What Research Says About MOOCs – An Explorative Content Analysis

Olaf Zawacki-Richter,Aras Bozkurt,Ahmed Aldraiweesh,Uthman Alturki

doi:10.19173/irrodl.v19i1.3356

Abstract

<p class="3">Since the first offering of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2008, the body of literature on this new phenomenon of open learning has grown tremendously. In this regard, this article intends to identify and map patterns in research on MOOCs by reviewing 362 empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 2008 to 2015. For the purposes of this study, a text-mining tool was used to analyse the content of the published research journal articles and to reveal the major themes and concepts covered in the publications. The findings reveal that the MOOC literature generally focuses on four lines of research: (a) the potential and challenges of MOOCs for universities; (b) MOOC platforms; (c) learners and content in MOOCs; and (d) the quality of MOOCs and instructional design issues. Prospective researchers may use these results to gain an overview of this emerging field, as well as to explore potential research directions.</p>

Highlights

The 21st century witnessed an educational paradigm shift, stemming from the widespread use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
The results reveal that the thematic region of courses has the most direct mentions within the text with 599 (100% relative count), followed by MOOC / Massive Open Online Courses (83%), learners (23%), design (10%), analysis (9%), future (7%), and universities (6%)
The results of the text-mining analysis are described along four connected pathways that emerged from the selected MOOC articles: (a) the potential and challenges of MOOCs for universities; (b) MOOC platforms; (c) learners and content in MOOCs; and (d) the quality of MOOCs and instructional design issues

Summary

Introduction

The 21st century witnessed an educational paradigm shift, stemming from the widespread use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). With the proliferation of ICT, online, open, and flexible learning moved from the periphery to mainstream education. ICT improved the quality and capacity of the online delivery of educational content. Online networks are used as learning spaces that are distributed, flexible, accessible, and, most importantly, potentially open. What Research Says About MOOCs – An Explorative Content Analysis Zawacki-Richter, Bozkurt, Alturki, and Aldraiweesh that “there are three key strands that lead to the current set of open education core concepts: open access education, open source software and web 2.0 culture” Providing access to higher learning opportunities is the raison d’être of Open Universities (Tait, 2008). Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a recent development of this open learning movement, which have drawn much attention from both the academic and the public sphere. The first course in this format was offered in 2008 at the University of Manitoba and was entitled Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (Liyanagunawardena, Adams, & Williams, 2013)

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Conclusion