Challenges for using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Latin
America
Valéria Feitosa de Moura
valeria.feitosa.vv@gmail.com Master’s student in Business at FEA-USP
Professor at the School of Thermomechanical Technology
Fellow of the Center for the Development of Technology and Educational Environments/São Paulo University (NPT-USP)
Juliana Nélia Corrêa
juliana.nelia.correa@usp.br
Master’s student of Business at FEA-USP
Fellow of the Center for the Development of Technology and Educational Environments/São Paulo University (NPT-USP)
José Dutra de Oliveira Neto
dutra@usp.br
Professor of the School of Economics, Business and Accounting of Ribeirão Preto/São Paulo University (FEA-RP-USP)
César Alexandre de Souza
calesou@usp.br
Professor of the School of Economics, Business and Accounting/São Paulo University (Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão
Preto/Universidade de São Paulo - FEA-USP)
Adriana Backx Noronha Viana
backx@usp.br
Professor of the School of Economics, Business and Accounting/São Paulo University (Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão
Preto/Universidade de São Paulo - FEA-USP)
ABSTRACT
Open educational resources (OERs), including massive open online courses (MOOCs), have emerged as an alternative to increase the access and quality of education, reducing educational costs and inequality, particularly in developing countries. Despite their potential to improve and provide free access to quality educational resources, developing countries are making little use of these resources due to language barriers, contextualization, the technological infrastructure, and the requirement that users have basic skills. Therefore, the objective of this study is to verify the impact of language, the technological infrastructure, and users’ skills in the use of MOOCs in Latin American countries through a descriptive analysis of the data obtained through a survey conducted in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia for the research project developed by the Center for the Development of Technology and Educational Environments (NPT). From the data analysis, it is possible to verify that the level of digital literacy and language are relevant factors to be considered to increase the use of MOOCs in the countries that compose the sample.
Keywords: Latin America, OER, MOOC, challenges
INTRODUCTION
In the knowledge society, higher education institutions (HEIs) are of unprecedented importance;
however, many challenges have been faced by these institutions, such as doubts about their role in society and the fragmentation of their functions, in addition to concerns about long-term costs and the sustainability of the system. In this context, through experiences such as open access, open educational resources (OERs), and, more recently, massive open online courses (MOOCs), the open education movement is a central concept for thinking about the near future of higher education (Aires, 2016) as a means to increase access to and the quality of education, reducing educational costs and inequality, particularly in developing countries (Cobo, 2013).
However, despite their potential to improve and provide free access to quality educational resources, developing countries are making little use of these resources (Cobo, 2013). Some authors note that this situation arises from the fact that there are barriers related to language, contextualization, the technological infrastructure, and the requirement that users have basic skills (Cobo, 2013).
Thus, the objective of this study is to verify the impact of language, the technological
infrastructure, and users’ skills in the use of MOOCs in Latin American countries. Additionally, as a specific objective, it is intended to identify the profile of the audience that elaborates, modifies, and shares MOOCs in Latin America.
Some reasons justify the choice of objectives and unit of analysis. First, the literature points out that one of the major impacts of MOOCs is access to quality education for developing countries (Daniel, Vazquez Cano & Gisbert Cervera, 2015, Jacoby, 2014), however, in the period from 2013 to 2015, More than 80% of the literature on the subject is published in North America and Europe (Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016). Second, despite the potential of the REA for developing countries, these resources are being underused by these nations (Cobo, 2013). Third, MOOCs are a recent phenomenon that has generated expectations both in pedagogical issues and in the strategic and economic issues of higher education (Sancho-Vinuesa, Oliver &
Gisbert, 2015). Fourth, there is little literature on the use of REAs from the perspective of university students in developing countries, often regarded as the largest recipients and beneficiaries of REAs (Hu, Li, Li & Huang, 2015). Finally, a number of problems have been reported in the use of OERs in developing countries (Johnstone, 2005), and despite similarities among these countries, there is also considerable diversity and the challenges are different (Wright, Dhanarajan, & Reju, 2009; Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014). It is therefore important to consider the context of each country.
