University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Scholarship of Teaching MOOC-Based Degree Programs: Opportunities and Challenges

Heap, Tania P.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/95872

Description

Title
The Scholarship of Teaching MOOC-Based Degree Programs: Opportunities and Challenges
Author(s)
Heap, Tania P.
Issue Date
2017
Keyword(s)
  • MOOC
  • digital scholarship
  • online teaching
  • faculty development
Abstract
This paper explores the teaching component of scholarship in the Digital Age, with a focus on teaching online Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) aligned to degree programs. Instructors are increasingly embracing online teaching as part of their scholarly portfolio, including MOOC development and teaching. There is some empirical research on the impact of teaching stand-alone MOOCs on the instructors’ practices and on learners’ experiences. The impact of teaching MOOC-based degree programs on the instructors’ professional development has not been investigated to this date. This study explores the instructors’ experiences teaching program-aligned MOOCs, with a focus on the online MBA at the University of Illinois, which combines non-credit courses with traditional credit-bearing courses, and the impact teaching a MOOC-based degree has on their professional practice as digital scholars. Preliminary findings suggest that the experience of designing and delivering a MOOC informed the instructors' teaching practice, and they often reused MOOC content in their face-to face and blended classrooms. MOOC teaching may not replace traditional online teaching but is perceived as a complementary form of scholarship in teaching. Challenges noted are the time-consuming process of designing and developing the MOOC-based MBA course, and delivering instruction on two Learning Management Systems at the same time: Coursera for the non-credit MOOC component, and Blackboard for the credit-bearing portion of the online course. Further work will involve determining ways to design MOOCs that positively impact on the instructor’s teaching practices and instructor-learner interaction, with a view of increasing the performance and motivation of global learners and MOOC-based degree enrolled students.
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95872

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