Expert Opinions on MOOCs Challenges: Rethinking of Emerging Pedagogies

Abstract

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are considered as the future of education by means of open to everyone, unlimited number of students’ enrollment, deliver multimedia learning formats, greater access to massive educational resources, and track student progress. This chapter aims to gather expert opinions on massive open online courses (MOOCs) practices and address the pedagogical challenges so as to respond to younger generation for future lifestyles and prepare them to compete in the twenty-first century labor market. In this chapter, we will employ the Delphi method process based on multiple rounds of questionnaires results that will send to MOOC panel experts. We will report the challenges and conclude with appropriate emerging pedagogies for MOOCs and its future trends.

1. Introduction

According to Roy [1], MOOCs is an acronym for massive open online courses. Massive refers to hundreds of thousands of students who enrolled in the online courses that are open to everyone, so that students can access learning materials or course content. Online in terms of most of lectures, meetings, interaction (teacher-to-students and student-to-student interaction) via forums, blogs, social networks, and activities can be delivered online. Course materials are made available to be accessed online or delivered for students via a particular electronic medium. MOOCs have been developed under a significant discourse particularly for universities, education reformers, and companies [2]. This means “call” for universities leaders, educational politicians or policymakers, and production companies or enterprises that MOOCs have numerous potentials to reshape the traditional education into modern teaching and learning approaches to reach learners interests, diversities, lifestyles, and circumstances of the workplace. The important role that MOOCs plays in higher educational institutions is to grasp attention of universities’ leaders to bring higher education into the digital age, and the MOOCs is the strongest candidate among learning technologies for the better future of online learning [3]. The major reasons for higher education institutions to offer MOOCs for students have been identified as alternative solutions including access, experimentation, and brand extension, providing opportunities for a large number of students, enabling students to personalize their learning through formation of sub-networks, meet students’ diversities and styles of learning, improve learners’ autonomy, reduce educational costs, and provide global access to exclusive institutions [4].

From the author’s experience in the field of education (educational technology filed), we believe that integration of technology in the teaching learning process could provide a variety of solutions to the educational problems and mitigate the burden rests on educational stakeholders or those who could reap the merits of learning with technologies. Our motivation for conducting this study we thought that adaptation of MOOCs can not only overcome the teaching learning challenges, but also can provide more equal access to knowledge and educational opportunities.

Since initiation of MOOCs as an innovative approach of online learning, a distinctive set of pedagogical and technical challenges have been arisen. With all of MOOCs platforms available, how could learners be encouraged to complete online course? How do designers of MOCCs take a student-centered approach as a way for customizing learning? How do pedagogies of MOOCs could effectively develop learners’ skills and competencies that are required for the twenty-first century workplace? How do learners develop a sense of engagement and adapt themselves with emerging learning pedagogies. This study aims to gather MOOCs experts’ opinions from different countries on pedagogical and technical issues, to reach consensus and address the current challenges of MOOCs. The importance of this study is to shed light on the merits and solutions that MOOCs could offer to higher education institutions.

In status quo, the universities leaders and education politicians as well as MOOCs companies as a community of learning are required to engage working with global MOOCs experts and rethink about the future of teaching learning with MOOCs [5]. This study will contribute to the explanation of MOOCs movement and recommend for emerging pedagogies that may require to develop students’ critical skills. In the following section, we provide a brief literature review of MOOCs.

2. Literature review

2.1 MOOCs overview

The rapid development of emerging learning technologies and acceleration of social changes have influenced the educational system in a wide range. For instance, online learning has received considerable attention from educational stakeholders as its affordances allow multimedia to be utilized for educational purposes. This considerable acceleration of emerging learning technologies has led to the birth of modern educational technologies. MOOCs have been started since 2008 after George Siemens and his colleagues at the University of Manitoba had participated in a conference that was streamed online using digital tools. The term MOOCs was coined and used for the first time by Georges Siemens from Athabasca University and Dave Cormier from the University of Prince Edward Island [6]. After Siemens and his partners opened their course online, they made it completely accessible for students to access lectures, readings, share their own ideas, thinking, and discussion through Moodle, blog posts, Twitter, and other social networks or synchronous online meetings [7], and this learning approach has gained wide acceptance among higher education institutions. By the years of (2012–2013), MOOCs were accredited and recognized globally by a variety of international universities, such as Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Stanford University, and these leading and good reputation universities have been started to offer open and free courses to students [8]. Other organizations like the Khan Academy and Coursera offer thousands of courses on a wide range of topics using structure of MOOCs. This innovative approach has effectively moved the learning into the hands of learners’. Researchers have anticipated that MOOCs will swiftly replace the existing educational system with openness and scalability [9].

