EMBRACE Project – A New Horizon for Culturally Relevant MOOCs

Since their inception, MOOCs have been widely regarded as instruments for democratizing access to higher education by globally providing flexible, affordable, and scalable learning opportunities (Laurillard & Kennedy, 2017). However, academic research has consistently identified significant limitations in their design and implementation.

Frequently-cited challenges are the low completion and retention rates associated with MOOCs. While early MOOCs attracted tens or even hundreds of thousands of enrolments, actual completion rates remained low. For instance, Jordan (2015) reported completion rates ranging from 0.7% to 52.1%, with a median of only 12.6%, and subsequent research confirms that learner engagement typically declines over time (Schulze, 2014; Huang et al., 2023). These findings indicate that large-scale enrolment does not necessarily translate into meaningful participation or learning outcomes.

The EMBRACE project, Education Modernisation Brazil, Colombia, Europe – The New Era of Digital Higher Education Cooperation, is an EU-funded capacity-building initiative that brings together higher education teachers from Brazil, Colombia, Finland, and Portugal to collaboratively design Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in digital pedagogy (HAMK, n.d.). These MOOCs, offered in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, are collaboratively developed with local experts and educators from the partner countries. The multinational, multilingual, and co-creative approach of this initiative reconceptualises MOOCs as participatory and contextually grounded tools for educational transformation, in contrast to the common way of viewing them as top-down instructional products.

Hence, by actively involving educators and institutions from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, EMBRACE marks a significant departure from conventional MOOC production models. This article examines the results from the EMBRACE initiative and reflects on how they make use of this new approach which directly addresses the persistent shortcomings of traditional MOOCs, seeking to revive their original emancipatory potential through inclusive and collaborative course design.

Pedagogical and social explanations why learners drop out

Researchers have identified multiple factors contributing to MOOC attrition, including limited self-regulation and motivation (Dang et al., 2021), insufficient interactivity and social presence, feelings of isolation, inadequate instructional design, and barriers such as time constraints or technological limitations (Romero-Rodríguez et al., 2020; Hone & El Said, 2016).

Collectively, these studies demonstrate that traditional MOOC models, which often rely on video lectures, automated quizzes, and minimal facilitation, frequently do not support the social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions necessary for sustained engagement. Huang et al. (2023) and Gillani et al. (2014) suggest that effective large-scale learning requires more than content delivery because it necessitates creating opportunities designed specifically for interaction, reflection, and community building.

Structural inequalities in massive education models

In addition to pedagogical issues, scholars have challenged the equity claims that have been frequently associated with MOOCs. Although MOOCs are often promoted as universally accessible, in practice they tend to attract learners from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds or regions with strong digital infrastructures (Ganelin & Chuang, 2020). Language barriers exacerbate these inequalities, as most MOOCs are offered exclusively in English, limiting access for non-Anglophone learners.

Furthermore, MOOC content and pedagogical frameworks often reflect Western epistemologies and cultural norms, which can limit their relevance for learners in diverse contexts (Shahini et al., 2019). While recent research suggests adopting more nuanced definitions of “success,” such as considering the learners’ initial intentions rather than only looking at the completion rates (Çelik & Çağıltay, 2024), the overall trend persists. Without intentional and sustained efforts to design for diversity, equity, and contextual relevance, MOOCs risk perpetuating the very inequalities they aim to overcome.

EMBRACE as a deliberate response with contextualisation and collaboration

In response to these challenges, the EMBRACE project positions itself as a targeted solution to both pedagogical and structural critiques of mainstream MOOCs. Its core strategy is based on cross-cultural collaboration, multilingualism, and institutional integration.

By bringing together higher education institution (HEI) educators from Brazil, Colombia, Finland, and Portugal, EMBRACE focuses especially on contextual diversity in course design. Instead of presuming a universal learner profile, the project explicitly recognizes that digital pedagogy should be informed by local educational cultures, institutional constraints, and professional contexts.

Alongside its collaborative design, the EMBRACE project used a cascading strategy to spread learning beyond the first group of participants. Attendees shared knowledge at their institutions through workshops, training, curriculum discussions, and by using new materials in teaching. This ensured that course insights reached entire institutions, not just individuals. The project also promoted lasting institutional change by revising curricula, fostering inclusive and digital teaching, building cross-institutional partnerships, and integrating open educational resources. These actions tied professional development to sustainable, structural innovation.

The cascading model was organised into three stages within the participating HEIs:

1. Pedagogical training of Institutional Developers (IDs) and the collaborative design of the MOOCs.
2. A pilot phase which involved the tutor teachers and included structured feedback collection.
3. The launch and scaling of the MOOCs to both internal and external HEI communities.

The development work was structured in distinct stages, based on the premise that sustainable transformation in higher education depends on the interplay between individual learning, institutional ownership, and the strengthening of internal capacity.

Putting the cascading model into practice through the ADDIEM model

In the first phase of the EMBRACE project, 25 Institutional Developers participated in a blended training programme that was grounded in Content and Language Integrated Learning (Darn, n.d.) and in research-informed principles of digital teaching and learning. In this context, digital pedagogy refers to the deliberate design, facilitation, and evaluation of teaching and learning processes in technology-mediated environments.

