The article, “Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education” has been recently published in the journal Education Sciences, analyzing a MOOC hosted by the LUMA Centre for in-service educators in Spring 2016.
The article has been written through a collaboration between Professor Maija Aksela, Visiting Researcher Maya Kaul, and Associate Professor at Peking University, Xiaomeng Wu. Maya Kaul is visiting the LUMA Centre Finland for the 2017-2018 academic year from the United States through a research fellowship funded by the Fulbright Finland program.
The study analyzes the formation of a Community of Inquiry (CoI) within the LUMA Centre’s MOOC, “Sustainable Energy in Education.” The course was offered to teachers from across the world who were interested in learning how to engage their students in topics related to sustainable energy and the environment. The article studied the ways that teachers were able to build professional development learning communities online within the MOOC, specifically through their written assignments in the online MOOC forum setting.
This publication builds off of previous research performed on the LUMA Centre’s 2015 MOOC for 15+ year-old students, “Millennium Youth Course – Sustainable Energy.” This course had expert researchers introduce topics such as sustainable growth and renewable energy to the students in order to expose them to new environmental education content knowledge. In 2016, the article “Relevancy of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) about Energy for Adolescents” was published about this course, providing insight on how to design and deliver relevant environmental science curriculum to youth through online, distance learning channels, such as MOOCs.
Both articles have been published in the Education Sciences journal and are available to be read online:
- Aksela, M., Wu, X., & Halonen, J. (2016). Relevancy of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) about Sustainable Energy for Adolescents. Education Sciences, 6(4), 40. doi:10.3390/educsci6040040
- Kaul, M., Aksela, M., & Wu, X. (2018). Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education. Education Sciences, 8(2), 40. doi:10.3390/educsci8020040
Text: Maya Kaul & Julia Halonen.
