The Online Interface and Social Inclusion: A MOOC Study in Turkey

One of the virtues of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is that, because of their scalability, temporal flexibility and digital mediation, they have the potential to increase learner numbers in higher education, boosting their general level of social inclusion. Whether a MOOC actually succeeds in enhancing students’ social inclusion, however, is shaped by two elements of the course: 1) the features of the online interface – the embedded linguistic, pedagogical and interactive features that direct students’ engagement with the course materials, the educator and their peers; and 2) the knowledge content of the course, especially its relevancy for equipping learners to be able to engage meaningfully with the world after completion of the MOOC. With this in mind, this paper focuses on the first element, exploring Turkish students’ experiences of taking a MOOC and their perceptions of how the MOOC interface shaped their sense of social inclusion. Fifteen university-level students registered for a five-week MOOC on how to improve their English language writing skills. They then completed a questionnaire about their views on the learning experience. Nine of the students also kept diaries reflecting on their learning through the MOOC. Findings reveal that these students had a positive view of the MOOC, with different elements of the online interface playing important roles in improving digital, educational and social inclusion. The paper ends by recommending that researchers should further investigate the relationship between social inclusion and MOOCs; that course designers should rethink the role of online interfaces within MOOCS; and that Turkish higher education institutions should develop more MOOCs with locally relevant features embedded within them.