Analysis of massive open online courses on web accessibility

Author(s):  
Ye. A. Kosova

The article discusses the results of the analysis of massive open online courses (MOOCs) on web accessibility and web accessibility in e-learning. Using the search by keywords in four MOOC aggregators and total browsing of the four Russian-language online education platforms, 38 free and 28 paid courses on the research topic were allocated. The only one course in Russian — “Web accessibility in e-learning” (Stepik platform) was detected. The following positions presented on MOOCs’ promo pages were analyzed: platform, author, target audience, duration of training, access (open / closed), cost, student’s achievement document (certificate / badge / other); training mode (independently / with instructor / other); prerequisites (starting skills). An average MOOC “portrait” in the field of web accessibility has been formed: target audience — web developers/web designers (45 % of MOOCs) or developers/teachers of online courses (24 %); prerequisites — not required (76 %); achievement document — certificate for an additional fee (55 %); platform — Coursera (26 %), Canvas (24 %) and EdX (21 %). The content of the nine MOOCs available for study was analyzed in detail. It was shown, that the content of MOOCs on the web accessibility in e-learning can vary and have different depth depending on the target audience of students, but it must include: concepts of web accessibility and universal design in learning and related WCAG guidelines; web content accessibility assessment methods; methods for developing accessible online materials.

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 157-166
Author(s):  
E. A. Kosova ◽  
M. Yu. Khalilova

The paper studies the problem of developing the massive open online courses (MOOCs) that conform to the content accessibility principles for persons with disabilities. Using the browsing of MOOCs platform catalogues, a total of 56 Russian-language free MOOCs in mathematical disciplines hosted on 5 platforms has been received. By automatic testing using Web Accessibility Checker, the accessibility of the functional and informational content of the MOOCs was evaluated. 73% of MOOCs were found to conform to the syllabus subjects “Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics”, “Discrete Mathematics” and “Algebra and Geometry”; 8 basic disciplines of higher mathematics education are not covered by online education; 96,4% of the courses have accessibility limitations, especially for people with visual impairment. Accessibility problems are related to shortcomings of the platforms and MOOC developers’ errors. The results show a weak coverage by MOOCs of the basic mathematical disciplines included in the higher education curriculum in Russia and indicate the low content accessibility of the mathematical MOOCs for students with disabilities. The results of the work imply the need for: expanding the range of MOOCs to cover all basic mathematical disciplines; troubleshooting the accessibility in existing courses (pursuant to WCAG); prescription to platforms and developers to strictly adhere to WCAG in future courses.


Author(s):  
Xiaobin Li

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the literature on massive open online course (MOOC) development in China, its accompanying practices, challenges, and opportunities. The chapter also offers recommendations derived from the literature on how to make MOOCs benefit more Chinese. To conduct this study, the author reviewed Chinese literature on MOOCs since 2012, when the first five articles on MOOCs appeared in Chinese journals, which introduced concepts and practices of Western MOOCs into China. The author also reviewed well-known English journals on online education and e-learning since 2013, when the first Chinese MOOCs appeared.


2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Archana Shrivastava ◽  
Ashish Shrivastava

Purpose This study aims to investigate the attributes of the online programme that are considered and compute their relative importance in the purchase decision. This study aims to identify the most lucrative bundling of these attributes and their levels that can be used by online education companies to craft their product design strategy to attract customers with the most attractive offering. Design/methodology/approach This research paper endeavours to identify the attributes of online education, which customers consider for making a purchase decision. Exploratory factor analysis followed by confirmatory factor analysis was used to identify the key attributes of online education programmes. This paper uses the conjoint analysis technique to identify the most preferred bundling of attributes, which online education companies can package to attract customers. Findings Based on various attributes and their respective levels, it is evident the most lucrative design for attracting customers to buy online education programmes is to provide certification from a reputed international university, which requires an investment to the tune of 3,000–5,000. The duration of four weeks with asynchronous pedagogy and access to course material vial uniform resource locator (URL) is a preferred feature. Access via a mobile application is more preferred over Web access. A phone application is known to be optimised, and most people are using mobile phones to access the internet. Online certification or degrees that are considered as valid employment qualifications were most preferred over other reasons. Originality/value There is a dearth of studies on massive open online courses (MOOCs) from a product design perspective. There is a gap in the context of the features to be included in the MOOCs package so that the customer can find more value in it, and the companies can benefit by expanding their customer base. The research question which this study endeavours to explore is what attributes consumers of MOOCs consider when making a purchase decision. This study will also find the relative importance of these attributes.


