scholarly journals Investigating MOOCs through blog mining

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Chen
Keyword(s):  
Dropout Rate ◽  
Disruptive Innovation ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Course Quality ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
High Dropout Rate ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Published Research ◽  
A Current

<p>MOOCs (massive open online course) is a disruptive innovation and a current buzzword in higher education. However, the discussion of MOOCs is disparate, fragmented, and distributed among different outlets. Systematic, extensively published research on MOOCs is unavailable. This paper adopts a novel method called blog mining to analyze MOOCs. The findings indicate, while MOOCs have benefitted learners, providers, and faculty who develop and teach MOOCs, challenges still exist, such as questionable course quality, high dropout rate, unavailable course credits, ineffective assessments, complex copyright, and limited hardware. Future research should explore the position of MOOCs and how it can be sustained.</p>

scholarly journals What Research Says About MOOCs – An Explorative Content Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olaf Zawacki-Richter ◽  
Aras Bozkurt ◽  
Uthman Alturki ◽  
Ahmed Aldraiweesh
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
Research Journal ◽  
Mining Tool ◽  
Published Research ◽  
Text Mining Tool

<p class="3">Since the first offering of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2008, the body of literature on this new phenomenon of open learning has grown tremendously. In this regard, this article intends to identify and map patterns in research on MOOCs by reviewing 362 empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 2008 to 2015. For the purposes of this study, a text-mining tool was used to analyse the content of the published research journal articles and to reveal the major themes and concepts covered in the publications. The findings reveal that the MOOC literature generally focuses on four lines of research: (a) the potential and challenges of MOOCs for universities; (b) MOOC platforms; (c) learners and content in MOOCs; and (d) the quality of MOOCs and instructional design issues. Prospective researchers may use these results to gain an overview of this emerging field, as well as to explore potential research directions.</p>

scholarly journals Formative Assessment as an Online Instruction Intervention

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Zexuan Chen ◽  
Jianli Jiao ◽  
Kexin Hu
Keyword(s):  
Online Education ◽  
Formative Assessment ◽  
Dropout Rate ◽  
Learning Outcome ◽  
School Closure ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Quick Response ◽  
Assessment Data ◽  
High Dropout Rate

Online education has long been suffering from high dropout rate and low achievement. However, both asynchronous and synchronous online instructions have to become effective to serve as a quick response to maintain undisrupted learning during the COVID-19 outbreak. The purpose of the present study was to examine student engagement, learning outcome, and students' perceptions of an online course featured with frequent tasks, quizzes, and tests as formative assessment. Data were collected from the first five weeks of a course that was temporarily converted from blended learning to be fully online in time of school closure. Analysis of students' learning records and scores indicated that students engaged themselves actively in all of the online learning activities and had gained high scores in all tasks, quizzes, and tests. In addition, students held positive perceptions towards the formative assessment.

Role of Instructors' Forum Interactions With Students in Promoting MOOC Continuance

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenghong Zhang ◽  
Hong Chen ◽  
Chee Wei Phang
Keyword(s):  
Global Education ◽  
Dropout Rate ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
Online Forum ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Instructor Presence ◽  
High Dropout Rate ◽  
Post Hoc

This article describes how MOOCs, being a new global education and technology phenomenon, present both opportunities and challenges to educators and learners. The lack of face-to-face engagement introduces a sense of isolation in students, resulting in a high dropout rate. To this end, online forums are deemed to help overcome the problem by enabling interactions among the learners and facilitating their learning. Recent research further suggests that with an online forum provided in a MOOC, the presence of instructors may not be important. However, in this article, the authors provide two important insights: First, online forum indeed plays an important role in motivating learner continuance. Second, among the different types of forum activities, they find that interaction with instructors emerge as an important factor contributing to more assignment completions in addition to forum posting. The authors' post-hoc analysis also indicates that the importance of instructor presence may be particularly salient in the Eastern vis-à-vis Western culture, which points to future research opportunities.

scholarly journals Supporting Virtual Mobility Skills in a MOOC: Preliminary Results

2020 ◽  
pp. 335-344
Author(s):  
Antonella Poce ◽  
Francesca Amenduni ◽  
Maria Rosaria ◽  
Carlo De
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
Intercultural Skills ◽  
Virtual Mobility ◽  
Actual Effectiveness ◽  
Technical Features ◽  
Mobility Skills

In the last years, the concept of Virtual Mobility has receiving a growing attention from educational policy makers and institutions, because it has the potential to make more accessible and effective students and teachers mobility in Higher Education. Virtual Mobility could be defined as institutional ICT-supported activities that trigger or facilitate international collaborative experiences in the context of teaching and/or learning. Despite the interest, there is still a few empirical researches regarding actual effectiveness of Virtual Mobility implementation and which technological solutions could be adopted. The present paper describes a research project aimed at designing an Open and Accessible Virtual Mobility Massive Open Online Course, by involving students and teachers from six European countries and higher education institutions. 716 participants completed and assessed the Open Virtual Mobility MOOC. Participants expressed a positive evaluation of different MOOCs features: (a) Badges; (b) Technical features; (c) Gamification. Four out of eight MOOCs obtained the highest evaluation: (a) Collaborative learning; (b) Autonomy-drive learning; (c) Open-mindedness; (d) Intercultural skills. Future research trajectories would be described.

