Abstract
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is an innovative method in modern education, especially important for autonomous study and the sharing of global excellent education resources. However, it is not easy to implement the teaching process according to the specific characters of students by MOOCs because the number of participants is huge and the teacher cannot identify the characters of students through a face to face interaction. As a new subject combined with different areas, such as economics, sociology, environment, and even engineering, the education of sustainability-related courses requires elaborate consideration of individualized teaching for students from diverse backgrounds and with different learning styles. Although the major MOOC platforms or learning management systems (LMSs) have tried lots of efforts in the design of course system and the contents of the courses for sustainability education, the achievements are still unsatisfied, at least the issue of how to effectively take into account the individual characteristics of participants remains unsolved. A hybrid Neural Network (NN) model is proposed in this paper which integrates a Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and with a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) based Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) in an effort to detect individual learning style dynamically. The model was trained by learners’ behavior data and applied to predicting their learning styles. With identified learning style for each learner, the power of MOOC platform can be greatly enhanced by being able to offer the capabilities of recommending specific learning path and the relevant contents individually according to their characters. The efficiency of learning can thus be significantly improved. The proposed model was applied to the online study of sustainability-related course based on a MOOC platform with more than 9,400,000 learners. The results revealed that the learners could effectively increase their learning efficiency and quality for the courses when the learning styles are identified, and proper recommendations are made by using our method.
Highlights
Due to the increasing impact of population growth, environmental degradation, and resource depletion, sustainable development has gradually become a worldwide focus and received great concerns from most countries
The importance of this platform lies in promoting and integrating the global education resources, but offers the equal chances to all learners to access the most excellent subjects and instructors. Various schemes and their technical supports have been designed since the idea of open education was concerned, among which the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), emerging in 2012, has attracted wide attention and been adopted by a lot of educational organizations [2]
MOOCs start a new era of open education which makes lifelong learning and widely sharing of high-quality education resources being feasible and acceptable via the power of the internet
Summary
Due to the increasing impact of population growth, environmental degradation, and resource depletion, sustainable development has gradually become a worldwide focus and received great concerns from most countries. The open education service platform equipped with massive learning resources, personalized learning plan and instructions, and efficient measurement and evaluation technologies, is one of the most critical strategic elements for effective learning, especially in higher education and continuous education The importance of this platform lies in promoting and integrating the global education resources, but offers the equal chances to all learners to access the most excellent subjects and instructors. Various schemes and their technical supports have been designed since the idea of open education was concerned, among which the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), emerging in 2012, has attracted wide attention and been adopted by a lot of educational organizations [2]. The fast growth of participants and courses shows that MOOC has gradually become an essential component of the modern education system which can effectively facilitate the people to accept high-class education in a more efficient and equitable manner
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