scholarly journals The Role of A/B Tests in the Study of Large-Scale Online Learning

Author(s):  
Alexander Olof Savi ◽  
Joseph Jay Williams ◽  
Gunter Maris ◽  
Han van der Maas

Although large-scale online learning increasingly succeeds in attracting learners worldwide, to date it fails to deliver on its promise. We first show the immense popularity of online learning and discuss its (unsatisfactory) effectiveness. We then discuss large-scale online randomized controlled experiments (A/B tests) as a powerful complimentary means to enable the desired leap forward. Although these experiments are widely and intensively used for web page optimization, and are slowly being adopted by the online learning community, their use, benefits, and challenges have only limitedly seeped through to the larger learning community. We summarize existing efforts in employing A/B tests in online learning, argue that such tests should take into account the typical nature of (online) learning, and encourage the use of knowledge from the various learning sciences to identify interventions that promise improved learning. We finally discuss both the limitations and promises of A/B tests, and show how such tests can ultimately contribute to learning that is tailored to each individual learner. The insights and priorities that arise from this overview and synthesis of A/B tests in online learning may help advance and direct the field.

2014 ◽  
pp. 1946-1962
Author(s):  
Eunice Sari ◽  
Cher Ping Lim

This chapter describes the role of the online learning community named OLC4TPD (Online Learning Community for Teacher Professional Development) in building professional capacity of Indonesian teachers. OLC4TPD was contextually built to address the challenges of teacher professionalism in Indonesia, which has contributed significantly to students' learning outcome. As an independent informal online learning community, OLC4TPD plays a unique role in schools' professional learning community. The authors investigate the role of OLC4TPD from different pillars that hold the professional learning community edifice. The four pillars are (1) collaborative teamwork, (2) teacher capacity, (3) leadership capacity, and (4) professional development. The chapter explains this unique role by showcasing several authentic examples on how OLC4TPD has improved professional capacity of teachers and teacher educators in an Indonesian context.


Author(s):  
Eunice Sari ◽  
Cher Ping Lim

This chapter describes the role of the online learning community named OLC4TPD (Online Learning Community for Teacher Professional Development) in building professional capacity of Indonesian teachers. OLC4TPD was contextually built to address the challenges of teacher professionalism in Indonesia, which has contributed significantly to students’ learning outcome. As an independent informal online learning community, OLC4TPD plays a unique role in schools’ professional learning community. The authors investigate the role of OLC4TPD from different pillars that hold the professional learning community edifice. The four pillars are (1) collaborative teamwork, (2) teacher capacity, (3) leadership capacity, and (4) professional development. The chapter explains this unique role by showcasing several authentic examples on how OLC4TPD has improved professional capacity of teachers and teacher educators in an Indonesian context.


Author(s):  
Frances Bell ◽  
Elena Zaitseva ◽  
Danuta Zakrzewska

Our emphasis in this chapter is on the sustainability of online educational communities, particularly the role that evaluation has to play in promoting sustainability. From the literature on online communities and evaluation of technology, we select and extend models of online community and technology acceptance that inform and enable the design and evaluation of sustainable online educational communities. Sustainability is a key issue that highlights the sociotechnical nature of these communities. Collaboration Across Borders is an online learning community that has received EU Socrates-Minerva funding to establish international collaboration between tutors and students and investigate sustainability of online learning communities. We present a case study of the development of the CAB community and its associated portal http://moodle.cabweb.net as a chronology of significant events. We then chart the evaluation process, using examples of tools and data to highlight the role of evaluation in the development of CABWEB and the sustainability of the CAB Community. Finally, we offer practical advice to those who wish to develop online learning communities, either small-scale collaborations between two groups of students or international networks of students and tutors.


Author(s):  
Xin (Shane) Wang ◽  
Shijie Lu ◽  
X I Li ◽  
Mansur Khamitov ◽  
Neil Bendle

Abstract Persuasion success is often related to hard-to-measure characteristics, such as the way the persuader speaks. To examine how vocal tones impact persuasion in an online appeal, this research measures persuaders’ vocal tones in Kickstarter video pitches using novel audio mining technology. Connecting vocal tone dimensions with real-world funding outcomes offers insight into the impact of vocal tones on receivers’ actions. The core hypothesis of this paper is that a successful persuasion attempt is associated with vocal tones denoting (1) focus, (2) low stress, and (3) stable emotions. These three vocal tone dimensions—which are in line with the stereotype content model—matter because they allow receivers to make inferences about a persuader’s competence. The hypotheses are tested with a large-scale empirical study using Kickstarter data, which is then replicated in a different category. In addition, two controlled experiments provide evidence that perceptions of competence mediate the impact of the three vocal tones on persuasion attempt success. The results identify key indicators of persuasion attempt success and suggest a greater role for audio mining in academic consumer research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-61
Author(s):  
Kai Wang ◽  
Yu Zhang

AbstractPurposeOpinion mining and sentiment analysis in Online Learning Community can truly reflect the students’ learning situation, which provides the necessary theoretical basis for following revision of teaching plans. To improve the accuracy of topic-sentiment analysis, a novel model for topic sentiment analysis is proposed that outperforms other state-of-art models.Methodology/approachWe aim at highlighting the identification and visualization of topic sentiment based on learning topic mining and sentiment clustering at various granularity-levels. The proposed method comprised data preprocessing, topic detection, sentiment analysis, and visualization.FindingsThe proposed model can effectively perceive students’ sentiment tendencies on different topics, which provides powerful practical reference for improving the quality of information services in teaching practice.Research limitationsThe model obtains the topic-terminology hybrid matrix and the document-topic hybrid matrix by selecting the real user’s comment information on the basis of LDA topic detection approach, without considering the intensity of students’ sentiments and their evolutionary trends.Practical implicationsThe implication and association rules to visualize the negative sentiment in comments or reviews enable teachers and administrators to access a certain plaint, which can be utilized as a reference for enhancing the accuracy of learning content recommendation, and evaluating the quality of their services.Originality/valueThe topic-sentiment analysis model can clarify the hierarchical dependencies between different topics, which lay the foundation for improving the accuracy of teaching content recommendation and optimizing the knowledge coherence of related courses.


Author(s):  
J. M. Garg ◽  
Dinesh Valke ◽  
Max Overton

This chapter introduces the reader to a sample ‘User driven learning environment’ created in an online community with a special interest centred on trees and plants. It traces the development of an online learning community through the lived experiences and thoughts of its founding members and also includes conversational learning experiences of other users to illustrate the process of ‘user driven learning’ in online communities. It illustrates innovative sense making methodologies utilized by group members to create a more meaningful ‘User driven learning environment’ while simultaneously contributing in a positive way to create information resources at no cost along with creating awareness & scientific temper among members.


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