This talk will present the findings of a study on educators’ contributions to the discussion areas of FutureLearn MOOCs. It will specifically discuss the reasons that inhibit educators’ contributions to foster deep learning in discussions. Drawing on the Community of Inquiry framework, it will explain why educators’ social, pedagogical and cognitive contributions only encourage surface learning and what modifications to educators’ activities are required to support learning in MOOCs. The talk will cover the mixed research design and findings about the frequency and type of educators’ contributions as well as the way and extent to which learner engaged with them. Summary of the study: https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/exploring-instructors-contributions-to-massive-open-online-courses Relevant paper: https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.12787

1. Educators and large-scale online teaching:
What free-flowing discussions in MOOCs
tell us
Fereshte Goshtasbpour
@GFereshte

2. 2
01 My background
02 Study context
03 Research questions and research design
04
05 Q&A
Content
Findings

3. 3
My background and experience
Teaching experience
10 years, mainly PGT (Lecturer, co-programme leader)
• MA Digital Education (University of Leeds)
• MA TESOL and Applied Linguistics (Manchester Met)
• MA Education Studies (Manchester Met)
Research experience
ECR
• UKCISA: Understanding the needs of non-native speakers in higher
education (enhancing communication)
• Approaching summative assessments through student-staff-
partnership
• Co-creating a digital research Living Lab by and for Educational
Psychology students
• Currently: Tackling AMR (Fleming Fund), Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP),
Impact of Covid on equitable access to education (RES funded) and
NOUK

4. 4
My background and experience
Research interests
• Online educators and their practices
• Open online education
• Digital technologies in HE
• Technology-supported professional learning
• Online communications (linguistics)

5. Educators’ contributions to
discussion areas and learner
engagement with them

6. 6
What do we know about MOOC educators
• Systematic reviews between 2008 and 2018 show: Most common MOOC
research strand is learner focused and literature is limited on educators,
particularly on their practices
• Zhu, Sari and Lee (2018): 5 out of 146 empirical (3.4%) studies
published between 2014 and 2017 targeted educators
• Veletsianos and Shepherdson (2016): A systematic analysis of the
empirical studies published between 2013–2015 by :
• Educators have been a secondary consideration within the MOOC research
agenda (Zheng et al., 2016)

7. 7
What do we know about MOOC educators
Research into MOOC educators
Research strand 1: Educator motivations and experiences
Research strand 2: Educators’ perspectives on processes and challenges of
offering MOOCs
Research strand 3: Educators’ activities in discussion areas
• The impact of educator participation on learner performance and
course participation
• The impact of educator participation on interactions and
communication networks
Not much information about what educators do in MOOC discussion areas and
how learners react to them.

8. Research questions and
design

9. 9
Research questions
RQ 1. How are instructors’ contributions to the discussions in Massive Open
Online Courses characterised based on the Community of Inquiry framework?
a) To what extent and in what ways do instructors contribute to MOOC
discussions?
b) How do the level and type of their contributions change during a
MOOC?
c) What prompts instructors to contribute to learner discussions?
RQ 2. What roles do the instructors’ contributions to discussions play in
learning?
RQ 3. To what extent, and in what ways, do learners engage with instructors’
contributions to discussions?

10. 10
Activity
What does an educator’s contributions to discussion areas of a MOOC look
like?

11. 11
Research design
Mixed method approach:
• Hybrid content analysis of conversations between instructors and learners
(n=818)
• Interviews with instructors ( n=12)
Data:
3 x 3-week MOOCs (history, business, arts)
818 online conversations
12 x interviews with instructors

12. 12
Research design
• Naturally occurring data
• Unobtrusive
• Enabled longitudinal
analysis

13. 13

14. 14
Theoretical framework
Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework
Describes learning and teaching through the three interdependent elements of
social, teaching and cognitive presences.
Social presence is concerned with the development of interpersonal and
purposeful relationships during an online learning experience, and consists of:
personal, open and cohesive communications.
• plays a mediating role between cognitive and teaching presences
• creates conditions for free and open communication,
and allows personal relationships to be developed
over time

15. 15
Theoretical framework
Teaching presence: focuses on the design of educational experience before the
course (design and organisation) and facilitation of learning during the course
(facilitating discourse and direct instruction)
Design is the first step in creating teaching presence and is directed by macro
decisions about the learning process.
Facilitation provides support and guidance for learning and is essential in
establishing and maintaining social and cognitive presences.
Direct instruction: more direct guidance is required to
provide subject knowledge, and diagnose misconceptions
to direct learners through the higher levels of cognitive
presence.

16. 16

17. 17
Theoretical framework
cognitive presence: reflects learners’ development of higher-order thinking
and includes four phases: triggering event, exploration, integration, and
resolution.

18. 18

19. Findings

20. • Instructors do not focus equally on the social and teaching contributions,
and there is an imbalance between the social and content-related support
that learners receive.
• The lower level of teaching contributions means that the academic support
to move learners through the stages of higher-order thinking is not strong.
Goshtasbpour, Swinnerton and Morris
(2019:234)

21. Teaching contributions are not
balanced in their focus on
facilitating the learning
discourse and providing direct
instruction.
• learners are mostly supported
but not challenged in their
thinking.
• the academic leadership
required to move learners
through the phases of inquiry
is weak.

22. Discussion activities are
socially oriented. However, the
high level of social presence is
due to frequent use of simple
group cohesion strategies such
as greetings and vocatives.
learners feel comfortable
sharing and exchanging
information, but are not
encouraged to form a
community.
Goshtasbpour, Swinnerton and Morris
(2019:234)

23. Goshtasbpour, Swinnerton and Morris
(2019:233)

24. Most learner-instructor conversations are short!
• An instructor’s contribution tends to end a conversation in most cases.
• Instructors’ contributions reduce the potential for turn-taking and
collaborative activities.

25. learners do not engage with the majority of instructors’ contributions (58%),
most likely because:
• they may simply become lost in the large volume of comments
• they do not meet learners’ needs
• they do not encourage a learner response
* learner engagement is most evident when the contributions are focused on
both teaching and social presences*

26. Learners engage with the “educators” the most! Why?
• They have a different prompting strategy.
• They are more successful than mentors and lead educators in encouraging
turn-taking and increasing the potential for collaborative activities (the
lowest number of short and the highest number of medium-length
conversations).
• Their contributions include the highest teaching and cognitive presences and
the lowest social presence.
Goshtasbpour, Swinnerton and Morris (2019:238)

27. 27
Articles
• Goshtasbpour, F., Swinnerton, B. and Morris, N. (2019). Look who’s talking: exploring
instructors’ contributions to Massive Open Online Courses. British Journal of
Educational Technology. DOI:10.1111/bjet.12787
• Goshtasbpour, F. (2019). Exploring instructors’ contributions to Massive Open Online
Courses. [available at] https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/exploring-instructors-
contributions-to-massive-open-online-courses

28. THANK YOU