An Updated "Wisconsin Idea"

An Updated "Wisconsin Idea"

The notion of extending UW–Madison's educational mission beyond campus borders is nothing new. For over a hundred years, we've called it the Wisconsin Idea: connecting the work done at the university to people all around the state.⁹ The phase-two MOOCs are simply the latest iteration of the Wisconsin Idea, appealing to resident hunters, theater fans, and foodies, among other lifelong learners. Along with engaging a global audience, the MOOCs will ideally inform decision making at the local level and give people around the state a sense of ownership in the university. The message is that the university is here to engage with communities, facilitate a discussion of their concerns, and serve as an economic engine for Wisconsin.

As for the MOOCs' value to the university, it all comes back to Educational Innovation. In the 2013 article "Sustaining Strategic Transitions in Higher Education,"¹⁰ UW–Madison's interim chancellor, David Ward, predicted that only about a third of all students will complete a continuously enrolled, four-year residential college experience over the next decade. For the rest, such an experience will be "inconvenient, inaccessible, or ineffective for their learning capacities."

David Ward discussing Educational Innovation

The solution, Ward argued, is to offer a broad menu of learning options, with an emphasis on customization. In other words, to respond to irreversible changes in higher education, we need to know our learners—to focus more on what they want out of a course than what faculty choose to provide for them. It's no longer enough for instructors to stand in front of a class, lecture, and dispense grades and credentials. Students have to be part of the process, helping to craft their own educational experience. UW–Madison's MOOCs will offer that opportunity.

If MOOC participants find value in this experience and follow up by enrolling in our certificate programs, credit programs, seminars, or webinars, so much the better for sustaining our efforts at innovation. MOOCs will allow people to "try before they buy," serving as a gateway to our campus. Other higher-education institutions have experimented with this approach, such as the Berklee College of Music¹¹ and the University of Cincinnati.¹² Like them, we feel that such outreach is well worth the time and resources we've put into it.

New Approaches to Assessment

To concretely demonstrate the MOOCs' value, we're again emphasizing evaluation in phase two. Our research questions include:

• Did we attract more Wisconsin residents this time?
• Did we change the profile of a typical MOOC user from phase one?
• Did people who signed up for MOOCs attend events, and vice versa?

To answer the questions, we will take these new approaches to assessment:

• Because we are doing more MOOCs in phase two, we've switched from surveying participants three times to a longer survey at the end of a course.
• Many of the questions about motivation will remain the same, but we will include more demographic questions to determine if we attracted the intended audience for each course.
• We will collect short information cards and surveys at events to see who is attending, and to see if the events are working separately from, or in conjunction with, the MOOCs.
• We will collect analytic information from the new centralized website.

These assessments will lead us—where else?—into phase three, perhaps involving new communities around the themes of health and wellness. It's likely that the MOOCs of phase three will shift even farther from a course-based approach to apply the lessons we've learned about designing learner-centered, community focused, and globally engaged learning experiences, blending the best of physical and virtual environments.

Will our current round of MOOCs point the way forward? We'll know a lot more after we evaluate that meet-up of hunters and chefs in Baraboo.