MOOC Course Research Articles

Implementation of the course “good chemistry: methodological, ethical and social implications” – a case study

Abstract The article describes the practical implementation of the course titled “Good Chemistry: Methodological, Ethical, and Social Implications” available on the EuChemS e-learning platform. This MOOC course has been used in various ways at several European universities and through blended learning at Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland), which is discussed in this article. Since the groups of students participating in the course were not large and it is worth taking a closer look/insight at this issue, the case study method was used. Sample materials and activities for this course are presented. The survey responses of lecturers and students, as well as the activities and posts of Jagiellonian University in Krakow students on the remote learning platform, were analyzed. The strengths and weaknesses of the course were identified, and the need for continuous efforts by lecturers to develop ethical attitudes, critical thinking, and communication skills in students, especially in the field of socioscientific issues, was emphasized.

GREENCOOL-Case Study of an International MOOC Course’s Green and Communication Content Development

Sustainability and green matters are emerging issues among youth in the 21st century. The European Union (EU) emphasises youth discourse on greener thinking and lifestyle, which aims to build an open-minded, green, and digital future. Therefore it is crucial to provide appropriate education and shape attitudes towards green issues. Regarding this scope, four universities of the European Capitals of Cultures (ECoC), the University of Pannonia (Veszprém, Hungary), University of Tartu (Estonia) Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania), and West University of Timisoara (Romania), allied to develop a MOOC course interconnecting green related topics and communication skills and methods. The case study summarizes the main findings of the questionnaire (with 701 youth between 18-25 age), the desktop and focus group interviews research that gave the bases of developing the MOOC course material of GreenCool Erasmus projects. First the primary data, reflecting aspects of the involvement of young people in fighting climate crisis was analysed. The ultimate goal was to come up with a well-documented profile of students in tertiary education, reflecting their 'green' and 'communication' profiles as agents in fighting climate change. Second, taking the outcomes into consideration, the 4 universities carried out focus group interviews with 27 participants: influencers, green and communication experts and university students. As a result the green and communication topics were identified. This led to those methodological tools that were appropriate and effective in developing the GreenCool MOOC material and the corresponding blended Greenfluencer course with the provisional title: ‘Attitudes shaping communication techniques and green related topics in the 21st Century’. The case study describes the process and the results.

The Use of Deep Learning in Open Learning: A Systematic Review (2019 to 2023)

No records of systematic reviews focused on deep learning in open learning have been found, although there has been some focus on other areas of machine learning. Through a systematic review, this study aimed to determine the trends, applied computational techniques, and areas of educational use of deep learning in open learning. The PRISMA protocol was used, and the Web of Science Core Collection (2019–2023) was searched. VOSviewer was used for networking and clustering, and in-depth analysis was employed to answer the research questions. Among the main results, it is worth noting that the scientific literature has focused on the following areas: (a) predicting student dropout, (b) automatic grading of short answers, and (c) recommending MOOC courses. It was concluded that pedagogical challenges have included the effective personalization of content for different learning styles and the need to address possible inherent biases in the datasets (e.g., socio-demographics, traces, competencies, learning objectives) used for training. Regarding deep learning, we observed an increase in the use of pre-trained models, the development of more efficient architectures, and the growing use of interpretability techniques. Technological challenges related to the use of large datasets, intensive computation, interpretability, knowledge transfer, ethics and bias, security, and cost of implementation were also evident.

MOOC Courses for Developing the Digital Competencies of Economics Teachers

MOOC Courses for Developing the Digital Competencies of Economics Teachers

A Study of Awareness and Perception Regarding MOOC Courses with Special Reference to NPTEL

A Study of Awareness and Perception Regarding MOOC Courses with Special Reference to NPTEL

MOOCs: Global Business Goals and Local Educational Strategies

MOOCs are prepared by universities, research centers, business and governmental bodies. That is a device with which academic centers spread state-of-the-art knowledge, while business entities facilitate the development of competencies, particularly in business, economics and IT. The paradox is that although MOOCs courses are open to global users, they contain distinctive features of their inventors’ and administrators’ culture because they have been created locally. In order to identify the cultural characteristics evident in the content of MOOC courses, 267 courses on creative writing posted on five platforms were analyzed: Coursera (USA), FutureLearn (UK), XuetangX (China), JMOOC (Japan) and Skill Academy (Indonesia). Skill Academy and Coursera were focused on business-marketing goals, although they represented different cultures. Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian courses reflected the responsiveness of those cultures and were people- and affiliation-oriented. They employed a holistic approach to teaching (emphasis on context), i.e. operated with live lectures, which had not happened on Western platforms. Therefore, the conviction that MOOC is a mirror of the culture in which it was created should be considered a myth. It is the MOOC platform that presents the interests of the administrators and owners. Platform owners differ in their goals: academic (general knowledge transfer becoming a thing of the past after the commercialization of Coursera and edX), marketing (focused on gaining customers and employees) or economic-political (XuetangX). For a MOOC to be useful to representatives of another culture, not only translation into another language is needed, but also a proper modification of learning objectives and methods.