OPEN ONLINE EDUCATION: CONTEXTUALIZING OERS AND MOOCS From the convergence and evolution of OERs, free software, open access, MOOCs, open science, and a set of social and economic changes, open education can be considered one of the most important educational movements of the 21st century and can now be considered an open online education, mediated by digital artifacts, networks of relationships, and cultures on the Internet (Aires, 2016).
Generically covering any type of educational material in the public domain or associated with an open license, the expression “open educational resources” was proposed by UNESCO (Aires, 2016), and it is possible to identify in the literature three key positions that characterize them: 1) intellectual property licenses are open; (2) the permission to adapt and replicate content is free;
and (3) rights are provided to everyone without any privilege (Cobo, 2013). In this manner, anyone can freely and legally copy, use, adapt, and share these resources (Aires, 2016).
Part of the discussion about OERs is focused on the MOOCs, whose pedagogical project was based on the idea of free access to resources to learning, teaching and research proposed by the movement. Literature on the subject has grown substantially, both in academia and in the media (Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016), since MOOCs were presented as potential disruptive innovations for higher education.
MOOCs may or may not be linked to universities and, by definition, are offered in online environments (Kennedy, 2014). They are characterized by the absence of formal entrance requirements, free participation, a project designed to support thousands of students (Chapman, Goodman, Jawitz & Deacon, 2016), no maturity, no penalty for evasion (Yadira, De, Sancho- vinuesa , Georgina & Zermeño, 2015), delivered asynchronously and unrestricted (DeBoer, Ho, Stump & Breslow, 2014). The "M" refers to "Massive", which means that thousands of people can simultaneously take courses (Clair, Winer, Finkelstein, Wald, Finkelstein & Fuentes- steeves, 2015), being this the characteristic that differentiates the MOOCs from other
experiences of e-learning (Sánchez-Vera, León-Urrutia & Davis, 2015). This characteristic is viewed by some authors from a perspective of education on a large scale, associated with cost reduction (Knox, 2014), whereas others take an alternative view, in which massive refers to the ability and size of the network in generating new knowledge, thus reflecting participatory learning and respecting the diversity of the large number of participants (Stewart, 2013). The first "O" refers to "open", which means that participation in courses is not restricted by geographical location, age or financial resources (Clair et al, 2015) and may include open technology, open software, open content, an open evaluation process, open registration, and open educational resources (Kennedy, 2014). The second "O" means "online," meaning that MOOCs are exclusively Internet-based courses. Finally, the "C" refers to "Courses" (Clair et al, 2015).
The first MOOC was conducted in 2008 by George Siemens and Stephen Downes (Kennedy, 2014; Zhang 2016; Stewart, 2013) and was designed according to connectivist principles of learning, and several other MOOCs were developed following this approach, and therefore MOOCs were associated with a learning vision based on participatory and networked pedagogy (Teixeira et al, 2016). However, starting in 2012, MOOCs became widely known, as several universities began to offer their own MOOCs, but with a very different approach to that adopted by CCK08 (Teixeira et al, 2016), which gave rise to the distinction of two formats of MOOCs widely adopted in the literature: cMOOCs and xMOOCs (Rodriguez, 2013).
The cMOOCs are of a connectivist nature and are aligned with the principle of open education (Yeager, Hurley-Dasgupta & Bliss, 2013), with a focus on knowledge creation and generation (Teixeira et al, 2016), emphasize connected collaborative learning, share the notion of free world participation in a non-credit course (Zheng, Wisniewski, Rosson & Carroll, 2016).
However, xMOOCs follow a more traditional approach to learning, using video-lessons, short questionnaires and peer review (Zheng et al, 2016), focusing on knowledge duplication (Teixeira et al, 2016). As they present the traditional roles of "teachers" and "students", have a closed curriculum (ie, the "teacher" and "students"), and are more structured (Clair et al, 2015)
are rigorously defined and are highly centralized (Teixeira et al, 2016). In these courses the term
"open" is used mainly as a synonym for "gratuity" (Teixeira et al, 2016).
