Predictors of Retention and Achievement in a Massive Open Online Course

Greene, Jeffrey A.; Oswald, C.; Pomerantz, Jeffrey

doi:10.3102/0002831215584621

Cited by 187 publications

(168 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Course material was progressively made available to participants, contingent upon their completion of relevant assignments. The discrepancy between the number of registered participants and the numbers of active participants who stay engaged with the course is consistent with documented patterns of MOOC engagement at large [35][36][37].…”

Section: Study Participantsmentioning

confidence: 76%

Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education

Kaul

Aksela

2018

Education Sciences

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Abstract:One of the greatest ways to transform education systems is to develop community-centered professional supports for in-service teachers. Given the rise of distance learning platforms such as massive open online courses (MOOCs), there is a growing potential to deliver such supports at scale. The community of inquiry (CoI) framework models the asynchronous, text-based communication that defines educational experiences within such collaborative learning environments; however, methods of CoI transcript analysis must be improved. This paper uses the University of Helsinki's 2016 MOOC, Sustainable Energy in Education, as a case study on how the CoI framework can be used to characterize the educational experience of in-service teachers in distance learning environments. Using the CoI coding protocol, this paper employs a transcript analysis of the discussion forum posts on the MOOC (n = 78), and applies improved measures of reliability in order to understand the capacity of CoI transcript analysis to reliably define online learning experiences. The findings suggest that, while the CoI framework is able to characterize some elements of online learning communities, more work needs to be done to ensure the framework captures the more nuanced elements of such educational experiences, such as the effects of course design and the relative engagement of course participants.

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Section: Study Participantsmentioning

confidence: 76%

Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education

Kaul

Aksela

2018

Education Sciences

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“…In this paper, Auditors have been defined as those students whose course participation metrics are indistinguishable from those who complete a course with a Certified status and high grade. The auditing group (20,000+) is larger than the Certified group (17,700). Auditor use of online resources is approximately at the same level as Certified use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Duke Bioelectricity 6 paper shows data which may be interpreted to infer that the number of auditors in a MOOC is double the number of "certified" completers. The Duke paper, and others such as Greene 17 , describe MOOC attrition curves plots. From these graphs and associated information, it is possible to compute the number of auditors within the Bioelectricity class.…”

Section: Previous Edx Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine Learning Regression Analysis of EDX 2012-13 Data for Identifying the Auditors Use Case

Mueller¹,

Weber²

2017

IJITE

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“…Although these studies have been useful in characterizing patterns of engagement, they are less informative as to why students choose to engage or disengage with online courses. Affective elements such as motivation and intent to complete play a key role in engagement in online courses (Greene, Oswald, & Pomerantz, 2015;Reich, 2014;Wang & Baker, 2015), but course-specific factors can influence engagement. Studies indicate that the modality of online content delivery can influence both learning outcomes and engagement (Türkay, 2016).…”

Section: Optimizing Engagement and Learning In Online Coursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanations and Interactives Improve Subjective Experiences in Online Courseware

Thomas

Türkay

Parker

2017

IRRODL

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As online courses become more common, practitioners are in need of clear guidance on how to translate best educational practices into web-based instruction. Moreover, student engagement is a pressing concern in online courses, which often have high levels of dropout. Our goals in this work were to experimentally study routine instructional design choices and to measure the effects of these choices on students' subjective experiences (engagement, mind wandering, and interest) in addition to objective learning outcomes. Using randomized controlled trials, we studied the effect of varying instructional activities (namely, assessment and a step-through interactive) on participants' learning and subjective experiences in a lesson drawn from an online immunology course. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Results showed that participants were more likely to drop out when they were in conditions that included assessment. Moreover, assessment with minimal feedback (correct answers only) led to the lowest subjective ratings of any experimental condition. Some of the negative effects of assessment were mitigated by the addition of assessment explanations or a summary interactive. We found no differences between the experimental conditions in learning outcomes, but we did find differences between groups in the accuracy of score predictions. Finally, prior knowledge and self-rated confusion were predictors of post-test scores. Using student behavior data from the same online immunology course, we corroborated the importance of assessment explanations. Our results have a clear implication for course developers: the addition of explanations to assessment questions is a simple way to improve online courses.

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Predictors of Retention and Achievement in a Massive Open Online Course

Cited by 187 publications

References 34 publications

Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education

Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education

Machine Learning Regression Analysis of EDX 2012-13 Data for Identifying the Auditors Use Case

Explanations and Interactives Improve Subjective Experiences in Online Courseware

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