Massive Open Online Course Content Research Articles

Evaluative study of a MOOC on knowledge translation in five French-speaking countries.

Over the past few years, the RENARD research team has observed a sharp increase in the need for knowledge translation (KT) training. Given the high demand, it has been nearly impossible for the team to provide training entirely in person, and so a massive open online course (MOOC) was developed. Its aim is to promote the use and appropriation of the KT process by practitioners, decision-makers, and others in the public sphere. The goal of this study was to evaluate the MOOC by collecting users' opinions, reactions, appropriation, and practice changes. A qualitative research design was used. Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews (n = 16) with professionals from Canada, France, and three West African countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal) who had taken the MOOC. All interviews were subjected to thematic content analysis. The MOOC content was generally appreciated and reused by the respondents. The results revealed one main motive for completing the course: the immediate opportunity to apply their learning in their practice environments. However, most respondents deplored the lack of interaction among learners and expressed the need for coaching with an instructor to deepen the topics covered during the course. The results also revealed connection and accessibility issues linked to the Internet network and unstable access to electricity in West African countries. The study highlights the potential of MOOCs for the acquisition of knowledge and competencies by KT professionals. Several recommendations and avenues of exploration were formulated to optimize and improve future designs of MOOCs on KT.

Physicians’ adoption of massive open online courses content in the workplace: An investigation on the training transfer process through the Theory of Planned Behavior

While Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are recognized as helpful learning tools for professional development in healthcare organizations, they often result in a low transfer of knowledge and skills into participants' workplaces. Regarding this issue, little research has explored the factors shaping physicians’ intention to transfer learning acquired through these courses to their job. In light of the above, the present study adopted an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to address the low transfer rate in such a professional population by investigating the potential antecedents of transfer intention among 217 Italian physicians. They completed an online questionnaire measuring TPB traditional constructs (i.e., intention to transfer MOOCs content to the workplace, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control), variables related to the MOOCs format, professionalism, and organizational learning culture. Findings showed that transfer intention was positively affected by attitude and perceived behavioral control; conversely, no significant association between subjective norms and intention emerged. Furthermore, the proximal antecedents of intention were affected by organizational learning culture. Lastly, attitude toward transfer was positively associated with MOOCs perceived usefulness, which mediated the path between MOOCs reputation and attitude. Study limitations and implications for future research and training programs development in the contest of professional continuing education are discussed.

Validity of a Massive Open Online Course on Career Planning

Adolescents must possess essential career planning skills to achieve career resilience and adaptability, especially during times of economic uncertainty. To develop these abilities effectively, appropriate training materials are crucial. This study focuses on the development and validation of a career planning training material through a massive open online course (MOOC) platform, supporting the resilience and career adaptability of adolescents. Employing a Research and Development (R&D) design with the ADDIE model (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation), the study produced MOOC content, including handouts, PowerPoint presentations, infographics, videos, motion graphics, and podcasts. Based on the concepts of resilience and career adaptability in adolescents, the material was divided into two parts: one for teachers and one for students. Expert validation of the MOOC product rated it as good to excellent. The validated product contributes by providing strategies and career planning training material through MOOC, offering novel findings that significantly benefit the development of adolescents' resilience and career adaptability.

EXPLORING THE ADVANCEMENTS IN MOOC STUDIES: A 2008-2022 OVERVIEW

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), play a crucial role in advancing the development of global e-education. This form of education, delivered via the internet, aims to reach diverse learners worldwide, regardless of their reasons for learning, backgrounds, abilities, or limitations. However, currently, the accessibility of MOOC platforms and content still remains a challenge, as they are not adequately available to all students. to effectively understand the MOOC phenomenon, it is important to uncover and visualize the MOOC research trends and patterns. This paper presents a complete overview of MOOC research from 2008 to 2022, including several studies led in different years. The study also offers an all-about investigation of the MOOC system, its functions, and its components.

