Cultural Relevance in MOOCs: Asking About Socioeconomic Context

Abstract

Existing datasets tell us only a partial story about the contextual factors that impact learners in Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). Information about race/ethnicity, education, and income helps us understand socioeconomic status, but such data is notoriously difficult to collect in an international context. Extant MOOC studies have not paid due attention to socioeconomic variables; they have either taken a U.S.-centric approach, ignored important country-specific dimensions of variables, or failed to ask about certain variables altogether, such as race/ethnicity. During a qualitative study of 24 self-regulated learners from population groups underrepresented in MOOCs, we piloted a short U.S.-centric demographic questionnaire. Preliminary results suggest that a large-scale survey designed for both cross-national and country-specific analyses would provide valuable information to MOOC researchers.