Massive Online Courses Research Articles

Needs and coordination mechanism for capacity building by the RNAS.

For the Regional Network on Asian Schistosomiasis and Other Helminth Zoonosis (RNAS+), capacity building with emphasis on modern technology with correspondence to traditional techniques was found to be a priority. This article summarized the actual needs of capacity building among RNAS+ member countries and the working mechanism of capacity building during the last 20 years. The needs with respect to the RNAS+ target diseases are highly correlated with the research priorities, since most problems with regard to the performance of the national disease control programme in the member countries are connected with inadequate capacity in relation to implementation of innovative research, epidemiological investigations, laboratory performance; and sociological investigations. The capacity building arranged through RNAS+ platform includes short training courses, individual training in member institutions, e.g., supervision of Ph.D./Masters students; postdoctoral training; and internship training in institutions of southeast Asia as well as in famous institutions of Europe and the United States. In the future, capacity building will focus on platform design and technical standardization aiming at fostering research capacity in the future. Moreover, new training projects, such as massive online courses (MOOC) will be explored under RNAS+ platform.

¿Qué sabemos de los estudiantes de los MOOC? Un estudio de caso

Este artículo presenta un estudio exploratorio inicial sobre el alumnado que cursó el MOOC titulado “Creación y retoque de imágenes con software libre”. Los cursos en línea masivos y abiertos (MOOC) se han popularizado en pocos años y cada vez son más las personas que los utilizan como medio de aprendizaje para su desarrollo personal y profesional. Su aparición ha venido acompañada de críticas debido a sus propias características, pero hay escasos estudios que preguntan a los estudiantes. A través de un método descriptivo se diseñó un cuestionario para recabar datos sobre las variables personales asociadas al alumnado del MOOC, sus motivaciones y el grado de satisfacción que manifestaron al término del proceso formativo. Los resultados obtenidos permitieron definir el perfil del alumno tipo, que es un hombre con estudios universitarios, de entre 26 y 45 años. Reside en España y trabaja por cuenta ajena. Ha realizado antes actividades formativas online y no es la primera vez que realiza un MOOC. El estudio concluyó que la motivación del alumnado para realizar el MOOC es la necesidad de mejorar su currículum y adquirir nuevos conocimientos. Motivación que se cumplió a tenor de los elevados niveles de satisfacción que manifestaron.

The relationship between system-provided learner control and maintained situational interest within e-learning courses

PurposeDue to the autonomous nature of e-learning, learner control options should be provided to allow students to be more selective of content based on learning needs. Maintaining students’ situational interest should also be a goal in e-learning, as research shows that doing so leads to a greater chance of success. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between learner control and maintained situational interest in hopes of promoting better engagement through content selection based on learning needs.Design/methodology/approachThis study analyzed survey responses from university students (n = 2,173) participating in a variety of massive online courses in South Korea to investigate the correlation between system-provided learner control and maintained situational interest. Additionally, the correlation between learner control and maintained situational interest was examined among demographic subsets including gender, age and grade level.FindingsResults show a positive relationship between learner control and maintained situational interest, as well as a positive relationship between learner control and maintained situational interest among each demographic subset.Originality/valueThese results add to the current literature by promoting a practical way of maintaining students’ situational interest by providing them with the ability to control aspects of their own learning processes.

Learning Clinical Assessment and Interdisciplinary Team Collaboration in Primary Care. MOOC for Healthcare Practitioners and Students.

Novel ways to build sufficient capacity to meet the need for competent healthcare providers in primary care are in strong demand. We developed a massive, open, online course (MOOC) to introduce and promote clinical skills development for healthcare workers (physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, and nurse aids) and students in healthcare education (medical students and master and bachelor students in nursing) focusing on systematic health assessment and strengthening clinical decision making in primary care. Results from the pilot supports that the MOOC was relevant and highly useful for the participants, and has potential to contribute to interdisciplinary collaboration and discussions.

