Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have considered to be a potential to disseminate engineering education at scale. However, the pedagogical requirement demanded engineering student to equip with specific skillsets such as communication, interactivity, and collaboration. Yet, MOOCs are skeptical of facilitating those skills. Generally, MOOCs evaluated against accessibility and usability. These evaluations may not perceive whether the platform designs in MOOCs support to much-needed interactions and collaboration required in engineering education. We evaluated 6 MOOC platform designs under the lens of collaboration and types of interactions which occur as learner to learner, learner to instructor, learner to platform and learner to content. Evaluation criteria were derived us-ing previous frameworks and evaluations were conducted using 10 participants. Based on each criterion a matrix was formed with a weight to compare results. We found overall collaboration opportunities in platforms are significantly less than the opportunities to interact. Based on the findings we provide 5 design recommendations and provide a future direction for MOOC platform designs which en-ables facilitation to engineering education through MOOCs.
MOOC user behavior is generally studied using the data collected within platform interactions in the learning system or via outside social media platforms. It is important to understand the root causes of anomalies in MOOCs, such as the 80% attrition, less interactions within platforms and what causing the reflected behaviors beyond platforms. We study MOOC student behaviors outside the platform using ethnographic methods, mainly focusing on diary study and interviews. Two groups, 11 extreme users who have completed many MOOCs and 10 who never completed MOOC have been used to collect data. The log sheets data and interviews were analyzed using the Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) method to explore if there is a significance between these 2 groups and other qualitative comparisons to explore behavioral patterns. Our results indicated 4 behavioral patterns with insights into a significant level of learner's habits between extreme and novice users’ behaviors leading to completion or dropping. This reflects the design gaps of MOOC platforms and based on the behavioral patterns, we provide recommendations to meet the learners' needs.
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