Education Inequality Between Rural and Urban Areas in China

Educational inequality is one of the significant societal challenges currently facing China. In particular, the educational disparity between rural and urban areas constrains rural students' development and opportunities and negatively impacts overall socioeconomic progress. Through a comprehensive study, this article seeks to elucidate the definition of developmental imbalance, understand the underlying causes of such disparity, and delve deeper into the roots, effects, and solutions of educational inequality between rural and urban areas in China. It also explores the potential of online education (MOOCs) as a solution. This paper summarizes and highlights the educational inequality problems in urban education in terms of enrollment indicators and school funding support. Through data investigation and analysis, we can discover the causes of educational inequality in implementing compulsory education and the issue of academic immigration. People have also found innovative education models such as MOOCs can provide rural students with more educational opportunities and resources. However, challenges related to interactivity, personalized learning environments, and communication between learners and teachers must be addressed. The paper also acknowledges the need to tailor MOOC course design to meet students' needs and improve learning outcomes in different educational contexts.

MOOC awareness and utilization among students of selected Polish universities

Abstract Purpose The main aim of the article was to examine Polish students’ awareness about MOOCs. For this purpose, the following issues were examined: the percentage of students aware of the existence of free courses, the percentage of students who have used the courses, the most popular educational platforms among Polish students, the percentage of people who did not complete a course, and the reasons for failure. Students who had completed any MOOC were also asked about their experiences and the usefulness of the course. Methodology The study was conducted in October/November 2022 in the form of an online survey. The generated link to the survey was sent by e-mail to students of the Jagiellonian University, the College of Engineering and Health in Warsaw and the Gdańsk College of Health, with a request to complete. Findings The results obtained may be surprising, especially after looking at the situation of MOOCs in other parts of the world. The knowledge about the availability of MOOC courses among Polish students is very low. Only 61 people of all respondents knew beforehand that MOOC learning was a possibility. Originality The added value of the article is examination of the motivation of students to take a MOOC course, as well as the reasons for not completing the course or not participating in it. The conclusions of the survey may be useful for designers of MOOCs. They set out some good practices in remote education and ways to keep young people interested.

Research on Causal Reasoning Method for MOOC Course Effectiveness Based on Multi-path Network Search

Research on Causal Reasoning Method for MOOC Course Effectiveness Based on Multi-path Network Search

EduGraph: Learning Path-based Hypergraph Neural Networks for MOOC Course Recommendation

EduGraph: Learning Path-based Hypergraph Neural Networks for MOOC Course Recommendation

Self-Study of the MOOC English Pronunciation in a Global World: Metaphonetic Awareness and English Accent Variation

This paper reports on a study in which Polish first-year university students of English, self-studied the massive open and online course (henceforth MOOC) entitled “Pronunciation in a Global World” to gain some knowledge on the fundamentals of phonetics (the notion of comprehensibility, nativeness and identity; vowels, consonants and selected suprasegmentals) and English accent variation. Its two main goals are: firstly, to examine the MOOC’s impact on the participants’ understanding of basic phonetic concepts and, secondly, to obtain the users’ assessment of this MOOC’s attractiveness and usefulness.In general, the results do not give evidence for the positive influence of the MOOC course on the students’ meta-awareness of English phonetics, since there are statistically significant differences in only three of sixty-eight questions between the experimental and control group. Nevertheless, many informants regard the course as useful (72%) and attractive (49%).Although the results do not support the hypothesis of the MOOC’s beneficial role in facilitating the understanding of English phonetics our stand is that this online training could complement classroom teaching as a form of blended learning.

The Influence of Presence Types on Learning Engagement in a MOOC: The Role of Autonomous Motivation and Grit.

We developed a research framework based on the community of inquiry theory to examine the relationship between three kinds of MOOC presence (teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence) and learning engagement. Further, we explored the mediating effect of autonomous motivation and the moderating role of grit in this relationship. The online survey included a sample of N = 794 college students (46.473% male) between the ages of 18 and 20. The COI survey instrument, short grit scale, the Utrecht work engagement scale-student scale and academic self-regulation questionnaire were used to test hypotheses. The study results showed that all three MOOC presences (teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence) had significant positive relationship with learning engagement. Autonomous motivation had a mediating role in them. Also, the positive relationship between social presence, cognitive presence, and autonomous motivation was stronger for students with a higher level of grit. This study enriches the literature on whether and how the presence knowledge of MOOC courses affects college students' learning engagement, and the complexity of MOOC environments determines that grit plays an indispensable role in the learning process.