Designing Continuing Professional Development MOOCs to promote the adoption of OER and OEP

There is growing interest in the adoption of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) in a variety of contexts. Continuing professional development (CPD) among practitioners in the effective adoption of OER and OEP is critical in this scenario. Massive open online courses (MOOCs), which also grew as part of the open education movement, provide a feasible means for this purpose. MOOCs are considered a ‘disruptive innovation’ in making free and open learning opportunities accessible to large numbers. Yet, the design of an effective massive online course that is as robust as a great online course with smaller student numbers where good principles of teaching and learning are maintained, is very challenging. Most contemporary MOOCs tend to have a content-driven focus of knowledge transmission, deviating from its original focus of knowledge generation. With the intention of providing learning experiences to promote learner engagement with OER, rather than presenting content about OER, we designed four CPD MOOCs to support the integration of OER and adoption OEP by practitioners based on a scenario-based learning (SBL) approach. This paper presents the analysis and design phases of this process, discussing the challenges faced and innovative strategies adopted in our pursuit to answer the question, “How best to design effective MOOCs on OER and OEP for continuing professional development of practitioners?”

Peer assessment in a project-based engineering course: comparing between on-campus and online learning environments

As the number of participants in online distance learning courses increases, peer assessment is becoming a popular strategy for evaluating open assignments and for breaking the social isolation surrounding distance education. Yet, the quality and characteristics of peer assessment in massive online courses has received little attention. Hence, this study was set to examine peer feedback quality and grading accuracy in a project-based course. The study applied a sequential exploratory mixed methods design. It included 339 participants who studied the same engineering course, but in three different modes: on-campus (n = 77), small private online course (n = 110), and massive open online course (MOOC) (n = 152). Content analysis of feedback comments identified four categories: reinforcement, statement, verification and elaboration, arranged in an ascending scale of cognitive ability. The findings indicated that the MOOC participants provided more feedback comments and volunteered to assess more projects than their counterparts did. However, the on-campus students provided higher quality feedback and their peer grading was better correlated with the grades assigned by the teaching assistants.

Learning Analytics Mobile Application for the Bucharest University of Economic Studies’ Students

IntroductionIn the last years there was an increasingly interest in personal and professional development and acquirement of as many information as possible, especially by development of alternative ways of study like online courses or training sessions for free. It is harder to keep the students interested when they have access to a lot of information interactively presented. So, it was necessary to develop a solution to provide proactive feedback and predict success or failure of a student in order to guide the learning process in such a way that offer the necessary information and maintain the students focused.This methodology called learning analytics implies the measurement and analysis of data about learners aimed at optimizing the process of learning, providing better information and a deep understanding of the field of interest for those involved. [1]Of course, there are many other ways to solve the problems in this area, reforming the learning process and introducing interactive teaching methods being only a small part of what can be done. However, it is very important to know the main cause and the factors that led to that problem in order to solve it, so learning analytics came to show the elements essentially to know and the main directions to the solution, making it the most suitable response. Just as it happens in any methodology, there are some limitations for learning analytics. According to [2], some of the limitations for learning analytics are:* Information belongs to different systems and there is not a unique system;* Education-technology industry has not enough standards and is not cooperating;* The governments don't focus on structures and focus on content;* Researchers don't focus on the processes in an ecosystem and focus on algorithms or teaching;* The target of the tools and reports is not the professional capital and capacity building;* In the relation between governments, school, leadership, teachers, students and the community does not exist enough trust.Taking these into account, there is a necessity to develop a solution to solve the main problems connected to learning process. Because of limitations of learning analytics, especially regarding a unified education system for all the institutions, we have focused only on students from Bucharest University of Economic Studies by developing an app for their needs. This software solution is designed to communicate with SIMUR database and to provide some key functionalities for every student, beyond their year of study or their faculty. Learning analytics means various benefits for all stakeholders so this application provides several reports and predictions to help both students and teachers by improving the learning process.As innovations, the current software solution comes with specific elements in order to sup- port students by providing methods of efficient time planning such as Gantt charts or predictions for specific facts as chances for a scholarship.2Related WorkLearning analytics became an important topic when referring to teaching and learning process, to students' success and to new methods of teaching and how useful they are. Frequently, papers related to learning analytics are focusing on what students will know at the end of the learning process and the elements that have an influence to this aspect, but, in order to understand and to use at the proper level the power of learning analytics a deeper look is needed.An analysis of data in the teaching process was done even before the widespread use of technology in order to obtain a feedback about the work done in the previous period, these calculations being done by hand. After that, learning analytics came to automate the process and to take care of all the data.Learning analytics has contributed very much in growth of effectiveness in the education field. Research has begun to be more intense in the learning analytics community after the appearance of massive online courses, online video-based learning, educational applications and the high availability of all kinds of computing devices. …

