MOOC LEARNERS: WHO ARE THEY AND WHAT ARE THEIR PERSPECTIVES?

Técnico Lisboa of Universidade de Lisboa (tecnico.ulisboa.pt), Portugal, has been aiming to position itself in the latest developments of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), in a pathway that started in 2013 with a definition of a strategic plan. This plan takes into account both the Portuguese higher education context in the areas known as Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) and, on the other side, the education in STEM elsewhere in the world for Portuguese-speaking communities. 

The first online courses were launched by the end of October 2016 in a proprietary platform MOOC Técnico (mooc.tecnico.ulisboa.pt) based on Open edX. Over a period of one year, eight online courses were produced and run for the first time, and three of them even resulted in successfully reruns. Around 3500 participants enrolled in the MOOC Técnico online courses. Presently, seven more courses are under production and are scheduled for launching in 2018.

The completion rates for the courses (participants who score greater or equal 60% of the course’ activities) are very encouraging, ranging between 25% and 58% the percentage of participants who receive the free certificate for having successfully conclude the course. Comparing these numbers with the usually average of 8% of completion rates among participants in edX courses (Chuang & Ho, 2017), the MOOC Técnico courses achieve a figure of success rate far above average.

In the present paper, we aim to present the first results of MOOC Técnico initiative over the first year of online courses. Namely, we characterize the profile of the participants, we describe the type of activities and pedagogic resources available in those courses, and analyze both participants’ performance, and the critical appreciation that they do about the courses. Based on the analysis of the collected data from MOOC Técnico participants’ answers to an online questionnaire, and from the eLearning platform’ records, we will attempt to answer the following questions:
a) who are MOOC Técnico learners?
b) how MOOC Técnico courses are structured and which are the interaction and communication modes that are promoted in the courses?
c) how much time do participants dedicate to the different activities proposed in each course, and which are the main difficulties experienced?
d) which are in general participants’ perspectives on the courses?