Does digital competence and occupational setting influence MOOC participation? Evidence from a cross-course survey

While MOOCs are recognized nowadays as a potential format for professional development and lifelong learning, little research has been conducted on the factors that influence MOOC participation of professionals and unemployed in MOOCs. Based on a framework developed earlier, we conducted a study, which focused on the influence of background variables such us digital competence, age, gender and educational level on MOOC participation. Occupational setting was considered as a moderator in the analysis of the impact of digital skills. Results of the study showed that MOOCs were an important tool for unemployed participants who were more likely to enroll in MOOCs than employed learners. MOOCs were also a way for workers who do not received employer support for other training activities to get professional development training. Results of the regression analysis showed that a person’s level of digital competence was an important predictor for enrolment in MOOCs and that specifically interaction skills were more important than information skills for participating in the MOOC context.This work has been partially funded by a tender (JRC/SVQ/2013/J.3/0035/NC) of the European Commission’s Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)

Digital Literacy Skills and MOOC Participation among Lecturers in a Private University in Nigeria

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) promote open access to learning materials, thereby, providing learning opportunities for professional development and lifelong learning. University lecturers, especially in developing countries can leverage on the opportunities provided by MOOCs for skills acquisition. Considering that studies have highlighted digital literacy skills as a determinant of MOOC participation, this study examined lecturers’ digital literacy skills and their participation in MOOCs. The study adopted a survey research design while the population of study comprised 110 lecturers from the Management and Social Sciences discipline at a private University in Nigeria. A self-developed questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection from the entire population. Data collected were subjected to analysis using simple percentages, mean score and logistic regression. The findings from the study revealed that on the overall, lecturers possessed advanced digital literacy skills ( = 3.60). Regarding the enrolment for MOOC, just 15% of the respondents had enrolled for at least a course on any of the MOOC website. Additionally, only 20% of those that enrolled for at least a course on the MOOC website indicated they actively participate in the courses they enrolled for. Lastly, the study revealed no statistically significant influence of lecturers’ digital literacy skill on their enrolment in MOOC (X2=2.35, p\u3e0.05). Conclusively, while this study has revealed that lecturers’ digital literacy skills have no influence on their MOOC participation, it also revealed that lecturers are not yet availing themselves of the opportunities for skills acquisition and knowledge update made possible by MOOCs

MOOC adaptation and translation to improve equity in participation

There is an urgent need to improve elementary and secondary school classroom practices across India and the scale of this challenge is argued to demand new approaches to teacher professional learning.  Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) represent one such approach and which, in the context of this study, is considered to provide a means by which to transcend traditional training processes and disrupt conventional pedagogic practices. This paper offers a critical review of a large-scale MOOC deployed in English, and then in Hindi, to support targeted sustainable capacity building within an education development initiative (TESS-India) across seven states in India.  The study draws on multiple sources of participant data to identify and examine features which stimulated a buzz around the MOOCs, leading to over 40,000 registrations and a completion rate of approximately 50% for each of the two MOOCs

Predicting Certification in MOOCs based on Students’ Weekly Activities

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been growing rapidly, offering low-cost knowledge for both learners and content providers. However, currently there is a very low level of course purchasing (less than 1% of the total number of enrolled students on a given online course opt to purchase its certificate). This can impact seriously the business model of MOOCs. Nevertheless, MOOC research on learners’ purchasing behaviour on MOOCs remains limited. Thus, the umbrella question that this work tackles is if learner’s data can predict their purchasing decision (certification). Our fine-grained analysis attempts to uncover the latent correlation between learner activities and their decision to purchase. We used a relatively large dataset of 5 courses of 23 runs obtained from the less studied MOOC platform of FutureLearn to: (1) statistically compare the activities of non-paying learners with course purchasers, (2) predict course certification using different classifiers, optimising for this naturally strongly imbalanced dataset. Our results show that learner activities are good predictors of course purchasibility; still, the main challenge was that of early prediction. Using only student number of step accesses, attempts, correct and wrong answers, our model achieve promising accuracies, ranging between 0.81 and 0.95 across the five courses. The outcomes of this study are expected to help design future courses and predict the profitability of future runs; it may also help determine what personalisation features could be provided to increase MOOC revenu

