Globally, MOOCs are still here: Growing use by pre-service and in-service teachers

• In Event: Online learning in different educational settings

Proposal

Research Context
The advent of COVID-19 pandemic has forced an unprecedented shift to online teaching and learning. Corresponding to lockdowns across the world, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have seen a surge in enrollment since March 2020. Impey (2020) reported that the enrollment at Coursera - one of the largest MOOC providers in the world grew 640% from Mid-March to mid 2020-April. During the pandemic MOOCs served as both teaching resources for classroom use, as well as for teachers’ own professional development (TPD).
Current research shows that teachers have become one of the largest groups of MOOC users (Karachristo et al., 2018). An early study found that among eleven MOOCs offered by MIT in spring in 2013, nearly 28% of enrollees were former or active teachers (Pope, 2014). Later, a report conducted over four years on open online courses by Harvard and MIT professors showed that 32% of survey respondents were or had been teachers (Chuang & Ho, 2016).
Indeed, more recently, many teacher-training MOOCs have been developed and are available on various MOOC providers around the world including: Coursera, edX, Canvas, Network, Udemy, Udacity, FutureLearn, EMMA -European Multiple MOOC Aggregator, Chinese University MOOC and so on (Misra 2018). Besides using English as the main instruction language, MOOCs for TPD also available in different countries by using different instruction languages. For example, “Flipped Classroom” in Chinese at Chinese University MOOC Platform, “Education Methods and Education Engineering” in Korean on a Korean MOOC platform K-MOOC, “Interactive Teaching” in Japanese on one of Japan’s largest MOOC platforms JMOOC, and many more.

Statement of Problem
In line with the CIES2022 conference theme, this paper addresses the voices of front-line teachers involved in education by conducting comparative explorations of practice and implementation of educational innovations – using MOOCs for TPD.
Despite research on MOOCs for more than ten years, their use for Teacher Professional Development (TPD) is still relatively new and is an under-studied topic. (Mabuan et al., 2018; Misra, 2018; Koukis & Jimoyiannis, 2019). Current research primarily addresses students’ motivations and perspectives regarding more general MOOCs. Less focus has been on studying this growing ‘teacher audience.’
Educators are at the heart of this online teaching and learning transformation. By recognizing that teachers are also learners, and their motivation and initiatives are essential to how students learn, MOOCs may provide a supporting role for pre- and in-service professional development for teaching and learning, especially in areas with limited access to other online or in-person resources. Providing online access to teacher development may broaden access to those without other means. It is likely, however, to widen the resources gap for teachers without access to the Internet.

Research Inquires & Method
This study explores teachers’ comparative participation in MOOCs using a narrative literature review methodology (Green et al., 2006). We performed three keyword searches including “MOOCs”, “Teachers”, and “Teacher Professional Development” on both Google Scholar and Eric databases. We further narrowed our research on academic articles that were published between 2013 to 2021 as MOOCs emerged as a popular online learning since 2012. A total of 60 articles meeting this set of criteria were then selected and further analyzed by thematic analysis and coded for major themes in four main areas: (1) participants’ characteristics and reasons for using MOOCs for teacher professional development, (2) teacher participants’ learning experiences and their outcomes, (3) challenges inherent to using MOOCs for TPD, and (4) the internationalization of MOOCs in higher education reframing more traditional views of teacher education.

Preliminary Findings
Preliminary findings suggest that many teachers currently use MOOCs for TPD over traditional professional development methods, as the digital age is requiring teachers to equip themselves with advanced technologies (Gordillo et al., 2019). In addition, MOOCs own characteristics such as large-scale, well-curated materials, free or at low costs, and flexible design, are drawing large teacher audiences. A second finding is that teachers prefer watching videos and participating in forum discussions (Coetzee et al., 2014). MOOCs can provide teachers an opportunity to connect with each other and build broad-based online professional learning communities, nationally or internationally (Koukis & Jimoyiannis, 2019).
Regarding learning outcomes, completion rates are still considered an important indicator, yet researchers hold different opinions of their value. Instead of simply reporting the completion rate of a MOOC, some researchers have suggested using more complex indicators to analyze teachers’ learning outcomes, including satisfaction, acquired knowledge, how participants actually engaged in a course, and the influences after completing the courses. (Kennedy & Laurillard, 2019) For example, teachers may engage in ‘just in time’ learning, taking only what they need from an entire MOOC course, and not finishing by choice (McClure, 2016).
Furthermore, four challenges of using MOOCs for TPD were also identified. These included a) technical challenges, b) learners’ challenges, c) instructors’ challenges, and d) challenges with regards to local support (Mabuan et al., 2018; Kennedy & Laurillard, 2019). MOOCs as part of the digital revolution is not new. MOOCs, however, can add to the disruption caused by the internationalization of higher education. For example, international faculty may teach MOOCs across multiple countries, offering low cost, internationally recognized certificates. Also, the roles of MOOCs should not be overlooked in addressing important issues related to access based on human and civil rights, as well as funding responsibilities.

Contribution to Comparative and International Education
Many of the teachers build on MOOC structures by including videos and other materials into their own online courses by curating digital materials. This quietly helps create the growing role for teacher education—choosing and sharing curated materials.
Describing who these teachers are, hearing the voices of front-line teachers, understanding what they bring to courses in terms of background knowledge, and what they want out of their experiences, could influence future digital course design to best meet teachers’ professional development needs. From a course’s design and content to its instruction and evaluation, MOOC providers and their funders ultimately need to learn from their users how to frame the highly complex perspectives generated by much broader domestic and international audiences.

Authors

• Xi Wang, The University Of Pittsburgh School of Education

• Maureen W McClure, The University Of Pittsburgh School of Education