MOOCS: QUALITY, DEMOCRATIZATION AND INNOVATION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
The "massive" nature is the distinguishing characteristic of MOOCs from other online learning experiences (Sánchez-Vera et al, 2015), thus, scalability combined with openness allows MOOCs to substantially increase accessibility to democratization of education (Schmid, Manturuk, Simpkins, Goldwasser & Schneider, 1990), and the development of the teaching of higher education (Clair et al, 2015), as they reduce material costs by making them accessible to low-income students (Ochoa, Sprock & Silveira, 2011).
In addition to accessibility, MOOCs improve quality (Nkuyubwatsi, 2013, Coelho, Teixeira, Nicolau, Caeiro & Rocio, 2015) and promote innovation for higher education (Warusavitarana, Dona, Piyathilake, Epitawela & Edirisnghe, 2014; Annabi & Muller, 2015; Bulfin, Pangrazio &
Selwyn, 2014) because they offer a fundamentally innovative form of learning (Clair et al, 2015; Teixeira et al, 2016) and stimulate HEIs to rethink the curriculum development process for more open and flexible educational models (Sánchez-Vera et al, 2015), enabling
autonomous learning throughout life (Subbian, 2013;
Kampff
, Ferreira, Reategui, De & Lima, 2014). MOOCs improve the quality of teaching, especially in developing countries, because they fill gaps in teacher experience by allowing the use of specialists to complement subject areas (Griffiths, Chingos, Mulhern & Spies, 2015) and to enable teachers (Kanwar,Kodhandaraman & Umar, 2010), because in these regions there is a scarcity of quality materials (Kanwar et al, 2010). In addition, they enable classroom time to be used to clarify students' doubts and to develop different methods, without the pressure to cover content, exposing students to other styles of teaching and discussion. It also enables the reinforcement of key competences such as critical thinking and online learning, as well as the substitution of support materials, since for the student the cost of the course is less than that of acquiring a book (Griffiths et al, 2015).
BARRIERS RELATED TO THE USE OF MOOCS
The MOOCs have experienced a rapid cycle of excitement and disappointment, since the design and management of a MOOC belongs to a complex context, involving pedagogical, financial, logistic and technological variables (Teixeira et al, 2016), so its use is low in developing countries (Cobo, 2013). Some authors note that this situation arises from the fact that there are barriers related to contextualization, language, the technological infrastructure, and the
requirement that users have basic skills (Cobo, 2013). In this context, Hansen and Reich (2015) emphasize that the results of their studies, in addition to the result of previous studies, which show that, contrary to what is expected, MOOCs favor the most privileged socioeconomic classes and, therefore, despite offering broad social benefits, it is not the neediest students who will be the beneficiaries.
In fact, one of the great challenges regarding OERs to be overcome is the fact that those who produce them are influenced by their sociocultural contexts and objectives, which may differ from those of the users (Chunwijitra, et al., 2015). Most students may differ with respect to learning methods, communication style, and rules of behavior. In this context, language becomes an important component because it mediates the learning process (Barak, Watted, &
Haick, 2016). Currently, many MOOCs are produced in English, representing a significant barrier to the participation of many students (Altbach, 2014), particularly those from developing countries, where most people have a local language and are rarely proficient in another language (Daniel et al, 2015).
Castillo, Zahra, and Wagner (2015) note that the literature presents a great concern about the content offered, teaching languages, diversity of learning needs, and cultural differences.
However, the greatest challenge for the use of MOOCs is most likely the lack of infrastructure.
When we evaluate the MOOCs only from the technological point of view, the number of people who can access education is amplified (Kanwar et al, 2010), because it offers possibilities for overcoming geographical and cost barriers (Gulati, 2014 ), However, in developing countries, despite the availability of technologies in urban areas, rural and poor populations continue to be deprived of this infrastructure (Gulati, 2014) and even if the infrastructure is somehow present, the operational cost can do (Wright et al, 2009). In this context, it is important to note that, in the case of low-income Internet users, access to the Internet is difficult. Thus, access problems, such as web connectivity, bandwidth, and the availability of peripherals (such as printers), vary widely from location to location and the lack of access to new technology tools constrains users’
ability to access, improve and share resources (Thakrar, Zinn, & Wolfenden, 2009).