2.2 Pedagogical philosophy of MOOCs

Two different ideological principles’ guided MOOCs practices were developed. In the following section, we shed lights on two prominent pedagogical philosophies that differentiate between cMOOCs and xMOOCs namely connectivist and behaviorist pedagogies.

2.2.1 cMOOcs model

This type of MOOCs pedagogy is mainly designed based on constructivist and connective knowledge (CCK08) organized by George Siemens and Stephen Downes and other connectivist learning pioneers in the year 2008 to support processes of relationships, creation, and knowledge sharing [10, 11]. Basically, connectivism is a network-based theory focusing on the learning that occurs via the connections made among learners and learning objects [12].

As pioneers and scholars of MOOCs noted, cMOOC was based on the connectivist’ pedagogy, relates directly to the pattern of interaction and communication between learners and teachers, focuses on more creation and creativity and emphasizes autonomy-based learning and social networking learning. As stated by Yeager et al. [12] MOOCs connectivist pedagogy can be distinguished from other MOOCs pedagogy by the following features:

Courses are constructed more openness to conversation, discussion, dialogue and creative thinking based on collaboration, connections and sharing, and the creation of knowledge is guided by teachers or facilitators; the learners should be active in the processes of creation and deepening of knowledge. Since the courses are offered to a large number of learners in an online learning environment, multiple technologies, tools to facilitate blended learning have to be available, and learning interaction could occur in many distributed online spaces.

2.2.2 xMOOCs model

The xMOOC model is considered much more familiar to both teachers and students, and the designers often use systems that developed to be more traditional online courses. Researchers have been criticizing xMOOC because its pedagogies are relatively not appropriate to support knowledge creation and no sufficient support could exist to help learner’s engagement in learning processes [13]. Siemens who is a pioneer of MOOCs asserted that the design of xMOOCs was emphasized more traditional learning modes through video presentations and short quizzes and testing, so it focuses on knowledge duplication rather than knowledge sharing and creation [14]. xMOOCs formats are categorized under the cognitive-behaviorist pedagogy [9] and it designed in consistence with the traditional behaviorist models in which information can directly be transmitted rather than effective environments in which elements of knowledge building and creation and unique thinking skills are developed. The methodology employed for the purpose of this study is presented in the following section.

3. Methodology

In order to explore pedagogical and technical MOOCs challenges, we adopted a modified Delphi method with focusing on gathering and collating global MOOCs experts’ opinions under the phenomenon of study. According to Dalkey and Helmer [15], Delphi is a method for “eliciting and refining group judgments.” The Delphi undergoes four distinct phases [16]. The first phase can be characterized by exploration of participants about the phenomenon under discussion, and in such situation each individual contributes by adding additional information that he/she feels is pertinent to the subject of study. The second phase of the Delphi approach concerns how to grasp and understand the participants views on the issue of the study (e.g., where the participants agree or disagree, what they mean by concepts or issues that they think are relevant and important to the phenomenon under the study). If there is a significant disagreement in participants’ responses, then the third phase should be considered to bring out the underlying reasons for the differences and possibly to evaluate them. In the last phase, final evaluation occurs when all previously gathered information has been initially analyzed and the evaluation has been given for consideration. The strength of the Delphi technique is fundamentally its consensus building focus, and the responses received from experts well versed on the phenomena under the study [17]. For these unique merits, we thought that the Delphi approach is an appropriate way to proceed this study. In the context of Delphi rounds, we only employed the first and second round of a modified Delphi approach that the panel experts’ consensus around pedagogical and technical aspects of MOOCs were confirmed.

3.1 Research design

The selected panel of MOOCs experts is knowledgeable, and they have direct experiences with MOOCs practices. Those who are nominated to participate in the study have informed “the purposes of the study and what things are required from them to be done.” The study utilized a purposive sampling technique [18]. The purposive sample is a specific type of non-probability sampling that relies on data collection from individuals who own qualities that a researcher expects from the target population [19]. This type of sampling is best used when a researcher wants to choose members who will be part of the study [20]. For this study, 12 MOOCs experts across a range of international institutions and countries who had a diverse of expertise using MOOCs are selected (see Figures 1 and 2; and Table 1). In this study, the questionnaire was generated form relevant studies of MOOCs and Open Educational Resources (OER) [21, 22] with both closed and open questions.

Figure 1.

Presents countries of participants.

Figure 2.

Highlighted universities to which participants belong.

