MOOCs: an updated look at the benefits and challenges of MOOCs designed for working professionals.

From Digital Culture & Society

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Revision as of 14:39, 28 November 2023

Context

One thing I often wonder is, why Moocs? Why would certain individuals want to learn through MOOCs? This article explores why busy working professionals choose to take MOOCs and what specific course features they find valuable. The article investigates the motivations of working professionals and the benefits and challenges in their design. The text compares MOOCs to face-to-face instruction, it looks at who enrolls themselves in MOOCs and which features contribute to their likeability.

Overview:

In the article, researchers investigated the Demographics of MOOC participants. They talk about how working professionals are most interested in learning topics that have immediate relevance to their jobs or personal lives. They have become very popular informal learning channels for working professionals to update their knowledge and skills in order to meet new professional challenges. They’ve discovered that participants are mainly from the Western world. They found that the top 5 countries for participation in a MOOC titled Circuits and Electronics are the United States, India, The United Kingdom, Colombia and Spain. Their research shows that men are using MOOCs more than women, in a Circuits and Electronics course, researchers found that of 7161 survey respondents, 88% reported their gender as male. Another study looked at 597,692 learners of HarvardX and MITx courses on edX only 29% of the registrants reported their gender as female. In the article we learn why individuals sign up, the key factors for taking a MOOC, what course features participants find useful/not useful, and how participants compare the MOOCs with face-to-face instruction.

Research Design and Method

To answer these research questions: What are the demographics of participants taking MOOCs, and what are their reasons for doing so? (RQ1)

How much time do the participants spend in taking the MOOCs and to what extent do they complete the assignments? What are their reasons for completing or not completing the assignments? (RQ2)

What course features do these participants find useful/not useful? Do the participants use social media tools such as a Facebook Group Page and/or YouTube Live Office Hours associated with the MOOCs, and what do they think of these tools as part of their learning experience? (RQ3)

How do participants compare the MOOCs with face-to-face instruction? (RQ4)

Participants were students enrolled in three MOOCs that ran from spring to summer 2017 and were provided by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin's College of Communication. There were 439 men (49.1%) and 456 women (50.9%) among the 895 participants. The same course materials, video lectures, quizzes, and weekly discussion forums are included in all MOOCs in order to keep participants interested and assess their progress.

Researchers created a survey with both Likert-scale and open-ended questions. The Survey consisted of 26 items in 6 sections

• Demographics
• Reason for taking the MOOC
• Time spent and completion of exercise/assigments and reasons
• MOOC course Features
• Learning and Enjoyment and comparison with Face-to-face instruction
• Social media tools used.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This article gives us plenty of valuable information to better understand MOOCs at a deeper level. This article allows the reader to better understand why people sign up for MOOCs and what is liked and disliked about their features. The article continues to explore what participants believe made them effective, and how they would compare them to face-to-face instruction. Through quantitative surveys, researchers were able to display what it's like taking a MOOC course by showcasing the amount of time spent by participants on a MOOC course, how many individuals complete the exercise and assignments, and the reasons that people would miss those tasks. The article does a good job of showcasing both sides of MOOCs indicating features that participants found useful and some that were deemed not useful. This article overall gives the reader a better understanding of participants who have been enrolled in a MOOC and their perspective on the course. Whether is it better or worse than traditional learning, essentially, what are its strengths and weaknesses compared to face-to-face interactions. One of the main limitations of this study was the participants in the survey were voluntary respondents. The data was self-reported and therefore subjective. This study only took participants who were working professionals instead of more broad users of COOMs which could lead to different results. Another study could look at younger demographics or different subject matter to see whether the results vary depending on age and direction of study. Another slight limitation is that the study analyzed MOOCs from 2017 which could have had much different demographic and technological innovation compared to today in 2023.

Results

Results There are four reasons why people sign up for MOOCs and four key factors that contribute to participants taking a MOOC highlighted in the article. The first reason for people to sign up based on their findings is to learn about a new topic or to extend current knowledge. Number two is due to curiosity about MOOCs, Third is a desire for a personal challenge and finally fourth, is to obtain completion certificates. Shapiro et al (2017) found that learners mostly considered knowledge, work, convenience and personal interest as the key factors for taking MOOCs. The three main reasons for enrollment were a general interest in the topic with 70.8%, personal growth and enrichment with 70% and relevance to job with 66.8%. The article examines the amount of time participants took working on MOOCs per week with 56.6% reporting that they spent 2-3 hours per week on the MOOCs and 38.1% reported they spent between 4 and 5 hours a week. Amongst all participants in the survey, 42.3% of individuals indicated that they had completed all exercises and assignments. The main reasons highlighted for participants who did not finish all of their assignments were due to lack of time stated by 79.4% of them and too much work by 25.6% of them. The Course Features that were found to be most useful and liked best by participants are the Topic of the course, the qualified instructor teaching it, the video lectures to share educational content, its easy access, flexibility and free of charge. On the other hand, the least favourite features were the discussion forums, the quizzes and the lack of interaction. When asked to compare MOOCs to traditional face-to-face learning 38.4% of the participants considered MOOCs as somewhat or much better. Meanwhile, 49.1% of participants considered the two instructional formats to be the same or somewhat worse. The reasoning behind participants thinking MOOCs are better is because of the self-paced learning, ensured your learning from experts, the quality of course materials and that it is free of charge. Individuals also highlighted that they are worse than face-to-face teaching because of the lack of interaction, poor interface design and too much self-directed learning.

Assessment

This article gives us a better understanding of why people take MOOC courses, the reasons behind their likeability and things they must improve on to become better. It is imperative for educators, policymakers, and learners themselves to comprehend these advantages and disadvantages. Making educated decisions about selecting a course of study, creating successful online programs, and resolving issues related to online learning environments is made possible by it. Furthermore, this information advances current conversations regarding MOOCs' place in the broader educational landscape and aids in the development of better online learning environments for a range of users.