Role of MOOCs in Pakistani English Teachers’ Professional Development

Abstract

The paper takes up one of the least researched areas in Pakistan i.e. the role of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for professional development in general and the capacity building of English teachers in particular. Although MOOCs are getting popular in Pakistan, the majority is still unaware of the concept especially those who teach in traditional face-to-face mode. As many second language University teachers have not attended any MOOCs, convenience sampling was used for data collection. Only 32 respondents completed the questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire on Cronbach alpha was 0.83. The results show that the number of Pakistani English teachers responding to the survey who attended MOOCs either partially or completely, was very low. Therefore, of course, the number of MOOCs attended by each was also very low. However, whoever attended and whichever MOOCs were attended, the teachers found them quite beneficial for their overall professional development, be it language improvement or teaching skill set development. The researcher recommends the use of MOOCs in classrooms which is only possible if more English Language Teaching MOOCs are available and teachers attend a variety of MOOCs. The researcher also highlights the need to develop Pakistani MOOCs with a national flavour.

Keywords

• moocs
• teachers
• professional development
• capacity building
• second language acquisition