MOOCs as an alternative for teacher professional development: examining learner persistence in one Chinese MOOC

Resource type
Report
Authors/contributors
Title
MOOCs as an alternative for teacher professional development: examining learner persistence in one Chinese MOOC
Abstract
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have developed into a significant international movement, showing great promise in addressing equity, quality, and efficiency issues in global education. To date, many MOOCs have been developed specifically for teacher professional development (TPD). In this regard, an important empirical question remains to be addressed: How and to what extent can MOOCs support equity, quality, and efficiency in teacher professional development? To help fill this knowledge gap, this study, conducted from 2014 to 2016, focused on persistent teacher-learners in a TPD MOOC that was offered for seven consecutive rounds by the X-Learning Center of Peking University. The study found that more than 15% of the 105,383 teachers who enrolled in this MOOC were persistent teacher-learners, defined as learners who enrolled in multiple rounds. Data analysis showed that these persistent teacher-learners had diverse motivations for re-enrollment, including refreshing conceptual understanding, achieving higher scores, earning course certification, and discussing practical problems. The study also found that the persistent teacher-learners developed self-regulated learning skills in the course of multiple rounds of the MOOC and showed significantly higher learning achievement than one-time enrollees. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of both clicklog data and interview data revealed additional insights into the persistent teacher-learners’ learning within the MOOC and their real-world teaching practice beyond the MOOC. Overall, this study contributes to an improved understanding of the potential of MOOCs as an alternative TPD delivery mode in developing countries and sheds light on the future design of effective TPD through MOOCs.
Place
Beijing, China
Institution
Peking University
Date
2018
Library Catalogue
Google Scholar
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Extra
Publisher: Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development, Inc.(FIT-ED)
Citation
Wang, Q., Chen, B., Fan, Y., & Zhang, G. (2018). MOOCs as an alternative for teacher professional development: examining learner persistence in one Chinese MOOC. Peking University. http://dl4d.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/China-MOOC.pdf