Massive Open Online Courses (Mooc) as heutagogical environments

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (Mooc) are unique learning environments due to their sheer size and global reach. Creating learning environments for masses is extremely complex and raises many course design questions because of participants’ diverse backgrounds, skills, and experiences. The emerging learning theory, heutagogy, in Mooc design has not yet been thoroughly investigated. This scoping literature review aimed to map the literature of the research fields of Moocs and heutagogy to have a deeper understanding of the potential of the theory for Mooc design. The results indicate that there is a gap between the high-autonomy requiring Mooc learning environment and the unprepared Mooc audience, which increases the necessity to better understand learners in terms of their readiness to learn in a Mooc.