Roles and profiles

MOOC functions and profiles

Bearing in mind the massive nature of MOOCs it is advisable to have a teaching team made up of colleagues from the university or other institution. In fact there are different roles involved: the expert in the subject who is responsible for designing the content (videos, texts, questionnaires, projects, etc) and two other but increasingly important figures.


Instructors: lecturers responsible for student interaction with the content of the platform. The design they training pathway, record and edit the all kinds of video content, design the self-evaluation or peer assessment activities that test the students’ progress, upload the video content, evaluations, slides and other materials, control the discussion forums during the first time the course is offered to ensure that specific questions about the course are answered, such as questions about the qualification policy. 
 

Teaching assistants (TA): lecturers responsible primarily for interacting with the students on the course in terms of its dimension. In other words they act as experts in the subject, spokespeople for the teaching team on the platform, they solve problems and answer questions about the content that arise in the forums or other channels, motivate the forums and other channels of participation and answer questions about how the platform works.
They can also help the instructors in the content design and creation phase.


Mentors: learners that have successfully completed the course or learners/other teachers chosen by the instructors having a vast knowledge on the topic. Their role is to follow up the course, give solution to doubts about content, engage the learner participation in the course and act as a filter for the instructors.


Administrators: technical staff in charge, among others, of the course set up in the platform; they act as intermediaries with Coursera; follow up the technical questions in the forum; they act as support staff. The appear in the forums as Teaching Staff.