Affiliation	Country	Field
North Texas University	USA	Learning Technologies
Sudan University of Science and Technology	Sudan	Computer Integrated Education
Hangzhou Normal University	China	Educational Technology
Sultan Qaboos University	Sultanate of Oman	Educational Technology
Beijing Normal University	China	Educational Technology
Zhejiang University of Technology	China	Educational Technology
Beijing Union University	China	Educational Technology
Beijing Foreign Studies University	China	Mobile learning

Table 1.

Presents participants’ affiliations countries and fields.

At the beginning, two MOOCs experts’ who were not part of the expert panel were consulted to refine the questionnaire whether the questions which combined are appropriate for the purpose and nature of the study, and they vetted and provided suggestions for some questions to orient and guide the study to be proceeded by the Delphi approach. Based upon two MOOCs experts’ consultations, a questionnaire was re-designed, and consequently minor modifications were carried out. The questionnaire was electronically (using Google Forums) sent to the MOOCs global experts to share their expertise on the pedagogical and technical of MOOCs teaching learning practices. After the questionnaire was returned, the authors collated and summarized the results, and based up on the results, a new questionnaire was developed and sent again to the MOOCs experts’ panel. However, they were given a second opportunity to re-evaluate their original responses and consensus around relevant statements with the panel members.

3.2 Ethical considerations

Since ethical considerations have been taken as one of the most important aspects in the research processes, the participants were informed “who we are” and presented briefly the purposes of study that intended to achieve and informed that they had right to withdraw before completion of the survey at any time. The anonymity and confidentiality were taken into consideration before carrying out the survey. Participants had given a choice to write their names in the electronic survey, so that the identities might be unknown to the researchers. The protection of the privacy of the participants was ensured, their identities were kept confidential, and data obtained would only be used for this research.

3.3 Delphi rounds

We have undertaken the Delphi technique which employed two rounds processes designed to combine experts’ opinions into group consensus, and the deadline for each round was specified.

3.3.1 First round

In the first round, we provided the panel an electronic survey comprised of a list of 18 questions with the panels ‘demographics information. The questions are focused to explore pedagogical, technical, and relevant challenges associated with MOOCs teaching learning practices: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdr05sLxSXUMNuIpMR1oFQ4MCMsqxAuryPIPQ_rhtTaOwIOg/viewform?usp=sf_link. More precisely, the questionnaire is comprised of three sections; the first section explored experts’ opinions to aspects relevant for MOOCs pedagogy (e.g., course content, instructional design, consultations of educators in the process of MOOCs, sustainable models, theoretical basis for guidance MOOCs educational practice). The section was also emphasized to ask the experts panel skills and attitudes they thought are necessary for students/learners to be cultivated for better engagement with MOOCs. The second section focused to skills are important for students to be cultivated for better engagement with MOOCs. The last section was emphasized on experts’ views on changes are required in learners’ learning habits when employing MOOCs and issues considered to change the future of MOOCs and better enhance teaching learning practices respectively.

3.3.2 Second round

In the second round, we focus to collate experts’ feedback of round one and extract their responses to reach consensus. Accordingly, the questionnaire was uploaded and shared on https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfHLiqPutyJChNq2WKAuPi-8dFd630GK0vZIDtUv9ADFG3qAQ/viewform?usp=sf_link. Before the beginning of asking the participants to look at a questionnaire of the Delphi second round and to revise their responses, they were required to view the responses collected from the first questionnaire based on information provided in the first-round items. Additionally, they asked to rank items to get establishment of preliminary priorities among the second-round questionnaire items. The construction of the second round of questionnaire was made to be more open, so that the participants could input or modify their responses as desired. Based on the results generated from round two, areas of agreement and disagreement were identified.

4. Findings and discussion

This section presents the findings and discussion of the study which are organized by themes. The participants’ responses generated from the first and second rounds including pedagogical, technical, and other challenges associated with MOOCs teaching-learning processes are combined and presented following:

4.1 Pedagogical challenges

In the context of pedagogical challenges encountering MOOCs practices, the following points are emerged from the findings of the study.

1. The seniors of MOOCs lack effective instructional design (n = 8 “66.7 %”).

2. There is a lack of sustainable models to guide MOOCs teaching and learning processes (n = 8 “66.7 %”).

3. The pedagogies of MOOCs do not cater students’ diversity of learning styles and interests (n = 10, “83.3 %”).

4. Educators are not fully aware of MOOCs teaching and learning potentials (n = 7, 58.3%).

5. Educational institutions adopt MOOCs without much understanding of its educational implications (n = 8, 66.7%).

It was seemed that the panel (9 of 12 responses) pointed MOOCs designs are still driven by traditional instructional approaches, so that learning scenarios could lack interaction in learning process. The majority of participants agreed that there is a lack of MOOCs sustainable models which means inappropriate teaching and learning approaches and ineffective instructional guidance could prevent teachers from innovation in their subjects; however, students’ interests, learning styles, and diversities might not be fulfilled.

