31 Supporting learners
Open courses can be designed to run satisfactorily as ‘stand-alone’ learning resources without any educator intervention. Instead, learners interact with each other during their participation.
Such courses continue to be moderated by the hosting platform provider to ensure that there isn’t inappropriate behaviour, but the educators’ involvement in the course ends with its creation. However, there is evidence to show that online learners value educator engagement during courses and this suggests that it can have positive effects on the learning experience overall.[1]
[1] Ferguson, Rebecca and Whitelock, Denise (2014). Taking on different roles: how educators position themselves in MOOCs. In: Rensing, Christopher; de Freitas, Sara; Ley, Tobias and Muñoz-Merino, Pedro J. eds. Open Learning and Teaching in Educational Communities. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (8719). Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 562–563.
