Could the MOOC approach be adopted in my own area – Teaching English as a Second Language?

What it takes for a MOOC to work well – skills the participants need

For a MOOC to work well, I think the participants need to have some critical literacies (Downes, 2009 – cited in Kop, 2011, p.22).

·      They need to be able to guide themselves and direct their own learning;

·      They need to be able to aggregate information themselves;

·      They need to validate information themselves;

·      They need to be able to edit and produce information themselves;

·      They need to be able to communicate and collaborate with others online.

Are people learning English as a second language going to have those skills?

People learning English as a second language need to feel confident and at ease when learning – they cannot learn the language unless they feel confident to experiment with it and make mistakes and get corrective feedback.

In theory if they had all the required digital literacies and could find MOOC-participant-peers who wanted to help them improve their English, then they could get some language-learning benefit from a MOOC – but it seems a bit forced and unlikely.

Most people participating in such a MOOC would not speak English, so it's hard to see how spontaneous peer-supporting communities would arise that could help each other to learn the language.

Something that may work better – a MOOC for Teachers of English as a Second Language

There’s no rigid description of a MOOC, but my working definition right now is that

·      it is an event that a large group of people with shared interests can coalesce around;

·      the MOOC has specific learning outcomes, but also creates a lot of spontaneous learning opportunities and interest groups who may then take their learning in new directions;

·      put another way, a MOOC is a catalyst for developing communities of learning of all shapes and sizes.

I could imagine a MOOC for Teachers of English that could have a specific learning outcome – e.g. How to use Technology in Teaching English as a Second Language. And I could imagine large groups of teachers who could benefit from coalescing around such a MOOC event.