=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2356/experience_short5
|storemode=property
|title=Reshaping teachers' professional identity for the digital era: Teachers' role and responsibilities in MOOCs
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2356/experience_short5.pdf
|volume=Vol-2356
|authors=Veruska De Caro-Barek
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/emoocs/Caro-Barek19
}}
==Reshaping teachers' professional identity for the digital era: Teachers' role and responsibilities in MOOCs==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2356/experience_short5.pdf
Proceedings of EMOOCs 2019:
Work in Progress Papers of the Research, Experience and Business Tracks
Reshaping teachers’ professional identity for the digital
era: Teachers’ role and responsibilities in MOOCs
Veruska De Caro-Barek
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
veruska.de.caro@ntnu.no
Abstract. How do we want to teach in MOOCs? This position paper takes a
closer look at teachers’ role in MOOCs. There is a consensus that teachers’
professional identity and beliefs greatly contribute to shaping the students’
learning environment. Teachers’ professional identity has been forged by
centuries of traditional school and university values, which nowadays seem to
clash with the imposing needs for digitalization in Education. Digital learning
environments pose different challenges from campus teaching and a paradigm
shift in how teachers perceive their role and responsibilities in online courses like
MOOC is sorely needed. The article addresses this topic by introducing the
strategy chosen by a MOOC working group at NTNU where we try to encourage
a connectivist approach to understand teaching and learning dynamics in digital
network learning environments. Teachers can reconceive their role in digital
learning environments as “narrators” whose voice accompanies the course
participants on their learning paths by focusing on digital storytelling and on
building a collaborative narrative frame around each course, across disciplines’
specialization and regardless of modus docendi (full-instructed or self-directed
courses). In this way the teacher/narrator’s voice remains in the background
while actively encouraging course participants to collectively reflect upon and
negotiate knowledge among themselves, fostering independent collaborative
learning.
Keywords: Digital Learning Environments, Teacher Professional Identity,
Connectivism, Collaborative Learning.
1 Introduction
Most of the debate around MOOC learning environments has consistently been
focusing around the intrinsic differences between cMOOC and xMOOC [1]. A fringe
of the debate has touched upon the role of the instructor in MOOCs, but the topic has
often been reduced to discussing the presence of the teacher either as an omniscient
“talking head” infused with transferable knowledge or as a set of automated processes
with minimal or none involvement from the instructor [2]. The dichotomy cMOOC
108
Proceedings of EMOOCs 2019:
Work in Progress Papers of the Research, Experience and Business Tracks
versus xMOOC, however, has been proven susceptible to critique by an increasing
number of studies [1, 2, 3, 4], and so does the somewhat simplistic categorization of
the teacher’s role in MOOCs. The intention of this paper is to bypass these sides of the
debate and rather to elaborate on the role of the teacher by choosing a connectivist
approach to understand teaching and learning dynamics in digital learning
environments. Within this context, principles of Digital Story Telling will be discussed
as a way to actualize better pedagogical practices and redefine teachers’ identity, role
and responsibilities in the new generation of hybrid MOOCs.
2 Hybridizations
As MOOC technology evolves, thanks to platform integration of newer convergent
technologies, so does the underlying pedagogical approaches to learning design in
MOOCs. A new generation of so-called hybrid MOOCs (hMOOCs) have been
implemented and set to prove in the attempt to overcome frustrating low completion
rates (average 10%) in traditional MOOCs [3].
hMOOCs combine characteristics of xMOOCs and cMOOCs. In hMOOCs, the
traditional teacher’s resource and instruction-based learning design extensively used in
xMOOCs is combined with the informal, self-driven, web 2.0-based social learning
model typical of cMOOCs [5]. The underlying pedagogical continuum in such MOOCs
spans widely from cognitive behaviourist through social constructivist to connectivist
approaches to teaching and learning [6, 7]. Not surprisingly, the inconsistent definition
and redefinition of the MOOC debate so far affects how teachers perceive and define
their role in MOOCs and ultimately decide how to design their courses and teach in
such learning environments. Teachers’ professional identity seems to be torn between
centuries of acquired academic legacy and modern digital learners’ needs. The result of
such an identity crisis is 1) an array of MOOCs of highly variable pedagogical quality
[4] and 2) a question open to further debate: What role and responsibilities should
teachers have in MOOCs?
