We are running the corpus MOOC again – and we are really looking forward to it. In the first run of the course we taught social scientists and other researchers from across the globe about how to use corpus linguistics to study language. We looked at a range of topics of contemporary social relevance in doing so – including how we talk about disability and how newspapers write about refugees. We also looked at key areas where corpus linguistics has contributed greatly, notably the areas of dictionary construction and language teaching.
The result, I must say, exceeded our expectations – which were pretty high. People really seemed to like the course and get a lot from it. Even though the approach was entirely new to most students, a very large number worked through all eight weeks of the course. The feedback on our training has been exceptionally strong – a look at the #corpusMOOC hashtag on Twitter will give a good idea of the overwhelmingly positive response to that course. The following quote, from a Chinese notice board on which our MOOC was discussed, gives a strong sense of how the course succeeded both in training students and in showing them that corpora have a key role to play in exploring social science questions (thanks to Richard Xiao for the translation):
“CorpusMOOC, with its assembly of the best corpus linguists and rich content, cannot be praised enough … The greatest benefit for me has been that the course has widened my vision: corpus linguistics and the applications of corpus technologies have gone far beyond what I had imagined – more resembling big data in the field of social science research instead of being confined to linguistics… I think the significance of this course lies not merely in teaching a large number of corpus techniques but more, rather, in introducing corpora and demonstrating what corpora can be used for, thus making us aware of them and helping us understand their importance … the corpus-based approach is the unavoidable approach to language in future.”
The first run of the MOOC had a great impact – the course was taken mainly by women (70.44% of students), and drew participants from all continents and a wide range of countries – including places as far flung as the British Antarctic Territory! The areas in which course participants were working and researching were heavily oriented to the social sciences, with students drawn from areas such as business consulting and management, health and social care and media and publishing. The greatest contribution of the course, however, seems to have come from providing training to teachers/lecturers in the UK and beyond. Given that the great majority of students were taking the course for career development (78.59%), the course was likely not only to have had a strong effect on this group but also, by extension, on the students who are exposed to the ideas in the course by the teachers/lecturers who took it.
Having read this, you can probably understand why we were keen to run the course again. Through it we have been able to get a good understanding of corpus linguistics across to thousands of people around the globe. We have made a few changes to the course based on the feedback we received – all designed to make a good course better! This includes new lectures (for example on the language used in cancer treatment) and new in conversation pieces with corpus linguists (such as Douglas Biber).
If this run of the course proves as popular as the first, which we think it should, we plan to run the course every September. Who knows when we will stop!
For a limited time, registration is still open. Book your place on ‘Corpus linguistics: method, analysis, interpretation’ now.