MOOC Platform Research Articles

The Importance of Offline Options for Online Learners

The popularity of MOOCs and MOOC platforms prompted some universities to develop their first online courses, while others experimented with the format of existing online offerings. Despite the body of research identifying cognitive, metacognitive, and practical benefits of printed materials, there has been a shift towards an approach that privileges online resources, reducing opportunities to access resources offline or in printed form. Online courses can be produced more quickly and cheaply than those providing both printed and digital options. They can also benefit learners in a society that values digital skills and literacies. This paper, informed by the principles of universal design for learning (CAST 2018), asks ‘What are the benefits to students of offering downloadable/printable versions of online study materials and supporting offline study?’. It takes a phenomenological approach, exploring the experience of 100 postgraduate learners on an online course delivered on the FutureLearn platform. Data was extracted from a large dataset that included all the students’ course discussion postings (N = 17,158). Data analysis identified the importance of the online/offline divide and showed that, as students’ contexts change, the benefits and accessibility of online, offline and print versions shifts. Printed and digital materials support different ways of learning and can have an affective impact. These findings point to ways in which learning design, skills training, and technical changes might be used to increase the affordances of digital materials for learners.

Fast certificate issuance in a Moodle‐based MOOC platform: A large‐scale study

Fast certificate issuance in a Moodle‐based MOOC platform: A large‐scale study

Quantitative Analysis of Online Courses for Learning the JavaScript Programming Language

Today, the JavaScript programming language ranks first both in the world well-known programming rankings and those in Ukraine in particular. The purpose of the research is quantitative analysis of online courses on learning JavaScript on well-known MOOC platforms. In order to achieve the purpose of our research, we used theoretical and quantitative (descriptive) methods. Also, we analyzed such well-known online platforms as Alison, Codecademy, Udemy, edX, Coursera as of December 2023. The number of online courses on each platform, their cost, an approximate user level, video length, etc. was used as criteria for the analysis. The analyzed MOOC was found to offer 1,795 online courses on learning the JavaScript programming language. Among them, 1,077 courses (60%) are paid, 201 courses (11%) can be taken for free, and 517 courses (29%) require optional payment. Most of the online JavaScript courses (788 courses, 44%) are developed for the Beginner level. Only 37 courses are available for experienced JavaScript programmers, which is 2% of the total number of online JavaScript courses. It was found that Codecademy and Udemy online platforms offer their users additional opportunities to learn JavaScript: programming projects (67 online courses); coding exercises (99 online courses); Practice test (55 online courses). The obtained results made it possible to formulate some proposals for choosing the optimal MOOC which helps to learn JavaScript, considering several selection criteria.

Impact of Internet Handling Skills in Swayam Portal Learning among B.Ed Trainees

SWAYAM is an acronym that stands for "Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds". MOOC Platform was developed indigenously by AICTE in 2016 to facilitate the hosting of online courses that could be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time free of cost to achieve three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz. access, equity, and quality. On the SWAYAM portal, Internet Handling Skills would involve navigating the platform effectively, accessing course materials, participating in online discussions and forums, submitting assignments, and engaging with instructors and peers. It also includes understanding how to use the features and tools provided on the portal to enhance learning, such as multimedia content, quizzes, and interactive modules. Additionally, being aware of online etiquette and security measures while using the SWAYAM portal is essential for a positive and productive learning experience. The investigator aims to study the impact of IHS on the SWAYAM portal among B.Ed. Trainees at Pudukkottai. Pre–Test / Post–Test single group design method was applied for the present study, the investigator divided two groups namely the first group and second group both are considered to be a sample. To find out the level of handling skill in the SWAYAM Portal among B.Ed. Trainees. To study whether there is a significant difference between Pre-test and Post-test scores in handling the SWAYAM portal among the first group, second group, and total sample B.Ed. Trainees. The investigator applied an experimental research method. A purposive sampling technique was adopted. 100 B.Ed. Trainees of first-year students in Government College of Education Pudukkottai district. SWAYAM Portal-related test was used as a pre-test and post-test. The split-half reliability of the test calculated is found to be (0.855). The magnitude of the difference between the pre-test and post-test scores for handling the SWAYAM portal was estimated to be 2.8601 through Cohen’s d-effect size analysis, which was found to be very large. Thus, it was indicated that the intervention has a significant impact on Internet Handling Skills in using the SWAYAM portal. The students must possess skills in handling the internet for selection and comfortable completion of any online course, especially SWAYAM courses.