Development and evaluation of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for healthcare professionals on malnutrition in older adults

BackgroundEducation about malnutrition in older adults is often lacking in the curricula of healthcare professionals. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are an innovative form of education that can potentially improve the knowledge of healthcare professionals. Objectives(1) to describe the development of a MOOC on malnutrition in older adults and (2) to evaluate the MOOC on the basis of knowledge gained. DesignThe MOOC was developed by following a structured approach. For the evaluation of the MOOC, a cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted. ParticipantsOverall, 1288 nurses, dietitians, medical doctors and other healthcare professionals participated in the evaluation study. MethodsAfter performing a comprehensive literature review, two dietitians specialised in geriatrics developed a summary of potentially important content of the MOOC. Nine European malnutrition experts from different professional areas were then asked to contribute their expertise. The specific MOOC content was developed based on the recent literature and evidence-based guidelines. For the evaluation of the MOOC, a questionnaire with 41 questions was developed. Results were analysed using descriptive statistics and chi-square tests. ResultsThe final MOOC consists of five modules with 15 learning videos and supplementary material. The percentage of persons with good malnutrition knowledge increased from 76.1 % to 89.9 % (p < 0.001), while the percentage of persons with fair or little malnutrition knowledge decreased (p < 0.001). The course significantly improved the participants' knowledge of specific malnutrition topics, namely, methods and instruments to determine the nutritional status of older people, interventions to improve oral intake, medical nutrition and multidisciplinary cooperation (p < 0.001). Overall, 91.5 % of the participants rated the quality of the course as very good or good. ConclusionMOOCs may be an effective tool that can be used to improve knowledge in healthcare professionals. This provides new opportunities for successful multidisciplinary malnutrition management in clinical practice.

Massive open online course adoption amongst newly graduated health care providers.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are flexible offerings that deliver content to a large audience in a virtual platform. MOOCs are increasingly accessed by health professionals to support their own professional development. Despite the agreed usefulness of MOOCs, the rates of adoption are still extremely low. This study sought to understand the personal and social factors associated with MOOC adoption. Participants were newly graduated occupational therapists who registered for a leadership skills development MOOC. Qualitative interviews were conducted to understand unique perspectives of participants who did and did not complete the MOOC. Data were analyzed using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) framework. Participants reported they found the MOOC content beneficial in providing a foundational framework on which to develop their leadership skills. Even though MOOC content was organized into multiple small components, participants shared that they would engage with the material once a week for up to two hours. Participants reported a high level of comfort accessing the technology to complete the MOOC, however they reported that they would have preferred more interactive or synchronous learning opportunities. MOOCs are an efficient way to offer a wide variety of educational offerings to health professionals. Despite their asynchronous nature, MOOC developers should consider maximizing opportunities for learner interaction and content application learning opportunities within MOOCs to increase their overall adoption.

Sentiment Analysis of Students' Feedback in MOOCs: A Systematic Literature Review.

In recent years, sentiment analysis (SA) has gained popularity among researchers in various domains, including the education domain. Particularly, sentiment analysis can be applied to review the course comments in massive open online courses (MOOCs), which could enable instructors to easily evaluate their courses. This article is a systematic literature review on the use of sentiment analysis for evaluating students’ feedback in MOOCs, exploring works published between January 1, 2015, and March 4, 2021. To the best of our knowledge, this systematic review is the first of its kind. We have applied a stepwise PRISMA framework to guide our search process, by searching for studies in six electronic research databases (ACM, IEEE, ScienceDirect, Springer, Scopus, and Web of Science). Our review identified 40 relevant articles out of 440 that were initially found at the first stage. From the reviewed literature, we found that the research has revolved around six areas: MOOC content evaluation, feedback contradiction detection, SA effectiveness, SA through social network posts, understanding course performance and dropouts, and MOOC design model evaluation. In the end, some recommendations are provided and areas for future research directions are identified.

Content presentation techniques for learning experience enhancement in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a new and innovative technique of disseminating knowledge to millions of people all over the world. Despite being a fantastic learning tool with a global reach, MOOCs have their own set of restrictions, resulting in an extraordinarily low course completion rate. Personalization and engagement are lacking in traditional material presentation strategies. Hence, MOOCs must adopt advanced learning approaches in order to create a more engaging experience for the learners. This study introduces Augmented MOOC (A-MOOC), an enriched learning MOOC environment. A-MOOC explores Active Learning, Augmented Reality, and Gamification techiques, and show how these strategies can be combined with MOOC content in both online and offline modes. It demonstrates the favourable influence of creating interactive and more engaging content in the current learning setting to increase learners’ motivation to complete a MOOC.