In addition to the challenges noted above, students’ lack of digital skills may hinder the teaching and learning process (Thakrar et al, 2009; Machado, Sepúlveda, & Montoya, 2016). Therefore, it is required that participants are trained to learn how to share and interact, create, criticize, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts (Atiaja & Proenza, 2016).
Thus, the authors observe that there are many challenges for the use of MOOCs, particularly in developing countries. However, although there are similarities between these countries, there is also considerable diversity, and they face different challenges (Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014).
Therefore, it is important to assess the specific challenges for Latin American countries.
METHODOLOGY
The present study is characterized as quantitative and descriptive, and the data come from a survey that composes a research project developed by the Center for the Development of Technology and Educational Environments (NPT), funded by the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development. The project performed data collection in nine countries in the southern hemisphere (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia). However, to meet the objectives proposed in this study, the data from the South American countries (Brazil, Chile, and Colombia) were analyzed.
Information related to the selection of data collection sites, the sampling definition, the
elaboration of the data collection instrument, and data collection and analysis is presented in the following.
Unit of Analysis and Sampling
The unit of analysis is composed of students from six HEIs distributed among the three surveyed countries of South America, as presented in Table 1.
Table 1: Research institutions by country
Country Institution
Brazil Claretian University Center [Centro Universitário Claretiano]
University of São Paulo [Universidade de São Paulo]
Chile
Institute of Banking Studies Guilhermo Subercaseaux [Instituto de Estudios Bancarios Guilhermo Subercaseaux]
University of Santo Tomas [Universidade Santo Tomás]
University of Tarapacá [Universidade de Tarapacá]
Colombia National University of Colombia [Universidade Nacional da Colômbia]
The random sampling method was used, allowing equal opportunity of participation for all individuals, thus avoiding bias in the selection (Smith, 2012). To identify the required sample, 30 courses from each institution were identified through random selection using Excel’s VBA
function. Then, the teachers of the courses were approached to identify 10 teachers with courses with more than 30 students who were interested in participating in the research. Finally, the participation of 20 students from each course was sought.
Elaboration of the Data Collection Instrument
To prepare the data collection instrument, a comprehensive literature review was conducted, in addition to a discussion with experts on OERs. The definitions of the constructs were centered on the factors that influence the adoption of OERS, resulting in the identification of 71 variables. To evaluate content validity and face validity, 34 researchers from the OER
community (of whom 76% had six or more years of research and educational experience) were invited to evaluate the impact of each of the variables identified in OER adoption (defined as
“use and/or creation”) by responding to a questionnaire with 62 questions administered by SurveyMonkey. From this process, the questionnaire was simplified to a set of 25 questions.
To identify potential problems with data collection (Postlethwaite, 2005), a pilot questionnaire was applied to a sample of 63 English-speaking students and teachers, eight Portuguese- speaking students and instructors, and three Spanish-speaking students and instructors from all institutions that composed the sample of the NPT research project. The pilot questionnaire identified the need to include the OER concept throughout the questionnaire. In addition, a series of questions were revised to use only the term “educational resource” to eliminate hypothetical responses because many respondents would have first contact with the term “open educational resource” only in the application of the research. Thus, the research sought to evaluate general practices more than only open practices, considering that educational resources also include OERs. To test the new version of the questionnaire, a second pilot test (in English and Spanish) was performed with 34 teachers and 28 students from the sample of HEIs to be researched, generating small revisions and making the final version possible.
Data Collection and Analysis
Data collection was performed from November 2014 to August 2015 through the
SurveyMonkey link sent to the email of the individuals selected for the survey. There were cases in which the students did not have easy access to the Internet; thus, printed forms were distributed to the respondents. The data were from the questions that help answer the research problem of this article and were analyzed using the descriptive statistics from Excel. . The final instrument had eight different versions: in four different languages (Portuguese, Spanish, English and Indonesian) directed to two different groups (for students and instructors).