A Study on Teacher’s Regulative Discourse in Online Academic English Writing Course

This study investigates the use of teachers’ regulative discourse in an online academic writing course from the perspective of Bernstein’s pedagogic discourse theory. By observing and analyzing the data from the “Academic English Writing” course on the China University MOOC platform, the study examines the forms, syntactic expressions, and functions of directives used by teachers in online classes and explores their impact on teaching and student learning. The findings reveal that teachers prefer to use direct regulative discourses, such as imperative sentences while utilizing indirect and more polite discourses less frequently. The findings help to provide references for MOOC teachers to optimize their use of regulative discourse.

The Impact of MOOC Platform Quality on the Independent Learning Ability of Higher Education Students: A Critical Review of the Literature

The Impact of MOOC Platform Quality on the Independent Learning Ability of Higher Education Students: A Critical Review of the Literature

The Involvement of Academic and Emotional Support for Sustainable Use of MOOCs.

MOOCs, the Massive Open Online Courses, are online educational courses that offer open access to a large number of participants globally. However, online engagement during MOOC learning remains a problem, as reflected in relatively high dropout rates. This paper involves academic and emotional support, aiming to explore whether they contribute to users' sustainable use of the MOOC platform. A total of 410 college students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) and with MOOC learning experience participated in this study. Employing the structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques, we examined the relationships among five factors in the EFL MOOC learning context: academic support (AS), emotional support (ES), perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEoU), and platform reputation (PR). The results indicate that academic support influences learners' perceptions of the usefulness and ease of use of the MOOC platform, as well as enhancing learners' feelings of being emotionally supported. Simultaneously, platform reputation plays a crucial role in influencing learners' perceptions of MOOC platforms. However, results suggest that emotional support does not have a statistically significant impact on the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the platform in EFL MOOC learning contexts.

The Teaching Mode Design and Effect Evaluation Method of Animation Course From the Perspective of Big Data

OBE concept is a new teaching mode which emphasizes the improvement of students' subjective initiative and professional practice ability. The teaching of animation course is based on drawing and computer, which requires teachers to understand the OBE mode of animation course, carry out targeted teaching innovation of animation course, and adjust the traditional teaching methods, teaching contents and teaching assessment methods. Based on the MOOC platform from the perspective of big data, this paper analyzes the teaching status and innovation process of animation course, and puts forward a hybrid animation course teaching method. Through the research of 686 primary and secondary school teachers, the results show that the hybrid animation course teaching based on OBE and MOOC from the perspective of big data has a better effect than the traditional teaching method, which improves students' initiative in learning animation courses and greatly enhances students' acceptability in learning animation courses.

MEBAL2 database and benchmark: Image-based multispectral eyeblink detection

This work introduces a new multispectral database and framework to train and evaluate eyeblink detection in RGB and Near-Infrared (NIR). Our contributed dataset (mEBAL2, multimodal EyeBlink and Attention Level estimation, Version 2) is the largest existing eyeblink database, representing a great opportunity to improve data-driven multispectral approaches for blink detection and related applications (e.g., attention level estimation). mEBAL2 includes 21,100 image sequences from 180 different students (more than 2 million labeled images in total) while conducting a number of e-learning tasks of varying difficulty or taking a real course on HTML initiation through the edX MOOC platform. mEBAL2 uses multiple sensors, including two Near-Infrared (NIR) and one RGB camera to capture facial gestures during the execution of the tasks, as well as an Electroencephalogram (EEG) band to get the cognitive activity of the user and blinking events. Furthermore, this work proposes 3 data-driven approaches as benchmarks for blink detection on mEBAL2, where the architecture based on Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory (ConvLSTM) achieved performances of up to 99%. The experiments explored whether combining RGB and NIR spectrum data improves blink detection in training and architectures that merge both types of data. Experiments showed that the NIR spectrum enhances results, even when only RGB images are available during inference. Finally, the generalization capacity of the proposed eyeblink detectors, along with state-of-the-art eyeblink detection implementations, is validated in wilder and more challenging environments like the HUST-LEBW dataset to show the usefulness of mEBAL2 to train a new generation of data-driven approaches for eyeblink detection.

Overview of Online Learning Behavior Analysis in the Context of Big Data

Under the Internet era, various technologies such as big data and cloud computing are becoming more and more a hot issue of concern. Big data provides a large number of network resources with great economic as well as social value, which has a certain impact on various fields in society, and its use in education has received more attention from scholars. After the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, online learning has become a normalized way of learning, online learning platform records a large number of learners' learning data, through the processing and analysis of these massive data, not only is conducive to the realization of students' personalized learning, but also helps teachers to understand and master the current situation of students' learning, and then adjust their teaching. In order to have a clear understanding of the current research status of online learning behavior analysis in the context of big data, the article uses the visual analysis software CiteSpace to analyze the literature selected from the China Knowledge Network (CKN), from which the current status of the research, research hotspots, and future research trends in this field are obtained. The analysis results show that the number of publications has gradually decreased in the past two years, and there is less cooperation and communication between the core publication authors as well as the publication institutions; the analysis of learning behavior data on MOOC platforms has become a research hotspot at this stage, and in-depth learning, multi-scenario, and focusing on the students' learning experience are the future research trends.