Institutional Developers received coaching which integrated pedagogical, digital, and linguistic skills based on the European Commission’s DigCompEdu framework (n.d.). This included workshops, course design, peer feedback, and mentoring on using digital tools in teaching. As a result, the participants redesigned courses and developed ways to build students’ digital skills.

Discussions and surveys conducted as part of the EMBRACE project revealed shared teacher training needs across partner countries, especially in pedagogy, critical digital technology use, and building students’ digital skills. During this phase, only the EMBRACE partners have discussed the survey results. However, the findings will be disseminated in forthcoming joint publications.These findings directly informed the creation of three MOOCs for higher education teachers:

1. Digital and Pedagogical Competences
2. Active Pedagogies with Digital Tools
3. Digital Competence for Professional Development

The planning and design of these three MOOCs was guided by the ADDIEM model (Battestin & Santos, 2022), a framework specifically designed to structure MOOCs and large-scale online learning environments. The model emphasises continuous refinement and evidence-based decision-making across six interconnected phases: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation, and Monitoring. Rather than proceeding in a linear sequence, these phases operate recursively, allowing insights from evaluation and monitoring to inform revisions to earlier stages that remain in progress. This iterative approach supports the development of pedagogically coherent, scalable, and context-sensitive MOOCs that align instructional objectives with learner needs and institutional contexts.

In the second phase of using a cascading model for planning, more than 80 faculty members from consortium HEIs piloted the MOOCs and provided feedback on the observed fulfilment of learning objectives, outcomes from activities, and experienced institutional relevance. Finally, the third phase of planning through a cascading model began in May 2025, and it focuses on the official launch and scaling of the MOOCs to wider internal and external audiences.

Pedagogical design choices and their rationale

The EMBRACE MOOCs employ a learner-centred pedagogical approach that values the participants’ prior experiences and encourages active learning. Activities are intentionally designed to facilitate knowledge exchange among faculty, build a sense of community, and promote collaboration across institutions and countries.

As discussed above, these design choices directly address some of the common critique towards traditional MOOCs, particularly the lack of social interaction and the prevalence of learner isolation (Romero-Rodríguez et al., 2020; Hone & El Said, 2016). By incorporating discussion forums, social spaces, and transparent mechanisms for sharing learning processes, the courses planned as part of the EMBRACE project seeks to enhance social presence and collective meaning-making.

Offering the courses in Portuguese, Spanish, and English is equally significant. This multilingual strategy challenges the dominance of English-only MOOCs, identified by Shahini et al. (2019), and reinforces EMBRACE’s commitment to accessibility, regional relevance, and institutional responsiveness, particularly regarding pedagogical innovation and connections to the professional world.

Engagement, completion and persistent challenges

In terms of engagement and completion, the courses developed through the EMBRACE project align with patterns frequently observed in MOOC research. Between May and December 2025, the three MOOCs discussed above enrolled 1,352 participants from both internal and external communities. Of these, only 574 completed the courses and received certification, highlighting a notable rate of non-completion.

However, EMBRACE’s certification rate of 42.45% is significantly higher than those reported in previous studies (Jordan, 2015; Schulze, 2014; Huang et al., 2023). This suggests that contextualized design, multilingual delivery, and social learning structures may enhance participant persistence, although some challenges persist, as discussed below.

Out of the three courses organised as part of the EMBRACE project, the MOOC Active Pedagogies with Digital Tools attracted the highest number of enrolments. This trend likely indicates a strong demand for practical pedagogical innovation and effective digital methodologies within the consortium, showing how important it is to align the MOOC themes with educators’ immediate professional needs.

Looking ahead with improvements

The collaborative production model of the EMBRACE project involved local experts as co-designers, facilitators, and researchers, with a view on supporting regional adaptation and pedagogical agency. Including the local experts in the co-creation process aimed to ensure that course content and learning approaches fit institutional realities, not external prescriptions.

However, EMBRACE still requires ongoing development. Future efforts should analyse how MOOCs can better support learner persistence and community engagement, for example, in cases where the learner is a higher education teacher. Such further development work should include research on non-completion reasons, such as motivation and institutional or workload constraints. Examining these factors can lead to further insights and help with more effective course design to enable the continuous learning of higher education teachers.

Future work should also embed MOOCs in institutional training for higher education teachers. This means dedicating resources for professional development, for example, allocating time during work hours for MOOC participation. Through such developments – by aligning participation with recognition, workload, and development policies – it is possible to improve engagement, sustainability, and the long-term impact of the EMBRACE project.

Education for all, shaped by all

More broadly, the project offers a model for equitable knowledge production in digital education, ensuring that knowledge is actively shaped through cross-cultural dialogue rather than simply disseminated globally.  In this sense, the EMBRACE project demonstrates that MOOCs do not have to remain only artefacts of a global, English-speaking population. Instead, they can serve as instruments for inclusive, contextually grounded, and collaborative educational development. For higher education in Latin America, Europe, and beyond, this approach can bring MOOCs closer to their original promise: education for all, shaped by all.

This manuscript benefited from the use of generative AI tools (ChatGPT, DeepL, Grammarly, ScholarGPT) for grammar correction, organization of prose, and stylistic refinement. The authors carefully evaluated and edited all suggested text and take full responsibility for the final content.

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