scholarly journals Explanation of observational data engenders a causal belief about smoking and cancer

PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e5597
Author(s):  
Leslie Myint ◽  
Jeffrey T. Leek ◽  
Leah R. Jager
Keyword(s):  
Observational Study ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
Causal Belief ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
Inferential Analysis ◽  
Randomized Controlled Experiment ◽  
The Relationship

Most researchers do not deliberately claim causal results in an observational study. But do we lead our readers to draw a causal conclusion unintentionally by explaining why significant correlations and relationships may exist? Here we perform a randomized controlled experiment in a massive open online course run in 2013 that teaches data analysis concepts to test the hypothesis that explaining an analysis will lead readers to interpret an inferential analysis as causal. We test this hypothesis with a single example of an observational study on the relationship between smoking and cancer. We show that adding an explanation to the description of an inferential analysis leads to a 15.2% increase in readers interpreting the analysis as causal (95% confidence interval for difference in two proportions: 12.8%–17.5%). We then replicate this finding in a second large scale massive open online course. Nearly every scientific study, regardless of the study design, includes an explanation for observed effects. Our results suggest that these explanations may be misleading to the audience of these data analyses and that qualification of explanations could be a useful avenue of exploration in future research to counteract the problem. Our results invite many opportunities for further research to broaden the scope of these findings beyond the single smoking-cancer example examined here.

Quality Assessment and Certification in Open Scholarly Publishing and Inspiration for MOOC Credentialing

2019 ◽  
pp. 902-919
Author(s):  
Xiang Ren
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assessment ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Open Education ◽  
Light Touch ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
Future Research Directions

This chapter looks at the changing landscape of quality assessment and certification/credentialing in open knowledge systems by a comparative study between open publishing and open education. Despite the disruptive changes driven by open publishing in scholarly communication, it is challenging to develop widely accepted methods for quality assessment and certification. Similar challenges exist in open education platforms like the massive open online course (MOOC). This work reviews four types of innovations in open publishing in terms of quality control, namely “light touch” peer review, post-publication assessment, social peer review, and open peer review. Synthesising the principles and strategies of these innovations, it discusses how they might be inspiring for developing solutions and models for MOOC assessment and credentialing. This chapter concludes by suggesting future research directions. It argues that the open initiatives are co-evolving with the “traditional” systems and integrating with the established models.

Quality Assessment and Certification in Open Scholarly Publishing and Inspiration for MOOC Credentialing

2016 ◽  
pp. 245-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiang Ren
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assessment ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Open Education ◽  
Light Touch ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
Future Research Directions

This chapter looks at the changing landscape of quality assessment and certification/credentialing in open knowledge systems by a comparative study between open publishing and open education. Despite the disruptive changes driven by open publishing in scholarly communication, it is challenging to develop widely accepted methods for quality assessment and certification. Similar challenges exist in open education platforms like the massive open online course (MOOC). This work reviews four types of innovations in open publishing in terms of quality control, namely “light touch” peer review, post-publication assessment, social peer review, and open peer review. Synthesising the principles and strategies of these innovations, it discusses how they might be inspiring for developing solutions and models for MOOC assessment and credentialing. This chapter concludes by suggesting future research directions. It argues that the open initiatives are co-evolving with the “traditional” systems and integrating with the established models.

scholarly journals The First Massive Open Online Course of the European Psychiatric Association on Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy

2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 13-16
Author(s):  
T. Costa ◽  
N. Arnaoutoglou ◽  
T. Gargot ◽  
O. Kasa ◽  
N. Liu-Thwaites ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Therapy ◽  
Psychotherapy Training ◽  
Dropout Rate ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Behavioural Therapy ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
Cognitive Behavioural ◽  
The Uk

Introduction: Psychiatric trainees lack psychotherapy training. In 2018, the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) offered a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), “Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy”. We will present an overview of the course participants and engagement metrics, and propose improvements for future courses. Methods: Non-identifiable participant information was collected through a welcome survey. Additional data were internally extracted, including demographic information, interests, educational background, learning objectives, completion and satisfaction rate. Engagement strategy questionnaires were distributed and screen time calculated. Results: There were 7.116 enrollments, 1.504 completed the welcome survey and 954 (13%) the overall course. The three most represented countries were: Greece (18%), France (8%) and the UK (7%). Psychologists and psychology students represented 41% of the initial participants, psychiatrists and psychiatry trainees 33%. Conclusion: The MOOC achieved its primary goals and received a wide acceptance. The dropout rate was lower than similar online courses. Improvements and amendments are suggested.

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