Colombian and Chilean individuals responded to the Spanish-version questionnaire whereas Brazilian individuals responded to the Portuguese-version.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
From the selected sample, responses were received from 749 respondents; The sample is composed mostly by young students (77,8% were younger than 25 years, as can be seen by Table 2), with more than a half divided into four major areas of study: Physical Education (16%), Health & Social Care (13%), Science (13%) and Economics, Business and Accounting (12%).
Table 2 – Sample features
Primary area of study* n %
Age
Group n %
Physical Education 208 16% <25 583 77,8%
Health & Social Care 172 13% 25-33 122 16,3%
Science 168 13% 34-42 36 4,8%
Economics, Business, Accounting 160 12% 43-50 7 0,9%
Applied Science, Technology, Engineering 154 12% >50 1 0,1%
Education Studies 95 7% Total 749 100,0%
Mathematics, Computing & Information
Science 92 7%
Medicine 57 4%
Psychology and Philosophy 52 4%
Other 146 11%
* respondents could choose more than one
Brazilian respondents accounted for 38% of the sample whereas 39% of the respondents were from Chile, and 23% were from Colombia. As shown in Table 3, most respondents
(approximately 70%) never created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC. The overall proportion is very similar to the proportion presented in Brazil and Chile. However, it is possible to observe that, in Colombia, the proportion of respondents who have never created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC is very similar to the proportion of those who have already done so, but this result may be due to the participation of respondents from only one institution.
Table 3: General results by surveyed country and institution
Country
Has created, used, modified, or shared a
MOOC
Has never created, used, modified, or
shared a MOOC
Total
QTY % QTY % QTY %
Brazil 61 21.3% 225 78.7% 286 38.2%
Chile 87 29.7% 206 70.3% 293 39.1%
Colombia 80 47.1% 90 52.9% 170 22.7%
Total 228 30.4% 521 69.6% 749 100.0%
Among the educational resources presented to the respondents, MOOCs are those with the lowest rate of use in Latin America, as shown in Table 4. The application of the chi-square test leads to the rejection of the null hypothesis of no association between countries and the rate of adoption of MOOCs, which indicates that there are significant differences in the percentage of adoption among countries. This finding is observed in the similarity between the general adoption rate and the adoption rate in Chile (approximately 70% never created, used, modified, or shared MOOCs), which is not repeated in Brazil (78% never created, used, modified, or shared MOOCs, a proportion greater than the overall proportion of the samples) or in Colombia, where there is almost a balance between the respondents who have never created, used,
modified, or shared MOOCs (52.9%) and those who have already done so (47.1%).
Table 4: Use of educational resources by resource type
Educational resource Copying Creating Sharing Modifying No action
Word 49% 68% 44% 48% 4%
PPT 49% 67% 41% 41% 7%
Excel 44% 48% 32% 34% 15%
PDF 58% 41% 40% 26% 6%
Images 57% 46% 43% 41% 5%
Audio 57% 38% 36% 23% 11%
Videos 55% 44% 41% 27% 7%
e-Books 52% 4% 25% 8% 33%
Lecture notes 44% 52% 34% 28% 16%
Quizzes 53% 29% 26% 21% 19%
Tutorials 59% 13% 29% 11% 19%
TextBooks 67% 6% 34% 13% 13%
Complete courses 44% 4% 19% 9% 40%
MOOCs 21% 2% 9% 4% 70%
Datasets 38% 12% 19% 14% 41%
Podcasts 10% 4% 4% 2% 22%
As shown in Figure 1, there are no major differences in the results presented by gender: the chi- square test demonstrates that, at the 5% level of significance, there is no evidence of an
association between the respondent's gender and the creation, use, modification, or sharing of MOOCs in any of the analyzed countries: the proportion of MOOC users was not significantly different between male respondents and not male respondents – women and those students that preferred not to answer about their gender (χ² Brazil = 3.64. p= 0.06; χ² Chile = 3.64. p=0.82; χ² Colombia = 1.89. p = 0.1693). This result differs from the result presented by Harb (2015), which identified that only 20% of MOOC students are women.