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.

The Influence of Teaching Presence on Students Satisfaction toward MOOC Based Flipped Classroom

Student satisfaction plays a crucial role in ensuring effective flipped learning. This study designed a flipped "Fundamentals of Computer Application (FCA)" course based on Chaoxing MOOC platform and investigated 442 students' satisfaction with the model and the relationship between teaching presence and students satisfaction. The results showed that student satisfaction with the model was high (M = 19.37, SD = 2.694, total 129 in the affective coding, of which 79 were positive and only 2 were negative), and that the three dimensions of Teaching Presence(TP), Instructional Design and Organization(IDS) (r = 0.410, p < .001), Facilitated Discourse (FD) (r = 0.355, p < .001), Direct Instruction (DI) (r = 0.362, p < .001) were all positively and significantly related to satisfaction, with Instructional Design and Organization(IDS) (β = .239, t = 4.555, p = < .001) , and Direct Instruction (DI) (β = .218, t = 2.468, p = < .05) were able to significantly predict satisfaction. The findings indicated that students are highly satisfied with the flipped model in the FCA course, which is mainly practical and hands-on. Consequently, teachers should carefully plan and organize their lessons, give students direct guidance when needed, foster a safe learning environment, and provide more opportunities for students to give speeches. All of these strategies will contribute to students' increased satisfaction with flipped learning.

A tri-phenomenon perspective to mitigate MOOCs' high dropout rates: the role of technical, pedagogical, and contextual factors on language learners' L2 motivational selves, and learning approaches to MOOC

MOOC attrition rates have become a research hotspot in open and online education, requiring researchers to pinpoint psychological, technological, pedagogical, and technical factors that could mitigate this problem. For this aim, the current study applied a tri-phenomenon approach to explore language learners' perceptions of support coupled with the moderation role of their motivation plays in shaping their learning approaches to MOOC. To do so, 428 language learners who completed their online language course on the Iranian MOOC platform answered the study survey before getting their course certificate. An analysis of structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that MOOC instructional and peer support were positively correlated with learners' deep approach while negatively correlated with the surface one. Although technical support was provided in this instance, it did not contribute to shaping language learners' motivation and deep approach. Moreover, language learners who attended MOOCs to learn language intrinsically perceived more instructional support, whereas language learners who joined these courses to pass some obligations or get course certificates perceived greater peer support that could help them pass such criteria and shape their deep approach to MOOC. Further, both types of motivation significantly mediate learners' instructional and peer support within their deep language learning approach in MOOC. As a result of these findings, both theoretical and practical contributions have been reported in the study to lead MOOCs' enrolment to have a deep approach.

Task-Technology Fit Analysis: Measuring the Factors that influence Behavioural Intention to Use the Online Summary-with Automated Feedback in a MOOCs Platform

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the factors that influence behavioural intention (BI) to use the Online Summary-with Automated Feedback (OSAF) in a MOOCs platform. Task-Technology Fit (TTF) was the main framework used to analyse the match between task requirements and technology characteristics, predictng the utilisation of the technology. The relationships between TTF and BI was moderated by students’ performance. This TTF provides an illustration of the extent to which the suitability of technology support for tasks will affect the performance and utilization of technology. There were 9 hypotheses examined in this study. The participants consisted of 151 students at a public university in East Java, Indonesia. In order to analyse the collected data, PLS-SEM (partial least squares - structural equation modeling) was employed, using SmartPLS 3.0. In this study, several points can be concluded, namely: 1) task characteristics and technology characteristics were not positively and significantly effected by TTF, while students' characteristics had a positive and significant effect on TTF; 2) TTF and utilization which are influenced by social influence, have a positive effect on performance impact. In this case the performance impact is constructed from 3 dimensions, namely: learning performance, personal integrity, self-confidence, except TTF were not postitive and were significantly affected by self-confidence. 3) TTF and performance impact positively influence behavioural intention, except in the dimension of performance impact, personal integrity was not postively and significantly effected by behavioural intention.