Designing a Social Exploration MOOC - Visual Literacies: Exploring Educational Practices and Technologies

Social exploration is the key to how ideas spread through networks (Pentland, 2014). When people talk with others outside their immediate group, they can bring fresh ideas into the group leading to improved outcomes. So, to improve impact on educational practice we should increase communications within the professional community as well as increase the knowledge and competences of individual professionals. To improve social exploration opportunities for educators, we have developed a massive open online course (MOOC) with a technology-enhanced learning perspective on Visual Literacies. The two main challenges were to: gather content suitable for a multi-disciplinary audience; and design a MOOC that supports social exploration. The content was derived from analysis of interviews with 21 experienced educators about their use of visuals in education and communication. The educators came from a wide variety of disciplines and educational settings thereby offering multi-disciplinary case studies. The design of the ‘social exploration MOOC’ is based on Networked Learning theory, a pedagogical approach that emphasises openness, democratic relationships between teachers and learners, and support for diversity and inclusivity of participants. Participants can explore the MOOC content, share ideas and reflect on their own practice in a learning community that emphasizes sharing and discussion. Issues of engagement, drop-out, completion and retention rates are discussed in this descriptive case study using learning analytics and feedback from participants on their experience. The design of the MOOC promoted strong engagement and retention rates with the live webinar, in particular, enhancing participation, discussion and a feeling of community amongst participants.

A Semantic Recommendation System for Learning Personalization in Massive Open Online Courses

&lt;p class="0abstract"&gt;For an innovation producing education, MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platforms offer a plethora of learning resources and pedagogical activities to support the university’s 4.0 new era and the lifelong learning movement. Nevertheless, the rapid advances in learning technologies imply the need for personalized guidance for learners and adapted learning materials. In this paper we seek to enhance the MOOC learner experience by providing a semantic recommender system for the diversity and abundance of MOOCs available for learners. Firstly, the paper analyses the state of the art of the semantic recommendation approach in a distance learning context. Then it describes the proposed MOOC recommendation system that uses the ontological representation of the learner model and MOOCs content to make its intelligent suggestions. Finally, we explore the development phases of the semantic MOOC recommendation system to define the implications for the progress of our research.&lt;/p&gt;

The impact of visual posts on creative thinking and knowledge building in an online community of educators

This paper presents data from an Erasmus + project entitled Digital Leaders Across Boundaries (DLAB) to suggest ways learning is facilitated by engagement with collaborative online tools, and specifically through the use of creative visual posts. The DLAB project that informs this paper invited academics, teachers and students from four European countries to work together on a three-year project. The first year, which the data from this article refers to, focused on the theme of Technology Outdoors and resulted in three intellectual outputs, a four-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), a creative online community and a project website. This paper focuses on the online community, and demonstrates how the visual nature of the online community posts aided creative thinking and provided a hook for community members to adapt, develop and repurpose ideas. Using a visual ethnographic approach, the content of creative visual posts in the online community were tracked and coded to elicit how connections spread. This analytic process revealed observable ways in which ideas were developed and disseminated online. The paper findings exemplify, by exposing idea mapping, how the most effective posts allowed ideas to evolve by drawing relationships between creative outputs, participant thinking, learning cultures and practice. Sharing ideas facilitated creative thinking and collective knowledge building in the online community as the participants’ posts amplified the ideas seeded in the original MOOC content. The findings suggest that it would be beneficial for learning designers and educators to understand these processes in social online communities so as to nurture creativity within them.

