Contributions to the mosaic describing learners’ experiences with open online learning

Abstract

While individual offerings of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) differ in significant ways (Bayne & Ross, 2014), this fact did not prevent exuberant authors in the mass media in 2012-2013 to proclaim that MOOCs were going to revolutionize education. In 2013-2014 anti-MOOC sentiments rose amidst concerns pertaining to completion rates, sustainable business models, and pedagogical effectiveness, and by 2015 mass media attention has largely waned (Kovanovic, in press). While there continues to be “no shortage of prophecies about [MOOC’s] potential impact” (Breslow et al., 2013, pp. 23) and research into the behaviours and activities of learners enrolled in MOOCs continues unabated, the academic community has yet to develop an in-depth and multidimensional understanding of learner experiences in these courses and the scholarly community still has “an incomplete mosaic of students’ learning experiences with open online learning” (Veletsianos, 2013). As Veletsianos, Collier, and Schneider (in press) argue “while researchers can say with increasing confidence what they observe learners doing in MOOCs, empirical evidence on why they do what they do, how they do what they do, and what it is like to participate in MOOCs is scarce.” Thus, we developed this special issue to enhance our collective understanding of learner experiences and participation in MOOCs. The question that we invited researchers to answer was: What is it like to learn and participate in MOOCs? The collection of papers in this special issue brings together authors from around the world who share their research on learner experiences, perspectives, and practices.