Contributions to the mosaic describing learners’ experiences with open online learning
Date
2015Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
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.
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