Quality Model for Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Web Content

With the philosophy of providing open education to all, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), which introduced in 2006, has been through its first decade. Despite its popularity and worldwide acceptance, MOOC faces a few criticisms about the weaknesses of its content such as lack of clarity, unstructured, poor design and lack of fundamental initial requirements. This caused by the paucity of understanding among content providers about the facet of qualities contributes to the content. There are some previous efforts to improve the quality of MOOCs, but none focused on the content from the content providers or experts' view. As a result, most of the vital internal quality factors are neglected. Besides, the operational definition for the MOOC content quality factors is still missing or not well-defined. Therefore, this research proposes a quality model for MOOC web content as a content provider’s reference to develop quality MOOC content. In order to achieve that, three basic elements were implemented which is the content’s provider perspective, MOOC content quality dimensions and MOOC content quality factors. Development of MOOC content quality dimension is based on 7C’s model and PDCA for continuity, while the determination of factors involves the process like a revision of the possible factors from literature, factors combination and categorization. This proposed hierarchical model tends to make MOOC's learning more optimistic and beneficial to the learners through the development of high-quality content.

A reception study of machine translated subtitles for MOOCs

ABSTRACTAs access has grown to online courses in the form of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), the language barrier has become an important issue for users worldwide. Machine translation (MT) appears to offer an alternative or complementary solution to existing forms of MOOC translation. Very little attention has been paid, however, to the use and utility of MT for MOOC content. The main goal of this research is to test the impact machine-translated subtitles have on Chinese viewers’ reception of MOOC content. We are interested in whether there is any difference between viewers’ reception of raw machine-translated subtitles as opposed to fully post-edited machine-translated (PEMT) subtitles and human-translated (HT) subtitles. Based on an eye-tracking experiment conducted at two Chinese universities and survey methods, we show that participants who were offered full PEMT subtitles scored better overall on our reception metrics than those who were offered raw MT subtitles. HT subtitles, on the other hand, did not necessarily lead to better reception as expected; in contrast, the participants who were offered HT subtitles performed the worst in some of our reception metrics.

Twelve tips for integrating massive open online course content into classroom teaching

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a novel and emerging mode of online learning. They offer the advantages of online learning and provide content including short video lectures, digital readings, interactive assignments, discussion fora, and quizzes. Besides stand-alone use, universities are also trying to integrate MOOC content into the regular curriculum creating blended learning programs. In this 12 tips article, we aim to provide guidelines for readers to integrate MOOC content from their own or from other institutions into regular classroom teaching based on the literature and our own experiences. We provide advice on how to select the right content, how to assess its quality and usefulness, and how to actually create a blend within your existing course.

Evaluating Instructional Design Quality of Iranian MOOCs Based on Merrill’s Principles of Instruction and Margaryan’s Principles

A great deal of attention has been paid to the experiences of learners and stakeholders in assessing the quality of massive open online courses (MOOCs), while participants' experiences in MOOCs and stakeholders are highly important factors in this process. Therefore, this study aims at evaluating instructional design quality of MOOCs based on Merrill’s first instructional principles and Margaryan principles. For this study, a method of evaluation research was used based on the expert standpoints. Statistical population consisted of 20 internally-developed platforms of MOOCs, which 40 courses (2 courses from each platform) were selected by using simple random sampling method. This study was carried out from February to July 2018. To do so, a check list of 28 questions was designed by researchers based on the prescriptive strategies of Merrill's first instructional principles (problem-oriented, activation, presentation, application, integration) and Margaryan’s principles (collective knowledge, collaboration, distinction, authentic sources and feedback). Accordingly, instructional quality evaluation of MOOCs courses was carried out by the educational technology specialists. Descriptive and inferential findings revealed that instructional design quality of MOOCs based on the points of specialists is under-evaluated and does not address Merrill’s first instructional principles as well as the ones of Margaryan. It is suggested that in addition to paying attention to the elements of the MOOCs platform and its facilities, the Merrill's and Margaryan’s principles should be used in designing the MOOCs content.

Small Groups in a Social Learning MOOC (slMOOC): Strategies for Fostering Learning and Knowledge Creation

Social support and face-to-face learning may enhance outcomes for students who face barriers in accessing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In this study, we investigated how self-identified volunteer leaders guide and foster interactions among small groups of students who face technical and conceptual barriers in accessing MOOC content. Several months prior to the start of the MOOC (Environmental Education: Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Addressing Wicked Problems), we asked for volunteers among the registered students to lead groups for participants whose primary language was other than English and where limited Internet access, culture, or other barriers curtailed access to and understanding of course materials and pedagogy. Based on a survey and open-ended interviews (n=10), we found that group leaders were instrumental in overcoming barriers related to language, content, cultural ways of learning, access, and time. They also fostered cooperative learning strategies, which helped students acquire course content, and encouraged collaborative group projects leading to their groups adopting some features of online knowledge communities. We propose the term social learning MOOC (slMOOC) to capture a growing trend of incorporating collaborative learning strategies in xMOOCs.