3 Digital learning environments and teacher’s identity
Digital Learning Environments (DLEs) in MOOCs, especially with the advent of Web
2.0 convergent technologies, have challenged the traditional classroom teaching
paradigm in that they offer flexible solutions in time and space, tailored learner-
centered curricula and the possibility to establish personal learning networks to foster
life-long learning beyond the traditional educational frames. To meet the different
needs of DLEs, teachers and course developers have introduced different learning
design models. However, as a consequence of technology imposing itself on
pedagogical approaches, new linguistic and personal structures of identities have also
emerged from digitally mediated communication [7, 8, 9]. When people occupy digital
spaces they also reconstruct language according to the possibilities and constrains of
109
Proceedings of EMOOCs 2019:
Work in Progress Papers of the Research, Experience and Business Tracks
the digital platforms they use, and because language is a cultural identity bearer, they
also modify or adapt their identities [7, 8, 9]. This can be said for all digital users,
learners and teachers alike. However, teachers seem to struggle between two identities,
the academic or professional one forged by traditional university studies and the one of
digital users trying to survive in ever new emerging digital environments [2].
4 Connectivism, Digital Storytelling and the teacher as
“narrator”
To deepen the understanding of how technology affects learning and teaching and
essentially change our behavior as learners and teachers, the MOOC working group
established in 2016 at NTNU has developed MOOC courses, assisted HE-educators
and conducted research on MOOC production with the scope of defining a line of work
and research that can deliver high quality DLEs.
In our experience, the presence of an instructor in MOOCs, either as a physically
present teacher in fully tutored courses or as a digital presence and narrative voice in
self-directed courses, is paramount to the creation and deployment of a sustainable
ecosystem in DLEs [10]. However, we need to redefine teachers’ professional identity
and their role and responsibilities in DLEs in order to meet the needs of 21st century
learners. We believe that a connectivist approach to understand learning and teaching
dynamics in DLEs [11] and the implementation of Digital Storytelling (DST) in
hMOOCs can open the way for the establishment of higher quality DLEs.
Digital Storytelling (DST) transcends classic semiotic boundaries and lies at the very
heart of MOOCs learning design as it is regarded as an activity that can both enrich the
teaching practices and foster learners’ active behaviour in DLEs [12, 13, 14]. Within
the bespoke narrative frame of a MOOC, DST allows multi personal narratives to
coexist, the teacher being just but one of the narrators, whose presence is clearly
discernible and recognizable, yet just as a discrete voice in the background guiding
learners along the course’s different learning paths rather than pushing them through
the curriculum. The teacher’s personal narrative doesn’t prevail over the learners’,
rather all are collaborating in creating, defining and modifying the common learning
environment by bringing in personal experiences which reflect the individual’s
interconnectedness with the world [13, 14]. In this aspect lies the reference to
Connectivism as a useful theoretical frame to better understand how learning happens
in open DLEs as the ones in MOOCs. In such environments it becomes increasingly
difficult to define learning solely as an individual process that results in acquired
knowledge about something after either the modification of behaviours, the cognitive
understanding and searching for meaning of the individual, or the individual’s
interpretation of social constructs. Connectivism rethinks the concepts of learning and
knowledge and defines learning as actionable knowledge, not as a process for the
retaining of information. Actionable knowledge is found in the way individuals relate
and react to the continuous shifting of digital information landscapes. As Siemens puts
it: “Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the
110
Proceedings of EMOOCs 2019:
Work in Progress Papers of the Research, Experience and Business Tracks
meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While
there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the
information climate affecting the decision.” [11]. Knowledge is not necessarily directly
deriving from individual’s learning anymore. Consequently, knowledge can’t any
longer be understood and defined as the individual’s retaining of previous notions, as
these can reside in any constellations of knowledge flow where “people, groups,
systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole. Alterations
within the network have ripple effects on the whole.” [11]. Hence, it is not sustainable
to understand knowledge as an artifact anymore, as something you can transfer directly
from the teacher to the learner by following specific didactical practices. Knowledge
and the learning process that leads to it are rather negotiable knowhows, debatable
values in a shifting context of meaning and purpose [15] where, on a personal level, it
is increasingly difficult to discern the learner from the teacher.
