Designing a MOOC as an online community to encourage international students to study abroad

ABSTRACT

In this study, a massive open online course (MOOC) titled “Studying at Japanese Universities” was designed. The purpose of the course was to encourage international students to study in Japan. Accordingly, it is intended to build an online community to afford international students to encourage and support each other and realise their student lives in Japan. This paper outlined how the course was designed and further reported the results of the early outcomes of how the students received the course. The results indicated that the course reaches the target age group while also attracting a diverse audience. It is further been specified that students can communicate with others who have common interests. Furthermore, students share their thoughts and concerns about their plans to study in Japan and receive mutual support from the online community. Those who are interested in producing MOOCs as an educational environment for global outreach should find the results of the study beneficial.

KEYWORDS:

• Coursera
• online community
• international education
• Massive Open Online Courses
• MOOCs

Acknowledgements

We thank our course instructors, Professors Yujin Yaguchi and Yuko Itatsu, and teaching assistants, Rebecca Bourke, Savindhi Liyanage, Kok Mun Keong, Tuen Man Cheung and Mauricio Córdova Udaeta, for their great work in successfully running this course. We also thank all the students who appeared and shared their experiences in the course video. This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 17H00824.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 17H00824.