Exploring How Learners Integrate Personally Meaningful Issues in a Project-Based MOOC

• In Event: Honoring Diversity in Online Teaching and Learning

Abstract

We explore the impact of increasing learner agency through a project-based learning approach in a massive open online course, Problem Solving Using Computational Thinking. We discuss ways in which the course’s pedagogical approach allowed learners to bring their present views and concerns together with the course’s subject matter. Many learners chose to base their final projects on applications of computational thinking that address challenges they face in their personal lives, including the COVID-19 pandemic, carrying an individualized sense of importance and urgency. We assert that this approach enabled learners to more deeply internalize the role that computational thinking can play in their own lives, thereby enhancing knowledge construction and motivation.

Authors

• Juan Daniel Pinto, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Chris Quintana, University of Michigan

• Rebecca M. Quintana, University of Michigan