Still, the teacher has an important role to play.
4.1 Everybody likes a good story: The narrative role of the teacher
A good teacher is a good storyteller. A good storyteller can turn the driest of the
academic subjects into a fascinating and exciting novel. When the subject is mediated
by a screen in a digital learning environment, as in the case of MOOCs, a good story
teller will have to turn the course subject into the best of film scripts. At the core of
DST are the personal narratives of the individuals creating the story. In our chosen line
of work for learning design in MOOCs, the teacher is just one of the personal narratives
conveying his or her side of a story - the course subject. For learning to occur and
knowledge to be acquired, the personal narratives of the learners have to agree on the
story which has been told. This is true of any story regardless of the subject or modus
docendi of the MOOC. This process is never easy and no one can ever have control on
how it develops and ends. It is however possible to create learning environments that
can facilitate the way in which the story is presented and the way learners can interact
with and act upon it.
Among the traditional seven elements of DST [16], three key elements are a) a
dramatic question to introduce the plot of the story, or the subject of the course, and
initiate a reflection process in the course participants, b) an emotional content that
speaks to the ones sharing the story in a personal and powerful way and c) a personal
voice to tailor the story to help the audience understand the context [16, 17]. To these
elements, we add the underlying importance of a good narrative language that can
lighten up a weighted academic jargon by writing texts in an engaging way using the
narrative elements of literary fiction. In the digital learning environment in MOOCs,
the teacher’s major responsibility is to tell his or her story by designing a good narrative
frame that opens up for interactivity in both course resources and assignments. That
means for instance including variation in the narrative structure between video and
audio resources containing interactivity elements like the ones present in videogaming,
and exercises which allows the learners to express their own side of the story by
blogging, video-sharing and using other media elements. In this way the learners
111
Proceedings of EMOOCs 2019:
Work in Progress Papers of the Research, Experience and Business Tracks
become an integral part of the learning design and contribute to negotiate the part of
the story which is most relevant to them. Exercises and assignments should also include
variation and provide both formal and informal assessment. In fully instructed courses,
this means variation between mentoring and peer-to-peer dialogue, and between close,
staff evaluated exercises and open peer reviewed exercises. In self-directed courses,
peer assessment will necessarily be the most important form of evaluation, but the
teacher should also include automated assessed exercises. The challenge here is to
create exercises with enough interactivity elements to avoid the humdrum of repetition.
Dialogue is then pivotal. There is better learning when there is an open dialogue
between teachers and learners. In open DLEs like the ones in MOOCs the openness of
dialogue can reach far outside the boundaries of the course to include the personal
networks of all participants. It is the teacher’s responsibility to design a narrative frame
which facilitates knowledge flow through an apparatus of well-designed discussion fora,
meta reflection exercises and interactive assignments which can involve the learners as
a creative force in conveying a shared story. Learners’ personal narratives can then
draw upon knowledge resources which are not necessarily provided by the teacher on
the course but are rather a part of the individual’s personal learning networks. This way,
learners are not merely recipients of knowledge anymore, and learning becomes a
collective process involving negotiation of meaning and purpose.
5 Discussion and conclusion
The debate around MOOCs and which kind of pedagogical approaches are most
suitable to MOOC’s DLEs will certainly continue and evolve along with the integration
of new technologies. This paper introduced just but one of the possible theoretical
angles and implementation practices in the field. By focusing on network learning and
how technology changes individuals’ learning approaches, we believe on one hand that
Connectivism can offer a useful theoretical frame to understand learning and teaching
dynamics in open and scalable DLEs like the ones in MOOCs. On the other hand, the
practical application of principles of DST in MOOC’s learning design opens up for a
redefinition of teachers’ identity, role and responsibilities in the narrative frame they
share with their learners. The two elements combined can foster sustainable ecosystems
of collaborative learning and knowledge exchange that enrich all kind of narrators,
teachers and learners alike.
