From the classroom to a MOOC. University teachers’ experiences compared.

This article explores the experience of contributors to a MOOC designed mainly for university students. Following the Covid pandemic, university lecturers have been forced to adapt their traditional courses and lecture style in order to continue teaching. This has involved a sudden shift to video conferencing platforms and the transformation of the format of learning objects. Teaching staff have rapidly had to become familiar with new technologies and teaching strategies. However most had never been involved in creating asynchronous online courses. A departmental research group designed a MOOC which will award university credits to users completing it. An initial survey to assess willingness to be involved revealed considerable interest among teaching staff, with over 30 people (including almost 50% of the department lecturers) proposing content. Throughout the design and production process, the drop-out rate remains low. Teaching staff remain keen to contribute to the MOOC. We hypothesize that the recent disruption caused by the pandemic has meant that teaching staff are more open to new methods of teaching, and this will affect their approach to the design process in the future. Through the use of surveys to evaluate contributors’ attitudes, experience and knowledge, we focus on the connections between traditional F2F teaching, online teaching and asynchronous teaching via MOOC, as well as highlighting lessons for both contributors and organisers.