Making MOOCs collaboratively: working effectively with stakeholders

The University of Leeds is one of the founding partners of the FutureLearn Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform. During 2014, the University developed six MOOCs for the Futurelearn platform, from a wide range of academic disciplines and using a variety of instructional design and content approaches. Whilst there are common threads in the development process for every course, each MOOC has its own unique drivers and range of interested parties and stakeholders. This paper focusses on the challenges and rewards of developing MOOCs with individual academics, teams of academics and external stakeholders from the perspectives of the Digital Learning Team at Leeds. It is hoped that our experiences will highlight, through example, some of the challenges we have overcome and will help other MOOC developers who are faced with a growing portfolio and a diverse stakeholder base.