Abstract
Although MOOCs dedicated to the teaching and learning of languages - Language MOOCs known as LMOOCs in the published literature - have gained popularity since 2008, this is not the case for language teacher education courses which are still rarely delivered in the form of MOOCs. Unsurprisingly, very little is therefore known about the effectiveness of such courses for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and initial language teacher education. To fill this gap, a study was carried out based on a MOOC addressing the needs of current and prospective teachers of languages for specific purposes, which was designed by the consortium of the Erasmus+-funded CATAPULT project in 2019, and which has been run three times since its launch. The present study aims to probe the reactions of participants on the MOOC in terms of its usefulness and how it matched their reasons for joining. It is based on post-course surveys administered to course participants (n=50) as well as on feedback provided by instructors and on focus-group interviews with Teaching Assistants (n=4), whose role was to support instructors in providing feedback and comments in the third iteration of the course. Data analysis shows that if course participants' overall satisfaction has grown steadily between season 1 and season 3 of the course, it is partly because their initial objectives have been revised along the way. We also show that, from a MOOC designer's perspective, a combination of the xMOOC and cMOOC models seems to be relevant for any language teacher education MOOC and that creative solutions exist to address the issue of sufficient instructor presence in such online courses, however open and massive they may be.
Highlights
Both Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as well as studies into their effectiveness in enabling and fostering peer-to-peer participation and the generation and sharing of knowledge between learners as well as the ethos of new literacies date from the beginning of the millennium (Anderson 2004)
One interesting finding is that perceived module usefulness seems to be influenced by (1) its direct applicability to the classroom and (2) on content complexity, as shown by the slight variations between modules: there was a clearly stated preference for modules that are directly applicable in the classroom, which is in line with the participants’ stated objectives for joining the course possibly due to the fact they were all in-service language teachers
From a course design perspective, it is worth noting that course participants’ initial objectives for joining the course might have been revised along the way as they seem to value posts and feedback more than other types materials/activities at the end of the day. This points to the necessary flexibility of any LTEMOOC, as well as to the fact that MOOC designers should cater for both participants’ wants and needs, as these don’t always align
Summary
Both Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as well as studies into their effectiveness in enabling and fostering peer-to-peer participation and the generation and sharing of knowledge between learners as well as the ethos of new literacies date from the beginning of the millennium (Anderson 2004). The present paper looks at the LSP teacher education MOOC from three different perspectives. After situating it within the massive open online courses literature, it reports on the process preparation and writing, with an account of the structural design and content of the MOOC. The final part looks at data coming from a multifaceted research into the effectiveness of the course as well as participant satisfaction. Drawing on this analysis, we present both the lessons learnt as well as the revisions made to the course in preparation for each of the three iterations of the MOOC
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