Research on MOOC+SPOC Hybrid Teaching Mode for Engineering Optics

The current era is an era of informatization, which has become an important lever for national strategic development. The development of information technology has an increasingly significant impact on education. The vigorous rise of the Internet provides a strong guarantee for the implementation of online and offline hybrid teaching. "Internet plus education" is becoming the mainstream development trend. This article starts with the characteristics of MOOC and SPOC courses, and studies the hybrid teaching mode of engineering optics based on MOOC and SPOC, in order to provide reference and reference for the hybrid teaching of professional basic courses in higher vocational education institutions.

Challenges facing distance learning during martial law: results of a survey of Ukrainian students

Cataclysms such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had an irreversible impact on all spheres of human life. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor the needs of participants in specific processes to be able to respond to them dynamically. In this regard, a survey was conducted with 331 respondents from 13 institutions of higher education in Ukraine. The questionnaire consisted of four blocks: general questions (age, gender, educational institution, year of study, location, etc.), technical block (availability of technical means, access to the Internet, etc.), psychological block (respondents’ state), and educational block (availability of opportunities to continue educational activities). To answer some questions, a sample was made by regions of Ukraine to understand whether there is a significant difference between regions where active hostilities are taking place and regions that are conditionally safer. The article aims to present the results and analysis of the answers and offer suggestions for teachers on implementing educational activities based on the obtained results. The survey showed that teachers of higher education institutions take into account the peculiarities of the current situation in Ukraine. Most institutions implemented blended/distance learning to ensure all participants' safety in the educational process. Among the recommendations are the introduction of video recording of online classes and increased use of non-formal education opportunities, particularly MOOC courses.

Contextual Emotion Detection of E-Learners for Recommendation System

Abstract : In the recent pandemic times, there was an impactful transformation in imparting education which required everyone to become online learners. There has been an exponential growth in the number of e-learners attending classes online and taking MOOCs courses. This has opened an avenue for research to analyze the emotion of e-learners through reviews of students to evaluate the learning outcomes and performance of the course. Most challenging task is to find the exact pulse of the e-learners’ emotions from the huge data of the e-learners reviews. The reviews on all online platforms are mostly textual and this qualitative data needs to be quantified for analysis. There is a necessity to propose contextual emotion detection of e-learners by extracting the relevant information which can be correlated to the performance of the course on e-learning platform. Further, it can be a recommendation system to the aspiring e-learners to make decision based on thesatisfaction index of previous e-learners. This paper leverages deep learning techniques to train various models for academic emotion detection using dataset E-Learners Academic Reviews (ELAR) prepared from online textual feedback of e-learners and MOOCs course reviews. The Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) transfer learning model used to detect the emotions outperformed the other models. This proposed method using ELAR dataset is a novel approach to identify the right emotion of e-learners from the course reviews available on e-learning platform. The results were discussed with a benchmark of ISEAR (International Survey on Emotion Antecedents and Reactions) and GoEmotion Dataset. Keywords : Academic emotions; Digital natives; Deep learning; E-learners; Textual emotions

Massive Open Online Courses and intercultural competence: analysis of courses fostering soft skills through language learning.

This paper aims to survey language teaching MOOCs that promote intercultural competence (IC). Specifically, the survey aims to identify the keywords most relevant to MOOCs with IC components, the languages taught, the offering countries, and the embedded soft skills. The selection of keywords is important because they can indicate connection between different disciplines. After trialing a broader set of keywords in several rounds of initial search, we identified five keywords that are the most relevant to language education with IC components on MOOCs: culture, intercultural, cross culture, multi culture, and society. Then courses with these five keywords on language learning are selected for further analysis. The results are summarized as follows: (1) Most language teaching MOOCs are found under the keyword "culture," indicating a strong connection between language education and intercultural communication; (2) In terms of the target languages and the offering countries, it is found that English, Chinese, and Spanish are the major languages widely taught in the context of intercultural competence; China, United States, and Ireland are the three countries which offer the highest numbers of MOOCs in this respect; United States, United Kingdom, and Australia are the three countries which offer the highest numbers of MOOCs of different languages. The results indicate that a limited number of languages and offering countries dominate the language learning MOOCs. The study calls for a plurality of languages and cultures to be taught through MOOCs, making more diversified knowledge systems accessible to global audiences. (3) The language teaching MOOCs not only focus on language but also aim to foster five types of soft skills (language learning skills, communication skills, business and entrepreneurship skills, career development skills, and cultural development skills), suggesting that intercultural competence and its related soft skills are usually important components embedded in such MOOCs courses.