Author(s):  
Abhishek Kumar ◽  
Shweta Nishad Brahmbhatt

This chapter aims to provide an up-to-date snapshot of the current state of application called MOOCs, which are one of the subset of e-Learning. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) provide a new way of learning, which is open, participatory, distributed and lifelong. Various premier universities of the world are now offering courses in the form of MOOCs. The MHRD, Government of India has also started a MOOCs platform called SWAYAM. This chapter covers the definition of MOOCs, its features and different MOOC platforms being used for e-learning i.e. edX, Coursera, SWAYAM, Udacity.


This chapter covers the field of e-learning. The authors explain what e-learning is and what tools are currently available. The chapter will contain examples of said tools with information about whether the tools are useful for people with dyslexia. The MOOC (massive open online courses) is the most widely used and will be covered in detail. At the end of the chapter, the authors will also provide examples of emerging trends in the area of e-learning.


Author(s):  
Triloki Pant ◽  
Swati Pant

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have evolved in past decade and become one of the prominent parts of the higher education system. The MOOCs provided a promising platform to aspirants who wanted to study further to either enhance their educational status or learn new technologies. With the evolution of MOOC, many platforms started to offer such courses, and many of them are not free as these courses need to register with some nominal fee. The role and need of libraries come at this point for MOOC courses as the courses are bundled with corresponding study material. The print library needs to assist e-library so that it may be compatible with the MOOCs and corresponding resources. The technological shift from print to e-library has a great impact on e-learning followed by MOOCs; however, the issue of MOOC libraries and resources is yet to be resolved to ensure the availability to all the users. The chapter deals with the need of library for MOOCs, its structure and technology shift from print library to e-library, along with the differentiation between e-learning and MOOCs.


Author(s):  
Clare Lade ◽  
Paul Strickland ◽  
Elspeth Frew ◽  
Paul Willard ◽  
Sandra Cherro Osorio ◽  
...  

This chapter examines the ways in which teaching and training in tourism, hospitality and events have evolved and adapted to the contemporary demands of academia and industry. It explores the development of education in tourism, hospitality and events, the contemporary factors which influence teaching and learning, and discusses the rise of Massive Open Online Courses with a particular focus on their potential application within tourism, hospitality and events curriculum. The chapter concludes by providing an overview of Open Badges and their importance in education. At the time of writing, the world has been confronted by the Covid-19 global pandemic which has caused great disruption at all levels. The impact of Covid-19 is briefly addressed in this chapter as the enforcement of social distancing measures has led to a significant increase globally in online education.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Zou ◽  
Haoran Xie ◽  
Yanghui Rao ◽  
Tak-Lam Wong ◽  
Fu Lee Wang ◽  
...  

The world has encountered and witnessed the great popularity of various emerging e-learning resources such as massive open online courses (MOOCs), textbooks and videos with the development of the big data era. It is critical to understand the characteristics of users to assist them to find desired and relevant learning resources in such a large volume of resources. For example, understanding the pre-knowledge on vocabulary of learners is very prominent and useful for language learning systems. The language learning effectiveness can be significantly improved if the pre-knowledge levels of learners on vocabulary can be accurately predicted. In this research, the authors model the vocabulary of learners by extracting their history of learning documents and identify the suitable vocabulary knowledge scales (VKS) for pre-knowledge prediction. The experimental results on real participants verify that the optimal VKS and the proposed predicting model are powerful and effective.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-252
Author(s):  
Samaa Haniya ◽  
Luc Paquette

Understanding learner participation is essential to any learning environment to enhance teaching and learning, especially in large scale digital spaces, such as massive open online courses. However, there is a lack of research to fully capture the dynamic nature of massive open online courses and the different ways learners participate in these emerging massive e-learning ecologies. To fill in the research gap, this paper attempted to investigate the relationship between how learners choose to participate in a massive open online course, their initial motivation for learning, and the barriers they faced throughout the course. This was achieved through a combination of data-driven clustering approaches—to identify patterns of learner participation—and qualitative analysis of survey data—to better understand the learners’ motivation and the barriers they faced during the course. Through this study we show how, within the context of a Coursera massive open online course offered by the University of Illinois, learners with varied patterns of participation (Advanced, Balanced, Early, Limited, and Delayed Participation) reported similar motivations and barriers, but described differences in how their participation was impacted by those factors. These findings are significant to gain insights about learners’ needs which in turn serve as the basis to innovate more adaptive and personalized learning experiences and thus advance learning in these large scale environments.


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