Thinking about what makes MOOCs work

Soleymani et al. (2025) explore “Personal Experience and Value Creation in Postdigital Education” in a large-scale survey (1227 people responded to their survey) of MOOCs run at the TU Delft. They use a value-creation framework, which categorises value into five cycles: immediate, potential, applied, realised, and transformative, and investigate how participants perceived the MOOCs in there. Since I haven’t taken any of the MOOCs in question, I am not really interested in that part, but I am interested in how that framework (and later also the recommendations Soleymani et al. (2025) come up with) can inform the work with my own MOOC. I’m discussing it below together with Soleymani et al. (2025)’s implication for practice:

Immediate Value

The immediate value that participants report on are mostly about confidence boosts that they feel happened by participating in the MOOC: New knowledge and skills, and hope for career advancement.

But participants also report frustrations about mismatched expectations, so here the recommendation to be very clear about what participants can expect from the course in terms of learning outcomes, but also how things will be structured and what level of difficulty to expect (potentially using several different tracks to reduce mismatch).

Potential Value

The potential value of participating in a MOOC is mostly about building new social connections. However, it is a big challenge to design learning opportunities so that “people learning alone and online can develop proficiency in skills that are deployed collaboratively and offline” (Napier et al., 2020). Typical networking opportunities in MOOCs are discussion forums and peer feedback, sometimes even collaborative projects (not directly applicable to my MOOC). However, “participants who emphasize their individual learning goals and have difficulty in online connections tend to interact less with their peers and be active on MOOC discussion forums“. This can lead to drop-outs and negative experiences, so the advice here is to foster networking opportunities. But how?

Soleymani et al. 2022 find that participation in discussion forums can be improved by making sure that contribution requests are quick and easy: “a simple contribution request can raise greater compliance among learners in comparison with lengthy and complicated requests” and that they see a value in contributing, for example because in a previous discussion forum they have seen that their peers are in similar professional roles and work contexts and have relevant experiences. It is also important that the course’s facilitators are active in the discussion forums, “facilitating the discussions, providing quick and practical information about the course contents, solving the learners’ challenges during the course.”

One option that I really like ever since I facilitated a local learning group on the “evidence-based STEM teaching” MOOC more than 10 years ago is to create MOOCs with two tracks: One for the main audience, and one for facilitators that convene local groups and, based on material provided, lead discussions on that week’s materials. And I found an excellent resource for facilitators (by P2P University, 2016) that I will definitely build on!

Applied Value

Applied value is about “improvements in job performance and implementing new ideas and practices in their everyday tasks“, however there is typically a “lack of practical application opportunities“, and in Soleymani et al. (2025), “[p]articipants expressed the need for more hands-on activities and practical exercises to better translate theoretical knowledge into practical skills“, espcially for working professionals who perceive an urgency to learn things that become directly relevant on the job. So how can we encourage professional development? Soleymani et al. (2025) recommend “real-world cases and relevant content“, which of course sounds great but doesn’t really help us in developing it. But it is important: “when our participants did not understand the relevance of the course content to their feld, and there were no real-world case studies in the MOOC, they were less likely to use or apply what they had learned in their everyday practice as students or professionals“.

Realised Value

Realised value is “context-related and usually difficult to capture due to their longterm efect“. But one tool that they suggest are “Impact Reflection Assignments“: “One solution to raise awareness about the positive realized value among our learners is encouraging them to think beyond their learning environment. Motivate them to consider how they can infuence their surroundings (e.g., their organization or school). This can be done by what we call an ‘Impact Refection Assignment’. This assignment includes refective activities where learners assess and discuss how their new knowledge and skills can infuence and improve their external environment“.

I found excellent suggestion for how to do that in Daalhuizen and Schoormans (2018), where they have three types of videos to prompt reflections:

• Benchmarking videos, where real students/participants show work in progress and discuss challenges they have faced and overcome (or not yet). “The video was intended to both show to the MOOC students how one might go about the exercise as well as offering a discussion between the students about the most challenging issues related to the exercise. The benchmark also showed how the course theory was being implemented in a good way. By ‘benchmarking’ themselves against the master students, the students were able to reflect on the level of quality of their own way of working. In terms of experiential learning, the benchmark video helped students to observe their own experiences and reflect on them, comparing it to a benchmark that they could be certain of it was good quality“. I love this idea, and I really want to implement it in my MOOC!
• Expert videos are then a bit less exciting: “expert videos were aimed mostly at the more advanced students, to trigger reflection on the course content and their own experiences in a broader sense“.
• Sofa session videos I think are really cool too: This is where the course leaders sit down and give feedback on real student work. This is, of course, challenging for logistical and many other reasons, but especially if one manages to actually create a cohort that is going through the course more or less at the same time, this would be amazing!

Napier et al. (2020) also suggest design elements that help with transfer:

• “Learning Circles” with accompanying Facilitator’s Guide, which I mentioned above already but which are not only helpful for helping to create networks and communities, but also to anchor new ideas in the local context and thus support transfer
• Action-oriented assignments with “Call to Action” videos (don’t know what more to say about that)
• Theory-linked activities with “Take-Out Packages, which are about providing templates so that working with new ideas in people’s home contexts becomes easy and straightforward

Transformative Value

This is about big picture design, to help participants think beyond their immediate contexts: “Course designers can implement in-depth exploration content or encourage critical debates in their MOOCs to promote positive, transformative value.” I was going to write that this should be a no-brainer in a MOOC on sustainability, but maybe it is not…

Anyway, lots of food for thought, and I am so excited about starting on my very own MOOC! :)

Daalhuizen, J., & Schoormans, J. (2018). Pioneering online design teaching in a MOOC format: Tools for facilitating experiential learning. International Journal of Design, 12(2), 1-14.

Napier, A., Huttner-Loan, E., & Reich, J. (2020). Evaluating learning transfer from MOOCs to workplaces: A case study from teacher education and launching innovation in schools. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 23(2), 45-64.

P2PU. (2016). Learning Circles Facilitator Handbook. Retrieved from https://www.p2pu.org/assets/uploads/learnin g_circle_downloads/facilitator_handbook.pdf

Soleymani, A., Itard, L., de Laat, M., Torre, M. V., & Specht, M. (2022, May). Using Social Network Analysis to explore Learning networks in MOOCs discussion forums. In CLIMA 2022 conference.

Soleymani, A., De Laat, M., & Specht, M. (2025). Exploring Personal Experience and Value Creation in Postdigital Education: Insights from a Large-Scale MOOC Survey. Postdigital Science and Education, 1-29.