Empowering Education with Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools: Approach with an Instructional Design Matrix

This study focuses on the potential of generative artificial intelligence tools in education, particularly through the practical application of the 4PADAFE instructional design matrix. The objective was to evaluate how these tools, in combination with the matrix, can enhance education and improve the teaching–learning process. Through surveys conducted with teachers from the University of ESPE Armed Forces who participated in the MOOC course “Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools for Education: GPT Chat Techniques”, the study explores the impact of these tools on education. The findings reveal that generative artificial intelligence tools are crucial in developing massive MOOC virtual classrooms when integrated with an instructional design matrix. The results demonstrate the potential of generative artificial intelligence tools in university education. By utilizing these tools in conjunction with an instructional design matrix, educators can design and deliver personalized and enriching educational experiences. The devices offer opportunities to enhance the teaching–learning process and tailor educational materials to individual needs, ultimately preparing students for the demands of the 21st century. The study concludes that generative artificial intelligence tools have significant potential in education. They provide innovative ways to engage students, adapt content, and promote personalized learning. Implementing the 4PADAFE instructional design matrix further enhances the effectiveness and coherence of educational activities. By embracing these technological advancements, education can stay relevant and effectively meet the digital world’s challenges.

Decoding Digital Learning Outcomes Among Diverse Learners

The democratization of online platforms through technological advancements has helped in the growth of new tools for digital learning. The global pandemic in 2019 accelerated the shift to a digital environment for organisations worldwide. With a shift to online learning, there has been a sudden spike in enrolments for massive open online courses. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by analysing the impact of MOOC courses on the achievement of program outcomes of a formal education program. The authors attempt to understand if digital learning outcomes vary among diverse learner groups, if the adaption of MOOC courses enhances the achievement of program outcomes among diverse learner groups. The data for this study were collected using purposive sampling from students pursuing a management course at a B-school in India. The results of the study indicate that diversity has no impact on the achievement of program outcomes.

Empirical analysis of integrated teaching mode of international trade based on practical training data detection and neural network

With the continuous development of China's foreign trade, the foreign trade industry requires universities to train more application-oriented talents with specific theoretical basis and professional knowledge. However, on the one hand, the gap between international trade professionals within enterprises is widening; on the other hand, many international trade graduates are not engaged in the foreign trade industry because their professional skills are not recognized, resulting in a waste of teaching resources. The root of this dilemma lies in the serious disconnection between the traditional training mode of international trade professionals and the international development background of Chinese foreign trade enterprises. This paper focuses on neural network technology and then analyzes the integrated teaching mode of international trade. The integrated teaching resources studied in this paper come from various sources, mainly including traditional textbooks, courseware and other resources, as well as self-made MOOC courses and other MOOC platform course resources and other online teaching resources. In this paper, the framework of the integrated teaching model is mainly designed from three aspects: pre-analysis, curriculum design, assessment and evaluation. It can be found that the following practice on integrated teaching mode is very successful in MOOC, which improves students' self-study ability and also cultivates their ability to cooperate and communicate. This proves that the integrated teaching model of international trade in this paper is effective. Through the research and discussion of neural network technology, this paper applies it to the integrated teaching mode, which provides a more powerful technical guarantee for the training of international trade talents.

Exploring the Needs for Developing MOOC Module on Risk Communication in Global Health Emergencies for Continuing Nursing Education Programme: A Qualitative Study

To support the learning process, it is essential to conduct a needs analysis to identify appropriate instructional materials that fit the learners’ characteristics and learning environment. This study aimed to identify the need for developing a MOOC module on risk communication in global health emergencies to use as a teaching tool for continuing nursing education programmes. Following the principles of a qualitative research design, a total of 14 participants, including two nursing lecturers from Kulliyyah of Nursing, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), two nurse managers (matrons), two emergency physicians, and eight registered nurses (RN) from SASMEC @ IIUM, were selected through purposive sampling method and interviewed using semi-structured interview-guided questions. The interview data were analysed using thematic analysis. The participants stated that continuing nursing education (CNE) was essential for professional development (PD) and a resource for enhancing existing skills and knowledge. Risk communication skills were crucial for nurses in emergency healthcare contexts. The majority of this study’s participants were unfamiliar with MOOC courses and stated that support and motivation from their institution, as well as monitoring of participation and course completion, were needed to implement MOOC courses successfully. To sum up, understanding of continuing education, current risk communication knowledge and literacy, and awareness of MOOCs were explored. These realities will support thedevelopment of the risk communication MOOC module that will help improve nurses’ risk communication skills and better prepare them for future global health emergencies.