Context Of Massive Open Online Courses Research Articles

Digital twins in MOOCs: exploring ways to enhance interactivity

PurposeThe purpose of this conceptual paper is to inform the administrators, designers, trainers and scholars, and encourage conversations on the role of digital twin technologies in enhancing interactivity in the context of massive open online courses (MOOCs).Design/methodology/approachDrawing on a review of literature, this article highlights the concept of digital twins and discusses its potential applications on enhancing interactivity in MOOCs.FindingsFindings of this conceptual paper highlights the significance of the emerging industry 4.0 technologies such as digital twins, in enhancing interactivity in a MOOC environment. Implementation of modern technologies such as digital twins and AI in MOOCs could guarantee access to comprehensive and equitable quality education and could expand the scope of lifelong learning for everyone.Practical implicationsThis conceptual paper is particularly relevant to the post-pandemic context where organizations and educational institutions have both adopted a hybrid mode of learning. Inclusion of the interactive elements may provide better insights to the platform administrators, designers, trainers and to enhance levels of learner engagement in MOOC environments. Moreover, effective utilization of these technology driven learning models in future may have larger impacts in catering to meet the sustainable development goal (SDG-4) towards provision of quality education.Originality/valueWhile past studies focused more on the conceptualization of human-to-human interactivity, the facets of human-to-platform interactivity remained largely unexplored. To our understanding, this paper is one of the initial attempts to conceptually highlight the applications of digital-twin technology to enhance human to platform interactivity in a MOOC context.

What drives art education massive open online courses continuance intention? Exploring determinants from value–software–hardware–design perspective

ABSTRACT Massive open online courses (MOOC) have become important in the learning process and have been adopted in higher education, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, few studies investigated MOOC continuance intention (CI) for arts disciplines. Thus, an integrated framework was proposed based on the expectation–confirmation model (ECM) and value–software–hardware–design system perception framework, focusing on the exploration of the potential factors of MOOC CI for art education taking music education as the context. A questionnaire-type survey was used, and responses from university students were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that perceived music familiarity (PMF), perceived emotional value (PEV), and perceived user interface design (PUID) positively influence music MOOC CI. In addition, expectation–confirmation factors (i.e. confirmation, perceived usefulness of individual learning, and satisfaction) not only considerably affect CI but also play partially mediating roles between music MOOC CI and perception factors (i.e. PMF, PEV, and PUID). Accordingly, the ECM is extended in the music MOOC context. Moreover, the results reveal that personality traits fail to moderate CI, which denotes no significant difference across groups. The findings present several implications for researchers and practitioners in the MOOC, music and arts education, and learning system design in the context of higher education.

FAQ chatbot and inclusive learning in massive open online courses

Recognizing the research gap involving the lack of equity considerations in new technology implementation, this study compares students' learning experiences when using an FAQ chatbot with using an FAQ webpage. We trained a natural language processing–based chatbot utilizing content from an FAQ webpage and deployed it in two journalism massive open online courses (MOOCs) with 46 students and compared their experiences with 74 students' experiences with the FAQ webpage as a baseline. There were equal numbers of male and female students, their ages ranged from 18 to 65+, and they hailed from 45 unique countries. Considering the importance of supporting students with an inclusive Q&A experience before implementing any new technology into real-world operation, this study investigates students' disparate Q&A experiences by measuring their intention to use the interface as well as perceived Q&A service quality, enjoyment, and barriers utilizing a between-subjects online experiment. The results indicate that the students preferred an FAQ webpage over an FAQ chatbot, and the chatbot users experienced a higher magnitude of barriers compared to the webpage users. For the chatbot users, we found that region and native language factors influenced their Q&A experiences significantly. We discussed the meaning of the students’ disparate experiences from multiple perspectives—namely, human-computer interaction, MOOC context, and technologies as social practice aspects. Lastly, we determined how feasible it is to provide an inclusive learning experience for the MOOC population with the FAQ chatbot, based on the contextualized meaning of MOOC inclusiveness in current literature. This study suggests multi-faceted aspects to consider when adopting new technologies in MOOCs to provide an inclusive learning experience, and underscores the need for more active research in chatbot use to serve diverse student needs in MOOCs.

