Teaching Creativity at Scale : Overcoming Language Barriers in a MOOC

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) allow higher education institutions to deliver courses for free to anyone with Internet access and thus to attract expansive linguistically diverse audiences worldwide. The purpose of this article is to address language barriers and challenges for creating and maintaining online learning communities in the Creativity, Innovation and Change (CIC) MOOC. This exploratory and descriptive study relied on CIC MOOC data and learning analytics framework to guide the analysis. The article discusses a number of strategies for fostering community as well as course innovations to make CIC more attractive and engaging. Authors conclude that understanding how to promote community with linguistically diverse students when aiming to teach creativity at scale contributes to a better comprehension of and responding to the needs and challenges of non-native speakers in the MOOC platforms