Participatory pedagogy in an open educational course: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

This article presents an empirical study of an open educational course in an online peer-to-peer university (P2PU). P2PU is a nonprofit organization offering free educational opportunities. Focus is on how peers are part of creating course content in a Web 2.0 environment. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have evolved into two different pedagogical directions: content-based xMOOCs and connectivist cMOOCs. cMOOCs emphasizing learning in networks developed informally, where learners are part of creating course content, resemble P2PU`s vision. We investigated processes of interaction in co-creation of tasks in an open educational course and what opportunities and challenges emerge. We employed template analysis for coding data. We report two different processes of interaction between users and organizers: problem identification and co-creation of tasks. This study contributes to understanding a new model of teaching and learning through scrutinizing participation in an open educational course and explores implications for the learning experience.

Keywords:

• co-creation of learning content
• mutual development
• online open educational courses
• massive open online course (MOOC)
• participatory pedagogy
• zone of proximal development (ZPD)

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the P2PU community for allowing us to conduct research on their online community. This work is funded by the Change Research Group at the Department of Educational Research and InterMedia at University of Oslo, Norway, and by the Swedish Research Council. We are especially grateful to Professor Anders I. Mørch and the members of the Research Group Change for providing us with constructive feedback and comments.