English for specific purpose through facilitated and nonfacilitated MOOCs: An analysis of the learners' perspectives

摘要

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained attention from learners and teachers across the globe, but high dropout rate is a matter of concern, which makes it imperative to understand the reasons. From the theoretical perspective that learners learn more effectively through collaborative and socially cohesive communities, this qualitative study is focused to understand how learners experience facilitated and nonfacilitated MOOCs. It attempts to explore learners' perspectives from two different groups of learners learning the same MOOC of English for journalism. One of the groups is facilitated for the first week of the course by instructors through face‐to‐face interactions, whereas the other is not. The perspectives of the learners from both groups regarding their experiences are analyzed through comparative and contrastive thematic analysis of the data collected through participant observation and semistructured interviews of focus groups selected through purposive sampling technique. Though learning the same ESP MOOC, the learners (18–35 in age; all of them university students), register partly similar and largely contrastive learning experiences across the facilitated and nonfacilitated MOOC environments. It is found that the learners, when facilitated, develop a stronger sense of belongingness, accountability, responsibility, peer competition, networking, and solution of issues, which results in retention of the learners. This study foregrounds the effectiveness of hybrid MOOCs, in terms of retention and satisfaction of learners.