Towards Culturally Inclusive MOOCs: A Design-based Approach

Mana Taheri, Katharina Hölzle, Christoph Meinel

2019

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become one of the most popular ways of acquiring new knowledge and skills. One of the unique characteristics of MOOCs is their learner diversity. MOOC learners vary in age, gender, cultural background, language and discipline. This poses a great challenge for MOOC designers to create learning experiences that resonate with their diverse global audience. This paper reports instructional strategies that were applied to create culturally inclusive MOOCs. We applied a design-based approach to experiment, test, and evaluate these strategies over the course of three MOOCs on the topic of Design Thinking. The study uses in-depth qualitative interviews with international participants, pre-and post-course surveys, as well as observations from the discussion forums, in order to gain insights into learners’ perspectives. As a result, the authors offer instructional strategies that may accommodate the needs of MOOC learners from diverse cultural backgrounds. Considering that MOOCs promise opportunities for life-long learning to learners around the globe, it is of utmost importance to design learning experiences that are culturally inclusive.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Taheri M., Hölzle K. and Meinel C. (2019). Towards Culturally Inclusive MOOCs: A Design-based Approach.In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-367-4, pages 597-604. DOI: 10.5220/0007715805970604

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu19,
author={Mana Taheri and Katharina Hölzle and Christoph Meinel},
title={Towards Culturally Inclusive MOOCs: A Design-based Approach},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2019},
pages={597-604},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007715805970604},
isbn={978-989-758-367-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - Towards Culturally Inclusive MOOCs: A Design-based Approach
SN - 978-989-758-367-4
AU - Taheri M.
AU - Hölzle K.
AU - Meinel C.
PY - 2019
SP - 597
EP - 604
DO - 10.5220/0007715805970604