There was members’ consensus around educators not being aware of MOOCs educational affordances. As noted by panel members, for many educators a better understanding of instructional implications of MOOCs is required. Educators are in need to develop awareness of MOOCs philosophical principles when they are incorporating MOOCs in overall teaching and learning process. Understanding the way how connectivism learning could influence by emerging learning technologies in (dynamic of networks and environments) is a key for success with MOOCs. In this context, learning modes that previously served older generation have to be reshaped to achieve the greater needs of current generation.

In addition, those mentioned emerged themes (MOOCs sustainable models, pedagogical aspects, teachers and students’ awareness, and educational institution readiness to adopt MOOCs) are critical ingredients to provide a ubiquitous learning. However, MOOCs are versatile ways that educational institutions have to offer in order to facilitate access to educational across world [23]. These results are consistent with other MOOCS studies; for instance [24], MOOCs are slowly emerging and evolving in higher education institutions.

4.2 Technical challenges

As mentioned in the literature review, designing and delivering interactive MOOCs formats are being challenging for many of educational institutions adopting traditional educational strategies. From the findings of this study, the majority of members (n = 8) agreed the delivery of MOOCs courses encountered a lot of technical difficulties. For instance, some designers who had never previously experienced designing online learning or MOOCs, those may lack to visualize the process of best designing of MOOCs learning, and finally what content would be delivered online might be changed and affected the quality and delivery of MOOCs. Refs. [25, 26] suggested that MOOCs formats have to be more innovative than ever before to overcome challenges of assignments, to provide immediate feedback and avoid several expected problems and sophisticated software-driven interactive experiences.

A variety of barriers have been discussed in previous related MOOCs studies. For instance, MOOCs participants who are less skilled of the use of technology have encountered great barriers in the process of using MOOCs [27]. Some other challenges are relevant to MOOCs infrastructures (low Internet, Wi-Fi, and boring MOOCs learning materials that could not easily be accessible) [28].

4.3 Skills are important for students to be cultivated for better engagement with MOOCs

According to participants responses (see Figure 3), self-directed learning skills (n =11, 91.7%) and self-regulated learning skills (n =11, 91.7%) are seemed critical for learners to be cultivated for better engagement in MOOCs learning environment. In addition, critical skills (n = 7, 58.3%) and personal responsibility (n =7, 58.3%) are obviously important to be developed. No doubt, changing from traditional teaching methods to MOOCs learning styles might require more newly skills to be developed, and consequently changing in learners’ learning attitudes should take place. Developing self-regulated learning and self-directed learning skills are not only necessary for helping students to take responsibility of their own learning but also assist to clearly understand themselves and prioritize learning goals.

Figure 3.

Presents important skills to be cultivated for better engagement with MOOCs.

For successful learning with MOOCs, combination of knowledge, attitudes, and skills is needed. Students are required to be more autonomous during learning with MOOCs, and hence, they need to improve ability of self-direction which important to self-regulate their own learning to achieve their intended learning goals [23]. In particular, cultivating skills such as self-directed, self-regulated, and critical skills provides students opportunities to teach and assess themselves, to manage their learning and to take responsibility of their own learning, and thus, a total independence of learners with indigenous knowledge and skills that the MOOCs learning environment require could achieve [29, 30].

4.4 Changes are required in learners’ learning habits when employing MOOCs

From panel experts’ opinions, it seems that MOOCs require a lot of changes and improvement in learners’ learning habits. Hence, the role that learners play in the process of learning should change. The participants suggested improvements in learners’ habits that can be happened through

1. Developing learners’ self-learning ability and to sustain and successfully complete MOOCs learning activities independently and without of supervision.

2. Good communication skills with people from different countries and regions in MOOCs learning platform are essential.

3. Improving information technology literacy is critical for learners, so that they can successfully be able to carry out learning activities.

Drawing from relevant literature [28] and discussion of findings, cultivating online learning habits and skills is critical to rise up learners’ levels of engagement, participation, collaboration, commitment, and sustaining to the course completion through learning with MOOCs. The designers of MOOCs have to improve the quality of courses and consider a variety of learning strategies to enhance learners’ ability of interaction. Additionally, developing students’ skills of being familiar with the use of technology could help them to be involved actively in learning process carried out by MOOCs.