Expectativas e frustrações com a oferta de cursos de pós-graduação lato sensu

A educação é um vetor para transformação de realidades na sociedade da informação e, por conta disso, as novas tecnologias vêm trazendo constantes inovações que desafiam modelos tradicionais de ensino. Ao mesmo tempo, a hipercompetitividade mercadológica exige dos profissionais atualização constante e preparação para não somente reagir, mas também transformar a partir de novos cenários. O artigo apresenta, primeiramente, um benchmarking que explora novas tendências educacionais que estão transformando a maneira como as pessoas aprendem, em exemplos como os Massive Online Courses e Cloud School. Em seguida, o artigo investiga as principais expectativas e frustrações dos profissionais que buscam na oferta de cursos de pós-graduação lato sensu um serviço capaz de atender a essas exigências, a partir do emprego da técnica de sessões generativas, proveniente do design thinking, que se enquadra como uma coleta de dados qualitativa a partir de técnicas projetivas. Os resultados mostram, do ponto de vista mercadológico, um gap significativo entre a entrega do serviço e o serviço esperado em cursos de pós-graduação lato sensu, em aspectos como a frustração com as metodologias adotadas, a deficiente incorporação de tecnologias e o distanciamento entre a prática de mercado e a preparação desempenhada em sala de aula.

Integración de un curso MOOC y de un PLN-PLE en un curso presencial sobre fundamentos de la programación

This paper describes the educational experiences in Computer Programming Fundamentals for students of Social Sciences and Humanities that integrates face-to-face classes with elements of virtual education such as participation in a Massive and Open Online Course (MOOC) and the development of personal learning environments and networks (PLE-PLN). This hybridization of face-to-face and virtual components requires proper integration and synchronization. In this sense the MOOC course has been taken as an assistant in the delivery of a practical part of the course and in the classroom the theoretical part is reviewed and exercises and comments are carried out trying to integrate the two educational modalities. This integration is reinforced by the PLN-PLE that each student develops according to the progress achieved in class and in the massive course. PLNs-PLEs as a whole can be considered as cyber-spaces of information exchange and knowledge construction. The central coordination of the activities of both educational modalities is carried out in the classroom through a virtual learning and teaching environment (EVEA) implemented in Moodle. The instructional design that has been followed in classes is supported by the methodology of project-based learning that allows the teacher and the students to have a well-planned vision and objective from the beginning of the school period. The pedagogical framework that supports the presence and virtual elements is given within a context of connectivist learning that seeks to achieve different levels of interaction and cognitive involvement among the participants.

Integración de un curso MOOC y de un PLN-PLE en un curso presencial sobre fundamentos de la programación

This paper describes the educational experiences in Computer Programming Fundamentals for students of Social Sciences and Humanities that integrates face-to-face classes with elements of virtual education such as participation in a Massive and Open Online Course (MOOC) and the development of personal learning environments and networks (PLE-PLN). This hybridization of face-to-face and virtual components requires proper integration and synchronization. In this sense the MOOC course has been taken as an "assistant" in the delivery of a practical part of the course and in the classroom the theoretical part is reviewed and exercises and comments are carried out trying to integrate the two educational modalities. This integration is reinforced by the PLN-PLE that each student develops according to the progress achieved in class and in the massive course. PLNs-PLEs as a whole can be considered as cyber-spaces of information exchange and knowledge construction. The central coordination of the activities of both educational modalities is carried out in the classroom through a virtual learning and teaching environment (EVEA) implemented in Moodle. The instructional design that has been followed in classes is supported by the methodology of project-based learning that allows the teacher and the students to have a well-planned vision and objective from the beginning of the school period. The pedagogical framework that supports the presence and virtual elements is given within a context of connectivist learning that seeks to achieve different levels of interaction and cognitive involvement among the participants.

The problem of designing a digital learning ecosystem for massive online courses (Estonian experience)

