The Potential of LMOOCs for the Teaching of English Composition

This paper is part of a broader research endeavour aimed at finding out more about the potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for foreign language teaching, as well as the demographics, views and needs of the students enrolled in the courses. This chapter focuses on learner demographics and user experience in an English composition MOOC developed and run by scholars at a distance learning university in Spain. The findings of the study were obtained through a questionnaire completed by learners enrolled in the December 2019 edition of the course. Though the learners totalled over a thousand, only 46 respondents completed the survey. This provided the researchers with a general overview of MOOC learner demographics, views, attitudes, needs and engagement. In fact, this study is further evidence that not all enrolled learners actually go on to complete the courses. In addition, this research has confirmed previous findings which indicated that MOOCs appeal mainly to adult learners, most of them being university graduates. Finally, respondents were mostly satisfied with their experience throughout the course, though there were some mixed feelings regarding peer-assessment, forum participation and instructors’ roles.