Evaluation of the UNED MOOCs Implementation: Demographics, Learners' Opinions and Completion Rates

Abstract

The paper is a study about the MOOC experience at the Spanish National University of Distance Education (UNED), where we have collected initial and final information about learners' profiles and opinions, as well as enrolment, completion and certification rates. It is a survey-based study covering 17 MOOCs offered in UNED's own platform, and collects information from a sample of more than 24000 learners (initial survey) and 2003 learners (final survey). The paper first presents an overview of the MOOC experience at UNED, introducing the main features of these courses. Afterwards, it focuses on the methodology used in the study and in the information gathered in the second edition of UNED MOOCs, which took place from November 2013 until March 2014. Learners' average profile is a Spanish female, approximately 37 years old, with a University degree, and generally employed. For many of the participants, UNED MOOCs were their first experiences with these sorts of courses, and the main reasons for enrolment were the course topic and the perceived usefulness for professional development. The expectations regarding completion and certification where initially very high, but completion rates remain below 14%. In the final survey, the overall experience in the MOOCs and the different tools used in the courses were highly valued by learners, except the support figures (curator, facilitator, peers), which received lower ratings. These findings are of interest for the institution and further research, refining learning analytics, is encouraged.

Exploring Demographics and Students’ Motivation as Predictors of Completion of a Massive Open Online Course

“…In spite of the numerous studies conducted to study learner motivations for enrolling in MOOCs (Belanger & Thornton, 2013;Gil-Jaurena, Callejo-Gallego, & Agudo, 2017;Konstan et al, 2015;Macleod, Haywood, Woodgate, & Alkhatnai, 2014;Radford, Coningham, & Horn, 2015;Zhong, Zhang, Li, & Liu, 2016), only a few of them have investigated the influence of motivation on MOOC completion. Konstan, Walker, Brooks, Brown, and Ekstrand (2015) concluded that most of the reasons that learners enrolled in a MOOC, such as university/instructor-related reasons or access to educational institutions-related reasons, did not affect course completion, but that learners' self-reported intention of completing the MOOC was a significant predictor of course completion.…”

Spanish Adult Students’ Intention- Behaviour Toward MOOCs During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The first part included similar questions found in other moocs at uned Abierta to obtain data regarding students' initial intentions, and therefore, test validity was confirmed. The second part of the questionnaire, at the end of the course, included common questions found in other uned mooc to test students' satisfaction with respect to course contents (Gil-Jaurena et al, 2017). In addition, we also included similar questions to those found in the first part of the questionnaire to test whether respondents' initial intentions were reaffirmed after taking the mooc.…”

Evaluation of a MOOC to promote information literacy: first evaluation results

“…A common approach is to use questionnaires on the user experience. A study about the MOOC experience at the Spanish National University of Distance Education used surveys covering 17 MOOCs offered by the university's own platform to analyse completion rates and the overall user experience (Gil-Jaurena et al, 2017). For an Australian study, conducted in cooperation with the OpenLearning platform, an evaluation form was embedded directly into the MOOCs to collect and analyse participants' attitudes and the perceived usefulness (Rawlings et al, 2017).…”