Learner Personas Point to Various Motivations in Enrolling in Open Online Courses

Brad is a 38-year-old man who is thinking about the future after leaving the Canadian Army. He has hands-on job experience in logistics and transportation but only a few college credits and no degree. He enrolled in the open online course “People, Technology, and the Future of Mobility” to learn about new technologies and get an overview of their possible impacts. He feels confident in his ability to learn independently online but dislikes reading and might struggle to spend time on the course due to heavy job demands.    

Lavonda enjoys her job in marketing but does not always feel comfortable meeting with clients. She hopes that taking the “Feedback Fundamentals” open online course will help improve her communication skills and put her in a better position for career advancement. Although she has a master’s degree in marketing, she has not taken formal classes in many years. She has never taken online classes before, and at 55, she worries she won’t be able to learn the technology needed to complete the course.  

Mohamed is a third-year engineering student in Syria who enrolled in “Community Organizing for Social Justice” because of the increased violence and injustice he sees. He knows very little about organizing and motivating people. However, he wants to work toward giving others more peaceful and equitable lives. His studies keep him busy, though, so he wants to find ways to stay motivated and make a difference in his community.  

An immensely wide variety of learners are attracted to the flexibility and low cost of massive open online courses. A single MOOC might contain learners from six continents with ages spanning teens in high school to retired adults. The range of learner demographics found in open online courses begs for an awareness of some key differences between learners’ levels of content knowledge, motivation, and engagement strategies learners bring to any given course.

Background  knowledge

Do your online learners learners share the same background and expertise? Not likely. The heterogeneity found in MOOCs means that people enter their courses with a wide range of content knowledge and background experience. These learners did not all attend schools with similar requirements and do not all live in the same regions, as reflected in the above examples of learner personas, so MOOC  “learners cannot be assumed to possess a common body of expertise and thus may approach a task with varying levels of understanding and experience” (Quintana et al, 2020). Faculty creating open online courses should take this broad range of content knowledge into account to make it accessible for diverse learners.

Motivation

Open online course learners are driven by various motivations for taking courses.  Building new skills for a career transition, professional development, and social activism are all typical motivations for learners enrolling in open online courses. Students also use them to supplement their formal training, casual interest in learning more about something (Milligan & Littlelohn, 2017), or a desire to connect with others (Zheng et al, 2015). 

Engagement Strategies 

Learners approach open online courses differently than traditional students might approach their residential courses. Some could have very little time to devote to the course each week and spend months rather than weeks to finish. Others may quickly and independently complete the required course readings, avoiding videos or optional material. Some will watch videos and only look at readings when necessary. Some learners will enjoy participating in discussions to request or offer help to peers, while others will not engage in forum discussions at all, so faculty should consider various possible activities and experiences their future learners might find engaging.  

Meaningful Connections

The flexibility and open access options of open online courses attract a variety of learners from around the globe. Some may be graduate students, undergrads, or high school students, but many others may not be students at all but working professionals with full-time jobs and/or families. To engage and maintain the interest of these learners, online content should focus on learners making meaningful connections between the theories faculty teach and how learners will use that theory in their own lives. 

References

Milligan, C. & Littlejohn, A. (2017). Why study on a MOOC? The motives of students and professionals. International review of research in open and distributed learning, 18(2) https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1138907.pdf 

Quintana, R.M., Halye, S.R., Magyar, N., & Tan, Y. (2020). Integrating learner and user experience design: A bidirectional approach. Learner and user experience research.   https://edtechbooks.org/ux/integrating_lxd_and_uxd Zheng, S., Rosson, M.B., Shih, P.C., & Carroll, J.M. (2015). Understanding student motivation, behaviors, and perceptions in MOOCs. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 1882-1895). ACM. doi: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2675133.2675217