Did someone order a MicroMasters?

It’s said that you can only be the first to do something once and I can definitely say that I have been part of a team that has done just that. UoE holds the record for being the first UK institution to launch a MicroMasters on edX. Yes, a year and half after we began this process we have launched the first module of our MicroMasters in Predictive Analytics with our colleagues at the Business School.

A lot has happened since January 2018, when I first started here at UoE, while also undertaking a new challenge which was to be a first for the university. I eagerly accepted this challenge. Settling into the new role was fine, I just had to figure out what a MicroMasters was. After a bit of research and a lot of self-assurance, I think I just about figured it out. Then came the next part… figuring out how were we going to do this!

Thankfully I was joined shortly after by my marvellously talented fellow Instructional Designers Lizzy and Andres and between us we became an unstoppable force (we did in my world at least!)

Between us, there was a lot of figuring out to do in the early phases:

Introducing a new learning design process
Familiarising ourselves with the edX platform
On-boarding academics
Updating the learning design process
Running learning design workshops
Updating the learning design process (again)
Exploring the world of chat bots!
Running even more workshops….

I think you get the picture. A lot of work has gone into building this and a lot of people and teams were involved, which would require another blog to name them all! On that point, whilst doing this for the first time, we were also simultaneously trying to build a team to support online learning programmes like the MicroMasters in Predictive Analytics.

All this hard work helped us to successfully launch the first module of our MicroMasters on September 17th. We have reached out to a wider and more global learning base that would otherwise have been unable to participate in this course for a variety of reasons. We have dared to be different, we have taken something that as an institution we have not done before and challenged the idea of what online learning can be. But, that’s not all we have done! We still have another four modules to launch and these will be released over the course of the year, in which we hope to reach more people interested in this mode of learning.

We are often encouraged to reflect and look back at what we have done and what we could do differently. There are definitely things that we have learnt from this process and can improve on. But if I’m being honest, I am really proud of what we have achieved so far and I have learned so much during this process from my colleagues and about the entire process of building a course like this, oh and I now know what a MicroMasters is!