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Analysing student participation in Foreign Language MOOCs: a case study
Elena Bárcena, Timothy Read, Elena Martín-Monje & Mª Dolores Castrillo
ensure that they worked with them in an organized way,
all the materials in the Professional English MOOC were
available to students from the beginning of the course in
order to fulfill the condition of openness in this type of
modality. The teaching team decided to rely on the students’
responsibility to take their study seriously and not
rush through the materials inappropriately. This feature
provided flexibility to the course and allowed the course
to be undertaken at different times and rhythms. As for
the scaffolding mechanism that led students to simpler explanations
and activities on a given topic when difficulties
were encountered, it was used by less advanced students
and valued as one of the key aspects of the course. This
feature allowed for the diversification of the usefulness
of the course, particularly since there was no entrance or
diagnosis test.
Learning and using a language involves a number of
written and oral skills and competences, including linguistic
(formal), pragmatic (contextual) and sociolinguistic
(cultural and intercultural) (following the terminology of
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
[Council of Europe, 2001]), all of which have a comparable
importance in successful communication, particularly
in professional environments. However, many computer-based
language courses emphasize the development
of reading/writing skills and on formal rather than functional
linguistic aspects, because of their computational
intractability (Chowdhury, 2003). For this course it was
decided to include the most computationally problematic
areas of language teaching, namely oral and written interaction
and sociolinguistic competence by making the most
of the P2P tool available in the Miríada X platform.
Students were asked to upload a video recording with
an oral presentation on a given sociolinguistic topic and
the online platform automatically sent the uploaded file to
three other students, who had to provide feedback to their
course mates using the following criteria: 1) appropriateness
of vocabulary, terminology and register; 2) grammatical
correctness; 3) fluency, pronunciation and intonation;
and 4) intelligibility and coherence. Guidelines on how to
provide useful and respectful feedback were provided in
the course guide (consisting of an explanatory video recorded
by the teaching team and a document), which was
available for consultation throughout the course. Special
emphasis was given to avoid erroneous feedback by
asking students to stick to areas that they felt confident
about and by asking for help if in doubt. In any case, the
seven teachers tried to supervise most of the P2P activity
and observed that the majority of students were prudent
and responsible when they felt unsure about the
correctness or appropriateness of a given element in the
video. In fact, as the literature of P2P reveals, there is a
tendency to be more cautious in correcting others’ production
than in one’s own production. Furthermore, the
students acknowledged (and there was evidence of this
being true) having searched on the web and consulted
several resources on the preparation of their feedback.
On a negative note, it must be said that students focused
their attention and criticism on criteria 1) and 2), rather
than 3) and 4) (see above). Since they were university
students (and highly likely to have undertaken a number
of formal/conventional English courses in their academic
lives), this preference is probably a reflection of the prioritization
that they have experienced as students by their
teachers. However, the skills which correspond to criteria
3) and 4) are of utmost importance in the professional
world (Belcher, 2006), so further guidelines in this sense
are likely to be incorporated into the feedback section of
the course guide for future editions of the course.
Conclusion
This paper has provided an account of the first edition
of the first language MOOC in Spain, which has recently
taken place in the Miríada X platform. Although the
overall feeling of the experience is rather positive both
for students and for the teaching team, there were very
significantly divergent results, reflected both in the statistical
records of the students’ log and the final student
questionnaires. The analysis of the data made it obvious
that language MOOCs capture the interest of the population,
but publicity is clearly not focused in the direction of
those people who could benefit the most by free and open
courses: the socially unprivileged and those out of formal
education. A thorough revision of this area is required in
the future. There is a huge variety of MOOC models being
used at the moment and results on the methodology of
the Professional English MOOC demonstrate that most
of its features are worth preserving for future editions
of the course. However, there was considerable dropout,
which reflects the misconception that the general population
has on MOOCs, despite the fact that each course had
an associated number of European credits, and that could
give them a rough idea of the volume of work involved.
However, the fact that they are free makes people register
with no commitment to continue, and randomly poking
around in the course, due to curiosity, although subsequently
dropping out. This is likely to carry on to some
extent in the future and questions the validity of course
abandonment as a quality variable for MOOCs (Read et
al., 2013). Finally, the P2P activity was developed by the
platform developers as a key tool that would enhance
interaction and was welcome by the language teaching
team because of the opportunity to put into practice what
is a key skill in language use. However, a large number of
students, who acknowledged the importance of interaction,
etc., in the questionnaires, failed to make the most of
this opportunity, probably because of the extra work, time
and effort that it entailed, a common social phenomenon
that has been widely acknowledged by language teachers
in this country. The teaching team has realized the need to
change this attitude of language learners and intends to
emphasize the importance of collaborative learning from
the beginning in the next edition of the MOOC so that
students realize the incoherence underlying their atti-
Research Track | 16