openSAP: Learner Behavior and Activity in Self-Paced Enterprise MOOCs

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a subject of research since 2012, especially in the context of professional development and workplace learning due to their flexible schedule and format, which is a prerequisite for on the job learning. But MOOCs often do not fulfill the promise of flexible learning as it is only possible to achieve a certificate during the course runtime. An unpredictable workload and thus a lack of time often results in not showing up to a course or dropping out during the course runtime. Therefore, some platform content remains accessible even after the course runtime in self-paced mode. These courses differ from live courses as participants still can access all of the content and the discussion forum in read-only mode, but are not able to take the graded assignments and exams which are a prerequisite to achieving a certificate at the end of a course. Even though it is only possible by paying a fee to earn a graded certificate for these self-paced courses, we identified a high share of additional enrollments after the course end that suggests there is still interest from participants. Nevertheless, learning behavior in self-paced courses has not been a major subject of research, yet. This work contributes to closing this research gap by exploring the learner behavior in self-paced courses. The results show tendencies of more time-efficiency and engagement of self-paced learners under certain conditions and pave the way for further research and practical applications.

Students’ Perception Towards Learning Massive Open Online Courses on Coursera Platform: Benefits and Barriers

“…Furthermore, participants claimed that Coursera was a user-friendly and convenient platform (M = 4.86, SD = 1.664). This result was similar to findings by Yuan, Powell, and Olivier [51] and Rohloff et al [52] that showed Coursera's user interface and platform design were user-friendly and convenient, contributing to a positive learning experience for learners. Furthermore, in their research, Jordan [11] found that learners appreciate the flexibility offered by Coursera, which allows them to tailor their learning around other commitments.…”

Measuring the effects of course modularizations in online courses for life-long learners

“…The category of those courses is also referred to as instructor-paced, in opposite to self-paced courses without fixed deadlines and reduced or no support from a teaching team. Some sources indicate that learners might learn more time-efficiently in those self-paced courses and achieve slightly higher scores in quizzes (Rohloff et al, 2020). Other sources doubt the impact of the self-paced mode on learning behavior and instead point to more diverse motivations for learners to start learning (Watson et al, 2018).…”

Learner Interactions and Behavioral Patterns in Enterprise Moocs

“…Focusing on learner behavior in different Enterprise MOOCs, the project aims to develop data-driven recommendations for learning design (Ifenthaler, 2017) and course facilitation. Following on from previous research (Rohloff et al, 2020), the study seeks to (a) identify typical behavioral patterns in openSAP Enterprise MOOCs and (b) determine whether such patterns differ between courses from different topic areas. This work-in-progress report extends existing high-level findings (Şahin et al, 2021) by analyzing learner behavior at the more granular level of system interactions.…”