Using a Programming MOOC as an Admission Mechanism for CS

Abstract

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) can be beneficial to universities in different ways. One use case of MOOC is to implement it in admission procedures. Our university offers an opportunity to study Computer Science (CS) to those students who have previous experience in programming based on the MOOC “Introduction to Programming” organized by the university. In this paper, we investigate differences in study outcomes between students who applied for a study right using this programming MOOC and students who used the traditional application method. The results demonstrate that, overall, MOOC and non-MOOC students’ learning outcomes do not differ, but MOOC students’ performance in mathematics is lower than that of non-MOOC students. However, we argue that using a programming MOOC as an admission mechanism for the CS curriculum is beneficial for the university.