Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 5, 2019
Date Accepted: Mar 23, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jul 16, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Benefits of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) participation: Qualitative Synthesis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) as originally conceived promised to provide educational access to anyone with an internet connection, there are limits to how expansive MOOC education has turned out to be. Nonetheless, leading universities continue to offer MOOCs, including many in the health sciences, on a number of private platforms. Therefore research on online education must include a thorough understanding of the role of MOOCs. Thus far studies on MOOC participants focus mainly on learners’ assessment of the course. We know that MOOCs are not reaching the universal audiences that were once predicted, and we know a lot about learners’ perceptions of MOOCs. However, there is little scholarship on what learners themselves gain from participating in MOOCs.
Objective:
As MOOC development persists and expands, scholars and developers should be aware of the role of MOOCs in education by looking at what they do offer their participants. In this qualitative synthesis of a set of MOOC evaluation studies, we explore outcomes for MOOC learners, that is, how learners themselves benefit from participating.
Methods:
To explore MOOC learners’ outcomes we conducted a qualitative synthesis, in the form of a deductive thematic analysis, aggregating findings from 17 individual studies selected from an existing systematic review of MOOC evaluation methods. We structured our inquiry using the Kirkpatrick model, relying on Kirkpatrick levels 2, 3, and 4 as potential themes in our analysis.
Results:
Our analysis identified six types of Kirkpatrick outcomes in 17 studies. Five of these (learning/general knowledge, skills, attitudes, confidence, and commitment) fit into Kirkpatrick Level 2 while Kirkpatrick Level 3 outcomes concerning behavior/application were seen in four studies. Two additional themes were identified outside of the Kirkpatrick framework: culture and identity outcomes and affective/emotional outcomes. Kirkpatrick Level 4 was not represented among the outcomes we examined.
Conclusions:
Our findings point to some gains from MOOCs, and while we can expect MOOCs to persist, how learners benefit from the experience of participating in the MOOC remains unclear. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.
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