Recommenders in improving students’ engagement in large scale open learning

Technology Enhanced Learning recommender systems (TEL RS) have become an attractive research area in the recent decade as they promote users’ selection process within limited time in educational domain. Actually, they have the ability to support e-learning through personalization of the learning process whether for teachers’ requirements or for individual students’ needs. Conventional recommender systems have proposed various methods focusing on recommendations to individual learners. Recently, due to significant increase in students’ number, especially in the field of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and regarding their diversity, the need of offering adaptation is becoming more important to help improve learning quality. For that reason, several recommender systems have been developed to adapt learning to personal students’ needs in MOOC context. This paper reports and discuss recommendations in large scale open learning for improving students’ engagement. We present an analysis and a comparison between TEL RS in the context of MOOCs for different purposes. Then, we present our proposed recommender system of learning activities in accordance with a set of comparison criteria.

Understanding individuals' engagement and continuance intention of MOOCs: the effect of interactivity and the role of gender

PurposeThis study aims to examine how three perceived interactivity attributes of massive open online courses (MOOCs), namely, perceived active control, perceived synchronicity and perceived two-way communication, impact individuals' engagement and continuance intention of MOOCs through the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) lens and how that effect differs between male and female users.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon S-O-R as an overarching theoretical framework, this study conducted an empirical study in China and collected 294 valid questionnaires from online learners. Structural equation modeling approach was used to examine the proposed research model.FindingsEmpirical results suggest that perceived active control, perceived synchronicity and perceived two-way communication are significant stimuli of individuals' continuance intention of MOOCs, and the influences of perceived active control and perceived synchronicity are partially or fully mediated by engagement on the platform. Multi-group analysis results further indicate that perceived synchronicity has a stronger influence on engagement on the platform for males, while perceived active control and perceived two-way communication are more salient in stimulating engagement on the platform for females.Practical implicationsResearch findings from the present study can serve as the foundation to guide MOOCs’ administrators to respond to the needs of participants through interactivity designed into the platform and shed light on possible key solutions of high dropout rates in MOOCs.Originality/valueThis study uncovers the mediating mechanism of affective engagement between interactivity and continuance intention in the emerging context of the latest online learning platform MOOCs and reveals the behavioral differences between females and males regarding their affective reactions to the three interactivity attributes.

Are you ready? Self-determined learning readiness of language MOOC learners

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) made the promise of offering unrestrictive and unselective educational opportunities to learners worldwide. However, the specific learning environment of the MOOC requires high autonomy and flexibility in learning. MOOC learners are extremely diverse in terms of their age, qualifications, background and in the ability of self-regulating their learning. In this study, we aimed at having a better understanding of learners’ readiness for self-determined learning in a Language MOOC context. Our objective was to select and characterize highly self-determined learners and to examine the relationship between self-determined learning characteristics of this specific learner cohort. We applied a battery of instruments measuring self-directed learning readiness, self-reflection and insight, self-efficacy and internet skills. Highly self-determined learners were selected by applying criteria based on the reported level of confidence in learners’ skills on the agreement scales. The Pearson correlation was used to examine the relationship between self-directed learning readiness and self-reflection and insight, self-efficacy and internet skills. Our results showed that only 4.31% of the participants fulfilled our established criteria. The correlation tests revealed that there are significant correlations among the self-determined learning elements: we found significant positive correlation between, self-directed learning readiness and insight, self-efficacy, information navigation internet skill ; between desire for learning and insight, engagement in reflection; desire for learning and need for reflection, information navigation; between self-management and mobile internet skill;and between self-control and self-efficacy. Based on the results, implications and suggestion for MOOC design are provided.

Systematic Review of Discussion Forums in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Discussion forums are the primary and most widely used venue for social learning and communication in MOOC context. There has been an interest in the last few years to study the interactions and participation behavior in this environment. This systematic review studied eighty-four papers published between 2013–2017 to provide a state of the art, and suggest future directions in the literature from two perspectives: descriptive analysis and content analysis. The descriptive analysis aggregates the reviewed papers into five dimensions: time of the publication, stakeholders involved in the analysis, objectives, methods, and data sources used in the studies. The content analysis aims to highlight the main issues addressed and the major contributions of the papers covered by the literature review. These contributions can be categorized into three major areas, first, explore the relationship between forums participation and retention or learning outcomes and evaluate ways to increase the participation activity and learning outcomes, second, analyze participants’ contribution in the forum and how to organize the content and efficiently monitor them, finally, analyze participants’ interactions and how it influences learning. At the end, we offer some suggestions to further advance this area of research.

