For a long time, technological advances have meant a major challenge and transformation for universities, which are trying to take advantage of the advances offered by technology.
However, the pace at which these advances have been introduced into class-based teaching has never been in line with the evolution of technology, not least because teachers are not fully convinced that they will improve students’ learning achievements or their school performance (Freitas & Paredes, 2018; Rodríguez, Olaskoaga, & Marúm, 2017).
Despite this, distance education in general (900% worldwide since 2000 - Muñiz, 2017) has not stopped growing. The increase is similar in the university environment: according to data from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MEFP), in 2018 69.2% of new university students took class-based courses, while 30.8% opted for distance education.
This is where we can find MOOCs, which are basically free online courses that combine lectures in audio or video format (of no more than 10 to 15 min), text documents and tasks automatically graded by the learning management system (LMS) in which it is hosted or by other students enrolled in the same course. There is no need for a specific profile nor is there a limit to the number of students that can enrol in a given course, therefore the course teachers’ tutorial work is minimal, and this responsibility is left to fellow students through forums (Ruiz-Palmero, López-Álvarez, Sánchez-Rivas, & Sánchez-Rodríguez, 2019). Thus, the massification and heterogeneity of the people enrolled are basic characteristics of MOOCs (Garcia, Fidalgo, & Sein, 2017).
Since MOOCs were first created, universities have been taking part as institutions of higher education. Nowadays around 1000 universities offer more than 14,000 MOOCs on different platforms (List of 943 Universities offering MOOCs/free online courses, 2019). They are also offering Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs), a term first coined by Professor Armando Fox at the University of Berkeley in Fox, 2013 which implies an adaptation of MOOCs to suit the specific needs of an educational body, diversification that obeys educational criteria tending to personalize learning (Escudero-Nahón, 2020). While MOOCs help update general knowledge and are directed to large groups, SPOCs allow the development of educational projects for specific communities, adjusting the contents to their needs. MacVie (cited in Aguayo & Bravo, 2017) difference between: COOC (corporative open on-line courses), courses designed for companies; SOOC (small open online courses), low-audience courses due to the extreme specialization of the subject and NOOC (nano open online courses), characterized by requiring less than 20 h of dedication.
Theoretical framework
SPOCs were created to succeed where MOOCs failed, namely in the high drop-out rate (Eriksson, Adawi, & Stöhr, 2017; Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016). They are, therefore, non-open courses with a smaller number of participants who have to meet specific requirements (Aguayo & Bravo, 2017; Álvarez-Gil, Montes-Sancho, & Tachizawa, 2017). As a result, the relationship with tutors is closer than in MOOCs.
Sometimes they have been developed in the university environment, by applying the teaching resources used in MOOCs, as a training course for the teaching staff, (Santamaría, 2014) or as a supplement to degree courses (López, 2016; Wang, Wang, Wen, Wang, & Tao, 2016; Zhang et al., 2019; Zheng, Chu, Wu, & Gou, 2018), strengthening blended learning teaching so that students can adjust their learning pace to the contents and explanations of the lessons (Lou, Zheng, & Jiang, 2016).
According to Aguayo and Bravo (2017) the methodology used in the SPOCs, “has its central axis in the use of short videos (and video-simulation) for the transmission of knowledge and autonomous activities with automatic correction tests and in some cases of peer-to-peer activities, with the possibility of representing highly complex phenomena” (p.134), which are ideal for transmitting concepts at a higher education level based on adaptive learning and have a series of characteristics that differentiate them from traditional online education courses.
However, incorporating online teaching is not easy (Liyanagunawardena, Adams, & Williams, 2013), and studies are needed to analyse the benefits of SPOCs in order to create appropriate learning environments in which to encourage real, consensual and lasting innovation, which can shape the way in which students and teachers interact, encourage more participation and active roles among the former and more support and guidance among the latter.
As of 2013, MOOCs started to receive attention from the scientific community (Karsenti, 2013). Since then, the number of researches on this training format has been increasing, and nowadays it is a major part of scientific literature (for example, a search in the Journal Citation Report -JCR- on MOOC or “massive open online course” gives 1751 results). However, there hasn’t been that much interest in SPOCs (a search in JCR from 2013 to 2019 on SPOC or “small private online course” gives 138 results). Terms such as COOC, SOOC or NOOC have not been sought because our course does not adjust to their characteristics.
Analysing their evolution, one could say that, after an initial stage when their advantages and disadvantages were identified (Fernández-Ferrer, 2019), MOOCs have become consolidated as a training option. For SPOCs to achieve a similar level of consolidation, more research should be carried out in areas such as the perception that students have of them and their quality, the profile of the participants, the motivations that lead them to study, etc.
Specifically, this paper addresses the following research questions: