Instructional Quality of Business MOOCs: Indicators and Initial Findings

Abstract

The concept of ‘instructional quality’ is central to the design and evaluation of massive open online courses (MOOCs). As MOOCs from the field of business and management are gaining importance both in academia and professional learning, questions on how to determine and improve the quality of these offerings arise. In this paper, we introduce an instrument for evaluating MOOCs against a set of theoretically grounded instructional design principles. After an overview of related research, we describe the concise course scan rubric and its application in detail. A pilot study with N = 101 business MOOCs reveals their rather low overall instructional quality. While most aspects of structuredness and clarity are rated high, the implementation of instructional design principles falls notably behind. The implications from our study point towards a learner-oriented notion of instructional quality and individualized learning and increased learner support in business MOOCs.