Research goals: analyze of the scientists experience of Estonia for the design of digital learning ecosystem for massive online courses and distinguish the main stages and tools for the design of massive online courses. Research objectives: define the basic concepts of the research “Digital learning ecosystem” and “massive online courses” according to the analysis of scientific publications of Estonia scientists; describe the main stages of designing digital learning ecosystem for massive online courses, based on the experience of foreign researchers, including Estonia; define the basic requirements to tools for creating digital learning ecosystem and provide examples of such tools. Object of research: lifelong learning. Subject of research: creation of digital educational ecosystem massive online courses for the development of teachers’ information and communication competency. Research methods used: analysis of scientific publications. Results of the research. The study found that the world’s educational systems become the relevance massive open online courses. These courses are characterized by mass production and distribution of knowledge that takes place in the context of open online education by using information and communication technologies, including cloud computing. For the implementation and effectiveness of these courses is necessary to create a special digital learning environment. Digital learning ecosystem is the result of a combination of network tools such as software, platform and other ICT users and their use by users with competences acquired through continuous use of these services in their daily and professional activities. The main conclusions and recommendations: 1. Massive open online courses are a significant solution for of the individual lifelong learning. Infrastructure such courses should provide maximum flexibility for the main activities of their members, in particular, practice, research, study. 2. The problem of designing massive open online courses can be solved through the creation of such digital learning ecosystem that will form a combination of network tools such as software, platform and other ICT users and their use with competencies acquired through continuous use of these services in daily and professional activities. 3. According to the analysis researches of Estonian scientists the digital learning ecosystem can be created through online tools that will support the creation of electronic educational resources, joint use of electronic educational resources the participants of the educational process, re-use of electronic educational resources the participants of the educational process, review and remixes all four components.

A Strategic Response to MOOCs

This paper asks the question what role should governments play in supporting a strategic response to the Massive Online Course (MOOC) movement? It describes the growth of MOOCs in Europe and reports on the Irish experience as a case study to discuss whether or not a more formal policy response is required to harness the potential of new models of open and online learning to promote wider access to higher education. Ireland is used to illustrate how different institutions have chosen to respond to MOOCs by tracing the history of several first generation initiatives. The response of government agencies and policy-makers is then discussed in the context of a number of high-level policy initiatives. Set against the backdrop of a lack of serious policy engagement in the development of MOOCs, the paper concludes by explaining why Dublin City University (DCU) has chosen to launch Ireland's Open Learniung Academy.

Setting accessibility preferences about learning objects within adaptive elearning systems: User experience and organizational aspects

AbstractHigher and further education providers are facing the challenge of supporting the interaction needs of an increasing number of students who feature accessibility preferences to use both elearning contents and services. In the next future, we can expect that, within adaptive elearning systems, both automatic and manual procedures will interoperate to elicit users' interaction needs for ensuring accessibility. In this paper, we report findings from the user experience with the self‐assessment of interaction needs, as part of a content personalization system, which tackles possible mismatches in the interaction between the user and the learning objects. All stakeholders involved in providing this service along with intended user groups (students with visual, auditory or mobility impairments, and without impairments) participated in the evaluation with over 100 users described in this paper. From the evaluation, results follow that our approach allows students to self‐assess and report adequately their interaction preferences. Furthermore, the paper describes findings of interest and open issues about how massive online courses may address the accessibility needs of an increasing number of elearning users.

Improving Peer Grading Reliability with Graph Mining Techniques

Peer grading is an approach increasingly adopted for assessing students in massive on-line courses, especially for complex assignments where automatic assessment is impossible and the ability of tutors to evaluate and provide feedback at scale is limited. Unfortunately, as students may have different expertise, peer grading often does not deliver accurate results compared to human tutors. In this paper, we describe and compare different methods, based on graph mining techniques, aimed at mitigating this issue by combining peer grades on the basis of the detected expertise of the assessor students. The possibility to improve these results through optimized techniques for assessors’ assignment is also discussed. Experimental results with both synthetic and real data are presented and show better performance of our methods in comparison to other existing approaches.

Automating a Massive Online Course with Cluster Computing

Before massive numbers of students can take online courses for college credit, the challenges of providing tutoring support, answers to student-posed questions, and the control of cheating will need to be addressed. These challenges are taken up here by developing an online course delivery system that runs in a cluster computing environment and is designed to support the delivery of a course having 10K or more students. This delivery system enhances synchronous and asynchronous lectures, provides an online intelligent tutoring system, and detects plagiarism. The free software system is shown to provide fast response times when run on a mid-range cluster computer. The system's automatic plagiarism detection system is shown to be able to detect multiple authors of course assignments when used to analyze the work of actual online students. Use of this system on a large scale would allow most colleges to reduce their faculty size by 20 to 40%.

Book Review of MOOCs: Opportunities, Impacts, and Challenges. Massive Open Online Courses in Colleges and Universities

For several years there has been hype about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in higher education. These MOOCs are changing the landscape of higher education by changing the way online education is viewed. Many unanswered questions exist for faculty, administration, and students about how these MOOCs will impact the current status quo in the American university. Now that the hype is slowing down around the creation of MOOCs, it is the time to analyze the struggles and successes of these massive online courses. As the title points out, the author strives to analyze opportunities, impacts, and challenges for universities now that MOOCs are part of this educational landscape. Each chapter of this book has two goals. To look at things that have gone wrong in MOOCs offered up to this point, and also to look at new and innovative practices that can be incorporated into higher education.

