Investigating Learners’ Changing Expectations on Learning Experience in a MOOC of Professional Translation and Interpreter Training

Abstract

This study investigates the dynamic pattern of learners’ evaluation of their learning experiences on the MOOC platform at different stages. Data include 364 evaluative comments from the large MOOC in Consecutive Interpreting for a period of 15 weeks. The results of MANOVA test suggest that MOOC learners left significantly more comments on four areas at the later stage compared with those at the early stage: learning resources, learning community, learning opportunity, and student voice. It suggests that MOOC learners at a later stage are looking for a learning environment which supports self-assessment, peer feedback, and coaching to fulfil their personal needs and expectations. Moreover, qualitative thematic analysis suggests that learning resources addresses three areas: the design of the tasks, helpfulness, and diversity of the resources. Learning community largely refers to peer-feedback, co-instructions of peers, and instructors. Learning opportunities refers to the tasks which improve professional knowledge, self-regulated learning strategies, and language proficiency. Last, student voice indicates three types of tensions: the need for pre-existing knowledge to study MOOCs, learners’ diversified personal goals and teaching objectives of MOOCs, preferred learning strategies between MOOC designers and learners.