This paper explores pedagogical practices and participants' engagement in learning activities during the first international Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offered by the University of Oslo through the FutureLearn platform in 2015. The data were collected using pre-and post-course surveys and participant observations. We used the acquisition and participation metaphors of learning proposed by Sfard (1998) as a conceptual framework to inform our analyses and discussions. The data indicated that new pedagogical practices are in the making for online learning, involving elements of existing practices and radically new ones. The instructors had sole authority in developing and curating course contents, thus following the acquisition metaphor of teaching and learning. In addition, the data indicated that, overall, the learners had a positive experience of learning by participating in the MOOC. The learners engaged in online discussion forums, interacting asynchronously with fellow learners and mentors. The discussion forums promoted knowledge sharing and collaborative learning activities among diverse groups (joiners, surveyors, and social learners). The apparent contradiction between teaching according to the acquisition metaphor and the learners' preferences for the participation metaphor was resolved by some of the learners through self-organised scaffolding. The teachers did not interact enough with the learners and so, to compensate, some learners took on facilitating roles. We discuss our findings in terms of the related work and contemporary trends in online learning and higher education research, including learning analytics, formative assessment, personalization, collaboration support, and lifelong learning.

This study examines how videos may support participants’ learning in the Information and Communication Technology Massive Open Online Course (ICTMOOC) aimed to develop digital skills with pre- and in-service teachers in Norway and provides an insight into how teachers’ interactions with videos may contribute to enhancing their agentic capacity to learn and transformative digital agency. Analyses of participants’ interactions with the videos are located in the cultural-historical theory and draw on Galperin’s conceptualisation of learning processes. The data consisted of 501 participants’ responses to the questionnaire administered to all pre- and in-service teachers engaged in the ICTMOOC in 2014–2018. Mixed methods were applied to analyse the data by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence about the processes of video use. Findings reveal the patterns of participants’ interactions with videos: (a) seeking explicit information about how to engage in learning; (b) seeking assistance while engaged with the assigned tasks; (c) support to compare learning outcomes with the requirements outlined in the videos. In doing so, the videos provided orienting, executive and controlling support and might have contributed to enhancing participants’ capacity to learn in digital environments and their transformative digital agency. The majority of participants used videos for executive support and the learners preferred videos in the range of 5–10 min. By providing these types of support by the videos, a learning activity carries a new function as a tool for studying the essence of learning in digital environments. These findings have implications for the design of videos in online courses. They also emphasise the crucial importance of awareness about the type of support videos provide to enhance participants’ learning in digital environments.

This study examines how course instructors facilitate students’ learning in the Pedagogical Information and Communication Technology (ICTPED) Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) aiming to develop professional digital competence in pre-service and in-service teachers in Norway. It also provides an insight into how students’ agentic engagement in learning may affect the course instructors’ guidance. Students’ online meetings with the course instructors and students were observed and recorded. The meetings aimed to develop students’ understanding of the examination assignment. The data (4.5 hours video recordings) analyzed by the method of interaction analysis revealed that the instructors performed four pedagogical functions: (1) setting up the learning process, (2) reifying students’ ideas;(3) assisting students in developing their conceptual understanding; and (4) summarizing and structuring students’ understanding about target concepts. These pedagogical functions evolved out of mutual collaboration of the instructors and students. The students’ agentic engagement in learning was visible when they took the initiative to explicitly share their ideas related to their examination assignment. Instructors’ agency in guiding came into play when addressing students’ ideas and questions emerged during the interaction process. Students’ agentic engagement in learning shaped the course instructors’ pedagogical functions and enhanced their agency. In doing so, the dialectical interplay between the students’ and course instructors’ agency comes to the fore as an essential aspect of learning and teaching in online environments.

No abstract

No abstract