Perceptions of Faculty and Instructional Designers on Multicultural Learners’ Needs in Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are one of the most innovative forms of online instruction delivered to learners of different language, cultural and educational backgrounds around the world. These multicultural learners have diverse communication styles, learning behaviors and needs that are manifested and demonstrated differently in such a large scale online learning environment as MOOCs. There is little research on how aspects of MOOC learners’ diverse cultural backgrounds and learning behaviors are perceived, how these learners are characterized in terms of their learning needs, and how the MOOC instructors and instructional designers respond to these needs in the course design process. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe how MOOC learners’ diverse learning needs, stemming from their different language, cultural and educational backgrounds, were perceived and responded to during the course design and delivery. Participants were fifteen instructors and instructional designers in American higher educational institutions who were involved in designing and delivering a wide variety of MOOC subjects on the Coursera hosting platform. The insights of participants into specific instructional strategies that were designed especially for MOOC multicultural learners’ needs were categorized into three themes: language, content and engagement. These strategies aimed to provide support and engage learners with English language barriers, who did not have the necessary subject background, or who were not familiar with the culture of American education. The study also investigated the pedagogical challenges and concerns that the participants faced during and after the delivery of the MOOCs. Typical challenges included confusions caused during the discussion triggered by the subject, the participants’ struggle with the efficiency of peer assessment, and the applicability of the content materials for the global audience.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Phan, Trang T.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• McNeil, Sara G.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Robin, Bernard R.
• Lee, Mimi Miyoung
• Mountain, Lee

• Diversity
• Multicultural learners' needs
• Massive open online courses
• Perceptions
• Faculty
• Instructional strategies
• Pedagogical challenges

Statement dc:rights

• The author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10657/3525

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/3525