Firmansyah Manda, Timmis Sue
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1JA UK.
Res Pract Technol Enhanc Learn. 2016;11(1):11. doi: 10.1186/s41039-016-0032-6. Epub 2016 May 4.
Along with massive open online course (MOOC) budding popularity, some problems have begun to surface. One that appears prominent concerns sustainability: for example, high dropout and low completion rates, which are reported to be less than 10 % on average. In response to growing concerns over these issues, some MOOC providers have begun to campaign for the development of offline supporting communities. Meanwhile in Indonesia, where provider supported learning communities are not yet present, some MOOC learners took the initiative to form their own community, which they called IDCourserians. This paper reports on a qualitative study which aimed to investigate and to make sense what was actually happening in the IDCourserians as an independent MOOC learning community. Nine overarching themes were identified from the collected data that illuminate the purpose of the IDCourserians, the way the community's members learn MOOCs, and the benefit the participants perceived by joining the IDCourserians. These findings then are discussed further with regard to two key theoretical perspectives: collaborative learning and communities of practice. The paper concludes that where English is not the main spoken language and the hub model is not yet provided, creating face-to-face communities in local communities should be considered, as this may be a better way for learners to experience MOOCs and make their learning more meaningful in the local context. This also offers potential for overcoming the common difficulties in MOOCs, such as a lack of motivation and difficulties in interpreting the material through developing collaborative support activities within a community of practice.
随着大规模开放在线课程（MOOC）的迅速普及，一些问题开始显现出来。其中一个突出问题是可持续性：例如，高辍学率和低完成率，据报道平均不到10%。为应对对这些问题日益增长的担忧，一些MOOC提供商已开始倡导发展线下支持社区。与此同时，在印度尼西亚，由于提供商支持的学习社区尚未出现，一些MOOC学习者主动组建了自己的社区，他们称之为IDCourserians。本文报告了一项定性研究，旨在调查并弄清楚作为一个独立的MOOC学习社区，IDCourserians实际发生了什么。从收集的数据中确定了九个总体主题，这些主题阐明了IDCourserians的目的、社区成员学习MOOC的方式以及参与者通过加入IDCourserians所感受到的益处。然后，结合协作学习和实践社区这两个关键理论视角对这些发现进行了进一步讨论。本文得出结论，在英语不是主要口语语言且尚未提供中心模式的情况下，应考虑在当地社区创建面对面社区，因为这可能是学习者体验MOOC并使其在当地背景下的学习更有意义的更好方式。这也为克服MOOC中的常见困难提供了潜力，例如缺乏动力以及通过在实践社区内开展协作支持活动来解读材料方面的困难。