Teaching Customer Service Principles Using the Massive Open Online Course (Moocs) Platform

This study reviewed the effects of a developing MOOC platform for Customer Service Principles course in higher education. Essentially, the Customer Service Principles course is designed to give knowledge and exposure about the fundamental of customer service and discover how to deliver customer service efficiently across various sectors. The development of MOOC platform is believed to be a role of an interactive learning method to attract and motivates students to clearly understand and to apply this course effectively. The originality of this study is its review the MOOC platform as an interactive learning method specifically for Customer Service Principles course, something that has been unobserved by previous scholars. This study will contribute to the body of knowledge on the effect of MOOC platform and to improve the learning activities for higher education institution.

A Study on Challenges and Opportunities in Commerce Education

Commerce education is important to gain knowledge of business, trade, industry and commerce. It provides the knowledge for various specialized and professionalized study related to the business. In India commerce education is available after the school period because of this school students were not taught commerce subjects and they don't possess any business and finance knowledge. There are various courses available to commerce students which help them to gain knowledge and competencies required for job in industries. But the students were not possess proper knowledge and competencies due to lack of faculties and practical training provided by colleges and institution which lacks students to get job. In present scenario everything is digitalized which also applies to education. Modern education also adopted the online education and MOOCs platform to achieve the objectives of commerce education

Study of Use of an Additional Reading Material in SWAYAM MOOC Platform in India and Need of Learner Centric Personalized Adaptive Real-time Reading Material in MOOCs

Study of Use of an Additional Reading Material in SWAYAM MOOC Platform in India and Need of Learner Centric Personalized Adaptive Real-time Reading Material in MOOCs

On the Innovation of Applying Linguistics in the Teaching of MOOC under the Background of Comprehensive Reform

With the continuous progress of society and the improvement of comprehensive national strength, people’s attention to the education industry has increased significantly compared to the past. Various reforms based on education models and educational theory applications are constantly being introduced, resulting in many differences in education business compared to the past. This article aims to explore the innovation of applied linguistics MOOC teaching in the context of comprehensive reform. Through a review and analysis of relevant literature, this article proposes a linguistics teaching model based on the MOOC platform. This model combines online learning resources, interactive learning activities, and personalized learning support, aiming to improve students’ learning effectiveness and motivation. The research results indicate that applied linguistics MOOC teaching can promote students’ learning interest and academic performance, and improve their learning satisfaction. The findings of this study have important practical significance for promoting innovation in linguistics teaching in the context of comprehensive reform.

Corpus Microtext Analysis and English Teaching Model Innovation in Cloud Computing Background

Abstract The rapid development of cloud computing technology makes the English teaching corpus an excellent choice for innovative English teaching mode. This paper constructs a corpus of English teaching resources and English O2O teaching mode based on MOOC education platform, combines the probabilistic semantic analysis (PLSA) model with the potential semantic indexing to carry out microtext analysis of the English teaching corpus, and solves the PLSA model by using the expectation (EM) algorithm. For the English teaching corpus and English O2O teaching model constructed in this paper, a validation analysis was conducted in three aspects: micro text analysis, text lexical ability and teaching satisfaction. The results show that the PLSA model is able to obtain complete sentence expressions in the microtexture of the corpus when the weight coefficient of the lexical items is set to 0.3. The text vocabulary ability of students in English O2O teaching mode shows a significant difference level at 1% level, and the correlation coefficient of in-class to pre-class reaches 0.889. The English teaching corpus relying on MOOC platform and O2O teaching mode can effectively enhance students’ deep understanding of English sentences, improve students’ satisfaction with English teaching, and enhance students’ interest in learning English.

Research on Optimized Allocation and Use Effect of Music Education Resources Based on MOOC Platform

Abstract The equitable distribution of educational resources epitomizes the essence of establishing a robust educational nation. Yet, the issue of unequal allocation of music education resources has largely been overlooked. This study addresses this gap by examining the current status of music resource distribution across colleges and universities in Province C. An objective function was formulated based on four key indicators reflective of music education resources. The Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), a multi-objective optimization algorithm, was employed to optimize this function and develop a novel resource allocation strategy. Upon implementation of this strategy, the optimized resource quantities at the sampled institutions were observed as follows: 1,131 square meters of space, 809 books, 72 musical instruments, and 7 personnel. Subsequent evaluation of the changes in students’ musical performance, pre-and post-implementation, revealed significant improvements. Specifically, the average music performance score in the experimental group increased by 7.32 points, compared to a 6.63-point increase in the control group, with both enhancements statistically significant as per the t-test results. Further, a survey assessing the perceptions of teachers and students towards the newly implemented program indicated that 66.8% of respondents endorsed the revised allocation. Collectively, these findings suggest that the optimized allocation strategy not only facilitated the music education resource distribution but also garnered a positive reception and improved student outcomes in music, thereby contributing constructively to the overarching goal of strengthening the educational infrastructure.