Figure 1. Creation, use, modification, or sharing of MOOCs between men and women However, it is possible to observe that the respondents with greater ability to use digital resources, as represented by the level of digital literacy that the respondents are assumed to have, present a higher proportion of creation, use, modification, or sharing of MOOCs. The differences are significant at the 5% level in the chi-square test for Chile and Colombia (χ² Chile
= 6.55, p = 0.038; χ² Colombia = 13.0405, p = 0.001). In the case of Brazil, no evidence is found to reject the null hypothesis of non-association between digital literacy level and the creation, use, modification, or sharing of MOOCs (χ² = 1.2885, p = 0.5251). This finding converges with conclusions of Warusavitarana et al(2014), which indicate that digital skills are a great challenge for the use of MOOCs in Sri Lankan,, thus demonstrating that the users’
training in digital resources is a relevant factor for increasing the use of MOOCs in the countries surveyed.
Figure 2. Digital literacy level
Analyzing the data, it is possible to identify that, although 93.9% of the respondents have Internet access at home, it is not a determining factor for the respondents’ contact with MOOCs because only 30% of these respondents have already created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC, whereas in the sample of respondents who do not have home Internet access, approximately 52% have already done so. Evaluating the results by country, it is possible to
identify, as shown in Figure 3, that, in Brazil alone, contact with MOOCs is greater because, proportionally, twice the respondents have already had contact with MOOCs compared to respondents who access the Internet from other locations.
Figure 3. Creation, use, modification, or sharing of MOOCs by place of Internet access The level of satisfaction with the Internet is evaluated in three levels: satisfaction with Internet costs, satisfaction with Internet speed, and satisfaction with Internet stability.
Figure 4 shows that the respondents have low levels of satisfaction with Internet costs. In the case of Brazil, for example, more than 50% of the respondents who have used, created, or shared MOOCs are very dissatisfied or dissatisfied with the Internet costs in the country. The highest percentages of satisfaction are among the respondents who have already used MOOCs:
46% are satisfied or very satisfied with Internet costs.
Figure 4. Satisfaction with Internet costs
Regarding Internet speed, as shown in Figure 5, the percentage of those who are satisfied or very satisfied is higher than that of those who are very dissatisfied or dissatisfied. The highest percentages of satisfaction with Internet speed appear among the respondents who have never used MOOCs in Chile (59%) and Colombia (51%). The levels of dissatisfaction are balanced between adopters and non-adopters and between countries, whereas the highest levels are observed among those who have used, created, or modified MOOCs in Brazil (44% among those who are very dissatisfied and dissatisfied).
Figure 5. Satisfaction with Internet speed
Finally, regarding satisfaction with Internet stability, the highest level of satisfaction is observed among respondents who have used, created, modified, or shared MOOCs in Chile (54%), whereas the highest percentage of dissatisfaction is observed among respondents from Brazil (46%) and among those in Colombia who have never created, used, or modified MOOCs (48%).
Figure 6. Satisfaction with Internet stability
Analyzing the sample, it is found that the great majority of respondents prefer to read in their native language. With the exception of Colombia, the percentage of respondents who prefer to read in a language different from the native language is higher among those who have created, used, modified, or shared MOOCs than among those who have never used such a resource.
Table 5: Preferred language for reading
English Native
Language Others Brazil Has created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC 7% 92% 1.6%
Has never created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC 3% 97%
Subtotal 3% 96% 0.3%
Chile Has created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC 3% 97% - Has never created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC 1% 98% 0,5%
Subtotal 2% 98% 0.3%
Colômbia Has created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC 4% 96% - Has never created, used, modified, or shared a MOOC 6% 93% 1.1%
Subtotal 5% 95% 1%
Among the respondents from Brazil and Chile, approximately 3% prefer videos without changes in the original language (dubbing or subtitles). In Colombia, this percentage is higher: 11% of respondents prefer to watch videos without language changes. With the exception of Chile, the preference for videos without language changes is higher among respondents who have already used MOOCs.
