Document Type : Original Article
Author
Department of International Business Languages, Budapest Business University, Budapest, Hungry
Abstract
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide digital learning opportunities for students
worldwide. Most of the MOOC platforms include a course description which plays a critical role
in informing potential participants about the course (e.g., requirements and syllabus) and in
persuading them to enroll in it. Even though a large number of studies addressed MOOCs, except
for Hajeer’s (2020) pilot study, none of them have addressed the rhetorical function of MOOC
descriptions. Therefore, this study sets out to reveal the rhetorical move structure of MOOC
descriptions. A corpus of 70 MOOC descriptions was compiled from an online MOOC platform
called Udemy.com. The outcomes of the rhetorical move structure analysis made it possible to
propose a Rhetorical Move Structure (RMS) model for the study of MOOC descriptions and
show that MOOC descriptions consist of seven main moves; namely, Presenting Credentials,
Introducing the offer, Highlighting Benefits, Incentivizing, Soliciting Action, Defining the
Audience and Presenting Proof.
Keywords
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