4.5 Issues are considered to change the future of MOOCs and better enhance teaching learning practices

Emphasizing use of open pedagogies “Methods of teaching practices” is very important, and teachers should be encouraged to develop well-structured teaching designs and deliver learning activities to help students achieve learning objectives by means of involving students to be a part of knowledge creation and active participants in learning process. Teachers also need to interact with students in MOOCs learning environment, so that they could change ways of teaching strategies and learning activities to provide learners’ opportunities and increase channels for interaction. MOOCs learning institutions are required to strictly develop mechanisms to help students avoid plagiarism. In such situation, MOOCs institutions might need to go through

1. Improving students’ ability of academic writing and develop a sense of honesty when someone quotes other researchers publication.

2. Developing tutorials for students to recognize and understand seriousness of plagiarism.

3. The rules and policies for using MOOCs courses by the universities should be changed.

4. MOOCs communities (e.g., MOOCs experts, universities leaders, and enterprises) have to work together in a harmonious way to draw a road map into the better future of learning with MOOCs.

Changing learners’ attitudes to be involved actively in the learning process when courses placed online require MOOCs communities to develop students’ awareness in several aspects. Students engage in activities to improve the ability of academic writing and avoid plagiarism that may require universities to get their students involved in specific relevant courses.

In line with related literature concerned MOOCs learning [31, 32] and what we can be concluded from findings of this study, thereby a new wave of policies and instructional approaches are necessary to guide MOOCs practices among higher educational institutions. Teachers have to seek to make paradigm shifts from traditional teaching methods to more modern online learning styles to evolve, innovate, and use augmented learning strategies, and thus, we can expect a promising future for teaching and learning with MOOCs. In the following section, the recommendations and conclusion are presented, respectively.

5. Recommendations

We now list some of the broad recommendations that we thought are important for better emerging pedagogies for learning with MOOCs.

1. It is essential to continue addressing pedagogical challenges and identify appropriate instructional approaches into better involvement with MOOCs learning.

2. MOOCs learning scenarios require teachers or instructors to implement open pedagogies as ways to alternate the practice and method of teaching and meet learners’ learning styles and environmental circumstances surrounding learners.

3. The earliest MOOCs pedagogies have been designed to be aligned with previous models of traditional learning and rarely focused to follow the online learning modes; however, to realize the concepts of openness and massiveness, the MOOCs pedagogies should be scrutinized and reconsidered.

4. Principles of connectivist to be considered in overall learning process, as therefore, MOOCs learning can be guided in effective ways.

5. MOOCs discussion forums have to be managed by faculty members or assistants, and thus, the barriers during online learning can be reduced.

6. The delivery course formats should imply elements of interactivity so students could have an opportunity to interact with instructors in learning process.

7. Peer-to-peer assessments are important at twofold, to allow student learning from each other and receive feedback of their work.

6. Conclusion

This study gathered experts’ opinions to the pedagogical and technical challenges of MOOCs teaching learning practices. The study undertakes a modified Delphi approach employed two rounds stages designed to combine experts’ views and shares their expertise on MOOCs learning. As noted in the literature review, a variety of higher education institutions were interested to adopt MOOCs, and this suggests that MOOCs is a vital and contemporary learning trend that provides numerous of alternative solutions to the traditional learning. As key findings, the study reached panel experts’ consensus around important skills that seemed to be critical and immediate needs for better learning with MOOCs. Due to the nature of MOOCs learning, experts’ recommended self-regulated and self-directed learning skills as well as personal skills are indispensable and necessary for learners to be cultivated. Hence, educational institutions must prioritize the development of learners’ those mentioned skills to support adoption of MOOCs. The study explored experts’ expertise and practices of MOOCs, noting that most of incorporated pedagogies are not focused on students-driven, as such pedagogical practice does not widely support the adoption of MOOCs toward improving learning process; however, following principles and guidance of connectivism theory is a key to success in learning leading by MOOCs. These findings indicate the need for ongoing scale-up educators’ awareness and understanding of MOOCs implications such as implementing appropriate learning approaches, effective ways of assessment, design course formats, and delivery modes. The findings may inform considerable changes to the MOOCs community (university leaders, institutional practices, educational policy makers, MOOCs providers, and enterprises) to adopt initiatives, encourage a wider use of MOOCs practices, and develop a sense of learners’ engagement to continue sustaining toward course completion. No doubt, trends of MOOC will bring to focus on cultivating leaners’ skills of workplace. The MOOCs experts have to be consulted through whole processes of designing, development, implementation, and evaluation of MOOCs learning.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the MOOCs experts and appreciate their insights and contributions that guided the focus of the paper. We acknowledge the authors of the articles that used in the process of this study.

Conflict of interest

We declare that no conflict of interests regarding this paper.