Table 6: Preferred language for viewing videos
Dubbed Subtitled in my language
Subtitled in the original language
Without changes
Brazil
Has created, used, modified, or shared a
MOOC 31% 52% 9,8% 6,6%
Has never created, used, modified, or
shared a MOOC 34% 57% 7% 2%
Subtotal 33% 56% 7,7% 3,1%
Chile
Has created, used, modified, or shared a
MOOC 31% 57% 9% 2%
Has never created, used, modified, or
shared a MOOC 25% 64% 7,8% 2,9%
Subtotal 27% 62% 8,2% 2,7%
Colombi a
Has created, used, modified, or shared a
MOOC 15% 48% 23% 15%
Has never created, used, modified, or
shared a MOOC 16% 58% 18,9% 7,8%
Subtotal 15% 53% 21% 11%
It is therefore identified that language is a relevant factor for the use of MOOCs, a question evidenced in the research by Clair et al (2015), which identified that 48.3% Are from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom and these are the countries in the world with the largest English-speaking populations.
CONCLUSION
Given the relevance held by MOOCs, a resource for expanding access to education, identifying the profile of individuals who have used, modified, or shared MOOCs and those who have not done so is important in targeting actions to expand and stabilize the use of such resources.
The data analysis shows that in Latin America, despite the percentage of respondents who have never used MOOCs, there are differences in adoption levels among the countries studied: Brazil and Chile have high rates of non-adoption (approximately 70%), whereas in Colombia, it is observed that the percentage of adopters and non-adopters is close.
In addition, it is verified that gender is not associated with differences in adoption levels, which may suggest the exemption of specific actions for different genders in the localities and
institutions in the sample. The level of digital literacy, in turn, is associated with the different levels of adoption of MOOCs in Chile and Colombia, which is not observed in the case of Brazil.
Still at the level of the individual characteristics of potential users of MOOCs, it is observed that the vast majority of potential users prefer to use content in their native language. Regarding video language preferences, more than two-thirds of the interviewed individuals in each country prefer changes from the language of the original content to their native language: first, with subtitles in the native language and, second, dubbed videos in their local language. This evidence highlights the critical role of one of the characteristics that differentiate OERs from other educational resources: the possibility to adapt and replicate content is free.
Regarding the aspects of technological infrastructure and their relationship with the adoption of MOOCs, no uniform standards between countries are highlighted. It is important to highlight
that the respondents in Brazil have higher levels of dissatisfaction with Internet costs, speed, and instability, and in the case of Internet costs and speed, the percentage of dissatisfaction is higher among respondents who have used, shared, or modified MOOCs. The respondents from Chile are those with the highest levels of satisfaction with Internet speed, whereas those in Colombia are the most satisfied with Internet costs and stability. These are important aspects to be considered in the adoption and expansion of the MOOCs because they can make their application unfeasible.
KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS SECTION
Challenges
Barriers that may hinder the expansion of the use of MOOCs. As for example, technological and cultural difficulties.
Latin America
Latin America is a group of countries and dependencies in the Americas where Romance languages are predominant. This study specifically contemplates the following Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile and Colombia.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Open Educational Resources (OER) covers any type of educational material in the public domain or associated with an open license, and it is possible to identify in the literature three key positions that characterize them: (1) intellectual property licenses are open; (2) the
permission to adapt and replicate content is free; and (3) rights are provided to everyone without any privilege. In this manner, anyone can freely and legally copy, use, adapt, and share these resources.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
MOOCs may or may not be linked to universities and, by definition, are offered in online environments. They are characterized by the absence of formal entrance requirements, free participation, a project designed to support thousands of students, no maturity, no penalty for evasion, delivered asynchronously and unrestricted. The "M" refers to "Massive", which means that thousands of people can simultaneously take courses. The first "O" refers to "open", which means that participation in courses is not restricted by geographical location, age or financial resources and may include open technology, open software, open content, an open evaluation process, open registration, and open educational resources. The second "O" means "online,"
meaning that MOOCs are exclusively Internet-based courses. Finally, the "C" refers to
"Courses".
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Data for this study come from ROER4D project (The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development), which was funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada.
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