Making MOOCs meaningful and locally relevant? Investigating IDCourserians—an independent, collaborative, community hub in Indonesia

Along with massive open online course (MOOC) budding popularity, some problems have begun to surface. One that appears prominent concerns sustainability: for example, high dropout and low completion rates, which are reported to be less than 10 % on average. In response to growing concerns over these issues, some MOOC providers have begun to campaign for the development of offline supporting communities. Meanwhile in Indonesia, where provider supported learning communities are not yet present, some MOOC learners took the initiative to form their own community, which they called IDCourserians. This paper reports on a qualitative study which aimed to investigate and to make sense what was actually happening in the IDCourserians as an independent MOOC learning community. Nine overarching themes were identified from the collected data that illuminate the purpose of the IDCourserians, the way the community’s members learn MOOCs, and the benefit the participants perceived by joining the IDCourserians. These findings then are discussed further with regard to two key theoretical perspectives: collaborative learning and communities of practice. The paper concludes that where English is not the main spoken language and the hub model is not yet provided, creating face-to-face communities in local communities should be considered, as this may be a better way for learners to experience MOOCs and make their learning more meaningful in the local context. This also offers potential for overcoming the common difficulties in MOOCs, such as a lack of motivation and difficulties in interpreting the material through developing collaborative support activities within a community of practice.