Massive open online courses and russian education system

The analysis platforms massive public online courses (MOOC), identified the advantages and disadvantages MOOC. We propose a way of further development and improvement of MOOC. The role of educational and scientific films in MOOC. A model scheme of the system on-line education with the use of mass open online courses, the implementation of which it is possible to eliminate the inherent disadvantages of massive online courses: a low level of socialization and personal contact students and faculty, low student motivation and excessive fragmentation, fragmented, unsystematic nature of learning within one specialty. The role of educational trajectories in the construction of distance education programs and MOOC in particular. The methods of construction of educational trajectories based on individual characteristics and wishes of the student have been proposed. Attention is given to promising areas: mind-fitness and gamefication. Formulate rules for building online educational systems with MOOC. The basic rules for writing an instructional video and the system as a response to the authors of the course, and for students to be able to improve the video course have been formulated.

Automation of Algorithmic Tasks for Virtual Laboratories Based on Automata Theory

In the work a description of an automata model of standard algorithm for constructing a correct solution of algorithmic tests is given. The described model allows a formal determination of the variant complexity of algorithmic test and serves as a basis for determining the complexity functions, including the collision concept – the situation of uncertainty, when a choice must be made upon fulfilling the task between the alternatives with various priorities. The influence of collisions on the automata model and its inner structure is described. The model and complexity functions are applied for virtual laboratories upon designing the algorithms of constructing variant with a predetermined complexity in real time and algorithms of the estimation procedures of students’ solution with respect to collisions. The results of the work are applied to the development of virtual laboratories, which are used in the practical part of massive online course on graph theory.

FORMATION OF LEGAL COMPETENCE BASED ON LINE INTERACTION OF PARTICIPANTS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

Investigated the pedagogical problem of formation of legal competence through online interaction of participants of the educational process. The author emphasized that one of the pressing problems is the technology gap in education, outdated forms and form of educational information that leads, of course, to reduce the effectiveness of training.Also problematic is the question of correct and full use of information technology opportunities, not just playing classical forms and methods of training in information content.Emphasized that the online interaction between the participants of the educational process is not limited to the concept of gamification, it is wider and is improving the user experience in software products. The framework of legal expertise that incorporates the following components: axiological, cognitive, empirical, humanistic, acmeological. Placed distribution the methods within educational technologies based on modern technological innovations and online interaction between participants of the educational process for the constituent components of legal competence. Thus, formation of axiological component of legal competence presented using blogs, social networks, work with electrons books; forming cognitive component of legal competence submitted using the chat forum; forming component of empirical legal competence - the creation of e-encyclopedias; forming humanistic component - the massive online courses; acmeological forming component - web quest. Emphasized that the use of educational technologies based on modern technological progress contributes to the preparation of individual skills and attitudes formed about the level of scientific progress and its opportunities of ita using.It is concluded that the development, implementation in the educational process of modern technologies and their integration with classical methods, the use of social media services helps motivated learning when the student is able to search for information and interest alone. This makes it possible to increase the quality of training of future professionals capable of adequately represent the Ukrainian education in Europe.Proved that the harmonious use of modern technological equipment in the formation of legal competence in terms of its components, the components will shock not only to rethink teaching methods, but is practically significant for teachers.

Improvement of Educational Process on the Basis of Use of New Information and Pedagogical Technologies

The paper represents modern information technology, which is successfully applied in the pedagogical process of educational institutions. The authors analyze possibilities of modern platforms for massive open online courses, and analyze the functionality of the platforms Moodle and OpenEDX. The platform OpenEDX has opened new opportunities for schools to implement massive online courses, at the same time Moodle is a leader in the field of platforms to work with traditional inner-academic online courses. In addition, the article presents two universal mobile work tools to work with large flows of students, to analyze their effectiveness. The findings allow us to recommend these tools for widespread use in the educational process, so that a lecturer could obtain an instant feedback from listeners. The main conclusion of this work - in the near future massive open online courses may completely change the traditional pedagogical approaches adopted in universities. Global competition for students will form a new order in the global educational system. At the same time, in the near future e-learning will not be able to replace traditional models of education. Teachers, keeping up with the times, will need to find a balance between traditional teaching approaches and possibilities of modern information and educational technology. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s3p410