Exploring communities of inquiry in Massive Open Online Courses

This study presents an evaluation of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) survey instrument developed by Arbaugh et al. (2008) within the context of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The study reports the results of a reliability analysis and exploratory factor analysis of the CoI survey instrument using the data of 1487 students from five MOOC courses. The findings confirmed the reliability and validity of the CoI survey instrument for the assessment of the key dimensions of the CoI model: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Although the CoI survey instrument captured the same latent constructs within the MOOC context as in the Garrison's three-factor model (Garrison et al., 1999), analyses suggested a six-factor model with additional three factors as a better fit to the data. These additional factors were 1) course organization and design (a sub-component of teaching presence), 2) group affectivity (a sub-component of social presence), and 3) resolution phase of inquiry learning (a sub-component of cognitive presence). The emergence of these additional factors revealed that the discrepancies between the dynamics of the traditional online courses and MOOCs affect the student perceptions of the three CoI presences. Based on the results of our analysis, we provide an update to the famous CoI model which captures the distinctive characteristics of the CoI model within the MOOC setting. The results of the study and their implications are further discussed.

Is peer review an appropriate form of assessment in a MOOC? Student participation and performance in formative peer review

Many aspects of higher education must be reconceptualised for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Formative and summative assessment of qualitative work in particular requires novel approaches to cope with the numbers involved. Peer review has been proposed as one solution, and has been widely adopted by major MOOC providers, but there is currently little evidence about whether it is appropriate or under what conditions. Here, we examine student participation, performance and opinions of a peer review task in a biomedical science MOOC. We evaluate data from approximately 200 student topic summaries and 300 qualitative peer reviews of those summaries, and compare these to student demographic data (gender, age, employment status, education, national language) and to performance in multiple choice tests. We show that higher performance in the written topic summary correlated with both higher participation in the peer review task and with writing higher quality peer reviews. Qualitative analysis of student comments revealed that student opinion on the usefulness of the peer review task was mixed: some strongly believed it benefitted their learning, while others did not find it useful or did not participate. We suggest instructional design strategies to improve student participation and increase learning gain from peer review in the MOOC context.

‘I’ve been astounded by some of the insights gleaned from this course’: Lessons learnt from the world’s first careers and employability MOOC by both instructors and participants

This article examines the design and delivery of the world’s first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) focused specifically on career and employability skills. It explores the context of MOOCs and why a university, such as the University of London, may choose to provide an open access learning experience particularly aimed at career development skills. The article examines the content choices and pedagogical design of the MOOC and provides an insight into the key learning points for the authors who were co-instructors on the course. Finally, it outlines plans for future iterations of the Enhance Your Career and Employability Skills MOOC.

A Systematic Mapping on the Learning Analytics Field and Its Analysis in the Massive Open Online Courses Context

Learning Analytics (LA) is a field that aims to optimize learning through the study of dynamical processes occurring in the students' context. It covers the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about students and their contexts. This study aims at surveying existing research on LA to identify approaches, topics, and needs for future research. A systematic mapping study is launched to find as much literature as possible. The 127 papers found (resulting in 116 works) are classified with respect to goals, data types, techniques, stakeholders and interventions. Despite the increasing interest in field, there are no studies relating it to the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) context. The goal of this paper is twofold, first we present the systematic mapping on LA and after we analyze its findings in the MOOCs context. As results we provide an overview of LA and identify perspectives and challenges in the MOOCs context.

Measures of success

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are widely understood to suffer from low completion rates, and this is taken as evidence that MOOCs are not living up to their promise. However, we argue that the common understanding of completion rates is misleading in the MOOC context because many of the registered participants are not actually students, in that they never intended to “complete” the course. We examine student participation in the light of declared intention in the Engaging India MOOC. We show the number of passing students is 28% of the number of registrants who intended to complete the course. We also show that a significant number of students completed the solitary assessments but did not complete assessment items that involved the discussion forum, with only 13% completing the final reflective piece. We conclude that a new understanding of completion is needed for the MOOC context and call for closer examination of the interplay between assessment type and student participation.

Peer Grading in a MOOC: Reliability, Validity, and Perceived Effects

Peer grading affords a scalable and sustainable way of providing assessment and feedback to a massive student population, and has been used in massive open online courses (MOOCs) on the Coursera platform. However, currently there is little empirical evidence to support the credentials of peer grading as a learning assessment method in the MOOC context. To address this research need, this study examined 1825 peer grading assignments collected from a Coursera MOOC with the purpose of investigating the reliability and validity of peer grading as well as its perceived effects on students’ MOOC learning experience. The empirical findings proved that the aggregate ratings of student graders can provide peer grading scores that were fairly consistent and highly similar to the instructor grading scores. Student responses to a survey also show that the peer grading activity was well received as the majority of MOOC students believed it was fair, useful, beneficial, and would recommend it to be included in future MOOC offerings. Based on the empirical results, this study concludes with a set of principles for designing and implementing peer grading activities in the MOOC context.