Analysing successful massive open online courses using the community of inquiry model as perceived by students

AbstractThis research examines the characteristics that contributed to the success of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in the fields of software, sciences, and management using data mining and semantic analysis together with content analysis. A total of 3,460 reviews regarding 5 different MOOCs that received a 5/5 grade were extracted from the CourseTalk website and analysed according to the community of inquiry model. It was found that, as well as in academic online courses, the characteristics that contributed to MOOCs' success were distributed between all 3 presence elements according to the community of inquiry model: teaching (36%), social (23%), and cognitive (36%; and technological [5%]). This is contrary to the perception that MOOCs mostly contain teaching presence elements. The four leading characteristics were teacher, exercise, atmosphere, and workload. Cluster analysis resulted in 5 types of students with similar presence element preferences. This shows that successful MOOCs enable students with different preferences to consume content and activities according to their individual preferences. These findings could be the base of future research on the subject of adapting MOOC activities and content to students' varied preferences, as well as further understanding the characteristics that contribute to successful MOOCs or other fully online courses.

A Framework for MOOC Content Generation

Abstract – Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is becoming increasingly popular. There are different forms of MOOC and many online courses created by various institutions around the world. The traditional methods of generating high quality MOOC content tend to be timeconsuming and are not easy for the lecturers to engage in natural interaction with the content. This paper presents a framework and proposes the use of the Chroma-Keying technique that would enable the lecturers to see the outcome in real-time and the use of simple hand gestures to control changing of slides.&#x0D;

Collaborative MOOC Content Design and Automatic Assessment Based on ODALA Approach

Since the fall of 2011, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) phenomenon is still being qualified as the most attractive and discussed subject by educational communities and public. In the literature, there are many researches about this recent e-learning generation that vary as the goals vary from raising pedagogical issues to economics ones. Several case studies state that MOOCs are challenging the use of technologies to enhance learning; others think that MOOCs can induce to disruptive in education and educational institutions. In this paper, we propose an instructional design for a kind of MOOC platforms where mainly the use of disciplines specifications and automated evaluation of MOOC learners are possible to settle the source of these problems. Our proposition is based on ODALA (Ontology-Driven Auto-evaluation Learning Approach) principles and on the disciplines' knowledge capitalization using a meta-model represented as domain ontology for disciplines modeling inspired by this approach.

Dropping Out or Dropping In? A Connectivist Approach to Understanding Participants’ Strategies in an e-Learning MOOC Pilot

Targeting faculties and external mentors in the teacher-training unit, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway opened up a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) pilot on digital learning in the fall of 2014. A main objective was to encourage these to use digital media more actively and hence, also to become role models for their own students’ future digital practice. However, research has shown that a main concern with MOOC programs is attrition. In line with those findings, and according to the course platform data, none of the MOOC participants completed the course material. As the course progressed, less and less pages were opened and obligatory assignments were only rarely submitted. The participants may thus be described as dropouts. Five of these participants were then interviewed about their MOOC experiences and activities. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed according to Grounded theory procedures. A general finding was that the informants would in fact put some of the material and ideas from the MOOC to use. Even if they dropped out, this indicates a gain from the course. In fact, some of the material that was introduced significantly changed these informants’ digital practices when they tested out new ideas in their own teaching. Frame-factors, such as lack of financial compensation or a nonstop flow of competing tasks, however, led the informants to down-prioritize the formal demands in the MOOC pilot. The informants selectively picked the material that suited their own purpose and therefore qualified as “drop-ins” rather than “drop-outs”. Rather than quitters who could not keep up with the pace in the MOOC we met media literate participants who remixed and redefined the MOOC content into a Web 2.0 resource and a stepping stone for self-directed online learning.