Addressing cultural and linguistic diversity in an online learning environment

ABSTRACT

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a growing phenomenon in the USA and Europe. A few big American platforms lead the field in terms of numbers of learners, institutions and courses on board. These platforms act as transnational platforms, and attract many European institutions because of the opportunities for visibility and branding they offer. Similarly in Europe, many platforms have emerged but no single pan-European initiative has found its own space. This is probably because of the complexity involved inaccommodatingdiverse languages, cultures and teaching approaches within the rigid structure of a Learning Management System (LMS). This paper looks at one possible response to the challenge of creating a single learning space via a multilingual and multicultural MOOC platform called EMMA, European Multiple MOOC Aggregator. It presents the results of two learner surveys with qualitative and quantitative data analysis collected within the EMMA project which aimed to assess user satisfaction with the learning experience on the platform, and whether it addressed the issue of “cultural diversity.” Initial indications suggest that learners appreciated and used the inbuilt translation systems in a multilingual approach, and that learners perceived the features and tools offered by the EMMA platform as European in feel.

KEYWORDS:

• MOOCs
• multicultural
• multilingualism

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our thanks to the EMMA project team, especially to Rosanna De Rosa, the project Coordinator and Chiara Ferrari and her team at IPSOS who administrated the data collection and analysis. A special thank you goes to all EMMA users who helped this research by taking the time to answer our surveys and to the participants in the focus group.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Class Central Largest and most widely used MOOC aggregator and observatory. They publish a yearly report with MOOC figures and classifications. Class-central.com.

2. Funded by the Erasmus + programme, EPALE, Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe, is a multilingual open membership community for teachers, trainers, researchers, academics, policy makers and anyone else with a professional role in adult learning across Europe. EPALE is an initiative of the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission. One of the initiatives is a MOOC scoreboard, updated until 2015 https://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/en/news/new-european-mooc-scoreboard-includes-more-1500-courses.

3. Three US-based platforms are Coursera, edX and Udacity. UK-based is Futurelearn.

4. DG EAC, Directorate General for Education and Culture, already invests in different projects in their previous Lifelong Learning Programme and nowadays by Erasmus+, pilots and research related to MOOCs (HOME, BizMOOC, LangMOOCs, SCORE2020, MOOCs4all, MOONLITE, MOOC-Maker and many more). In addition, H2020 and FP7 programmes of the European Commission invest in MOOC projects like EMMA, ECO and TraMOOC (Jansen & Schuwer, 2015).

5. http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/pdf/press/horizon2020-presentation.pdf Economic objectives in field of Education to ensure smart and sustainable growth in Europe.

6. ECO, ELearning Communication Opendata A 36-month CIP initiative to enroll teachers on selection of MOOCs and provide the skills they need to create their own MOOCs http://project.ecolearning.eu/about-eco/our-project/.

7. HANDSON is a 28-month Erasmus + European-funded project that aims to facilitate the inclusion of ICT tools in education. One of the results of this project is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for teacher training about designing ICT-based learning activities. Following a 5-week MOOC format, educators are encouraged to design learning activities in a hands-on approach so they can use the tools and techniques in their classrooms.

8. The European-wide Knowledge Alliance “BizMOOC” started on January 1st, 2016 and will run over a period of 3 years. The EU-funded project tackles the European challenge of enabling businesses, labor force and universities to increase their activities and exploitation (economies of scale) of the MOOC potential. http://bizmooc.eu/project/.