educational experience focused on enabling self-reliant learners.

The course is one of several pilot projects across campus to receive funding from the DALVision Academic Innovation initiative this past year. Fred McGinn, director of the School of Health and Human Performance wrote the grant application to DALVision, and views the MOOC as a service to both students the community.

“It’s providing access to knowledge that you have, and that’s the philosophy behind most MOOCs,” says Dr. McGinn.

Aaron Panych, instructional designer in Dalhousie’s Centre for Learning and Teaching, designed and built the Grant Writing Bootcamp in the Canvas platform. While he believes MOOCs are trendy, he says that doesn’t make them any less intriguing.

“Two adjectives of the MOOC acronym — massive and open — are two of the more exciting things,” says Panych. “You just have so many people who are potentially focused on a particular topic. And with that massive element there is often a huge pool of expertise that comes together, is shared and grows.”

Panych says the open concept is also exciting: “It’s free and anybody can sign up.”

A learning experience

Dr. McGinn says the Grant Writing Bootcamp paves the way for other MOOCs to be considered at Dal. He says his team will look at future MOOC options after evaluating the success of this first pilot course.

“I would expect there would be a fair amount of discussion, formal and informal, on what this means so we can ask different questions before we get into something more serious as in, ‘What’s Dalhousie’s philosophy as it relates to MOOCs?’” says Dr. McGinn.

There’s no doubt MOOCs are transforming the education landscape, he says, but he has a wait-and-see attitude as to how the university community responds to the results of the course.

“Now it’s a matter of determining how [MOOCs] can support what we’re currently doing: how they can assist the learning we do and the services we offer the university community,” he said.

In the meantime, Dr. McGinn will continue to monitor the course and — like its students — learn something new in the process.

“We’re learning all kinds of things. I’ve been teaching for many, many years and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” says Dr. McGinn.

This article is part of a series highlighting projects funded by the DALVision Academic Innovation initiative. To learn more about DALVision and this year’s projects, visit its website.