References
1. Margaryan, A., Bianco, M., Littlejohn, A.: Instructional quality of Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOCs). Computers and Education 80(1), 77-83 (2015).
2. Ross, J., Sinclair, C., Knox, J., Bayne, S., Macleod, H.: Teacher Experiences and Academic
Identity: The Missing Components of MOOC Pedagogy. Journal of Online Learning and
Teaching 10(1), 57-69 (2014).
112
Proceedings of EMOOCs 2019:
Work in Progress Papers of the Research, Experience and Business Tracks
3. Garcia-Penalvo, F., Fidalgo-Blanco, A., Sein-Echaluce, M.: An adaptive hybrid MOOC
model: Disrupting the MOOC concept in higher education. Telematics and Informatics
35(4), 1018-1030 (2017).
4. Chiappe-Laverde, A., Hine, N., Martínez Silva, J.A.: Literature and practice: a critical
review of MOOCs. Comunicar, 22(44), 9-18 (2015).
5. Fidalgo-Blanco et al. From massive access to cooperation: lessons learned and proven
results of a hybrid xMOOC/cMOOC pedagogical approach to MOOCs. International
Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 13 (24), 1-13 (2016)
DOI 10.1186/s41239-016-0024-z
6. Anders, A.: Theories and Applications of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs): The
Case for Hybrid Design. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed
Learning, 16(6), 39-61 (2015). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v16i6.2185
7. Dunaway, M. K.: Connectivism: Learning theory and pedagogical practice for networked
information landscapes. Reference Services Review, 39(4), 675-685 (2011).
https:// doi.org/10.1108/00907321111186686
8. Darvin, R.: Language and Identity in the Digital Age. In: Preece, S. (Ed.) The Routledge
Handbook of Language and Identity, 523-541. Routledge, Oxon/NY (2018).
9. Domingo, M.: Language and identity research in online environments: A multimodal
ethnographic perspective. In: Preece, S. (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and
Identity, 541-558. Routledge, Oxon/NY (2018).
10. Beetham, H., Sharpe, R. (eds.): Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age. Designing for 21st
century learning. 2nd edn. Routledge, Oxon/NY (2013).
11. Siemens, G.: Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. International Journal of
Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3-10 (2005).
Retrieved March 2018: http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/Jan_05.pdf
12. Robin, B.R.: Digital Storytelling: A Powerful Technology Tool for the 21st Century
Classroom, Theory Into Practice, 47(3), 220-228 (2008). DOI:
10.1080/00405840802153916
13. Rubino, I., Barberis, C., Malnati, G.: Exploring the values of writing collaboratively through
a digital storytelling platform: a mixed-methods analysis of users’ participation, perspectives
and practices. Interactive Learning Environments, 26(7), 882-894 (2018).
DOI: 10.1080/10494820.2017.1419499
14. Love, A. G., Dietrich, A., Fitzgerald, J., Gordon, D. Integrating collaborative learning inside
and outside of the classroom. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3&4), 177-196
(2014).
15. Elkordy A., Zumpano N.: Hive-Minded: Educators, Professional Learning Networks, and
Knowledge Exchange in the Digital Age. In: Ifenthaler D. (Ed.) Digital Workplace Learning,
307-318. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46215-8_17
16. Robin, B.: The Educational Uses of Digital Story Telling. In Crawford, C., Carlsen, R.,
McFerrin, K., Price, J., Weber, R., Willis, D. (eds.): Proceedings of SITE 2006. Society for
Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference, pp. 709-716.
AACE – Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Orlando, USA,
(2006). Retrieved March 2018: https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/22129/
17. Kocaman-Karoglu, A.: Personal voices in higher education: A digital story telling
experience for pre-service teachers. In Education and Information Technologies 21(5),
1153–1168 (2016). Springer, US. DOI 10.1007/s10639-014-9373-1
Retrieved March 2018: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10639-014-
9373-1.pdf
113