How is Learning Fluctuating? FutureLearn MOOCs Fine-Grained Temporal Analysis and Feedback to Teachers

Data-intensive analysis of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is popular. Researchers have been proposing various parameters conducive to analysis and prediction of student behaviour and outcomes in MOOCs, as well as different methods to analyse and use these parameters, ranging from statistics, to NLP, to ML, and even graph analysis. In this paper, we focus on patterns to be extracted, and apply systematic data analysis methods in one of the few genuinely large-scale data collection of 5 MOOCs, spread over 21 runs, on FutureLearn, a UK-based MOOCs provider, that, whilst offering a broad range of courses from many universities, NGOs and other institutions, has been less evaluated, in comparison to, e.g., its American counterparts. We analyse temporal quiz solving patterns; specifically, the less explored issue on how the first number of weeks of data predicts activities in the last weeks; we also address the classical MOOC question on the completion chance. Finally, we discuss the type of feedback a teacher or designer could receive on their MOOCs, in terms of fine-grained analysis of their material, and what personalisation could be provided to a student

Work community support in computer science MOOC courses

Tämä tutkielma on toteutettu artikkelimuotoisesti. Tavoitteet. Aikaisemmat tutkimukset ovat osoittaneet, että työllisten syyt osallistua MOOC-kursseille eroavat muista osallistujista. Syyt ovat moninaisia ja ne eroavat kurssikohtaisesti. Osallistujat kokevat myös eri tavoin kurssien vaikutukset, mutta moni osallistuja on kuvannut niiden olevan hyödyllisiä työelämän kannalta. MOOC-kurssilla opittujen asioiden hyödyntämi-seen vaikuttaa myös se, missä määrin työnantaja ja työyhteisö tukevat uusien taitojen sovel-tamisessa. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää työssä olevien syitä osallistua ICT-alan MOOC-kursseille, ja minkälaisia vaikutuksia osallistujat raportoivat kursseista. Lisäksi selvitettiin, millä tavalla työnantajan tuki on yhteydessä syihin osallistua kurssille ja koettuihin hyötyihin kurssista. Menetelmät. Tutkimuksen aineistonkeruu toteutettiin verkkokyselyllä vuonna 2019. Kyselyyn vastanneet olivat työssä olevia kurssille osallistujia (n = 589). Aineiston analyysi toteutettiin laadullisilla ja määrällisillä menetelmillä. Kyselylomakkeen avoimien vastauksien analyysi suo-ritettiin teoriaohjaavalla sisällönanalyysillä. Lomakkeen monivalintaväittämien vastauksista muodostettiin eksploratiivisella faktorianalyysilla viisi faktoria, jotka kuvasivat kurssille osallis-tumisen syitä ja vaikutuksia. Aineiston jatkoanalyysi käsitti kaksivaiheisen klusterianalyysin ja varianssianalyysin. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset. Osallistujien syyt osallistua kurssille jaettiin kuuteen luokkaan: mielenkiinto, ymmärryksen lisääminen, hyöty työhön, opintojen edistäminen, muiden suositte-lu ja joustava suoritustapa. Osallistujien kokemat vaikutukset jakautuivat myös kuuteen luokkaan: ymmärryksen lisääntyminen ja uusien taitojen oppiminen, hyöty nykyisessä työs-sä, hyöty opinnoissa, aiheen opiskelu lisää, hyöty työuralla ja kiinnostuksen lisääntyminen. Aineiston määrällinen tarkastelu osoitti, että osallistujat voitiin jakaa klusteroinnin avulla nel-jään tuen saajien profiiliin. Laajasti tuetut ja työyhteisön huomioimat kokivat vaikutukset mer-kittävämmiksi kuin työaikaa hyödyntävät ja ei-tuetut suhteessa työuran edistämiseen, ura-suunnitelmiin sekä työhön tai opiskeluun.This study has been carried out in the form of an article. Objectives. Previous research has shown that the reasons for employees attendance on MOOCs differ from other participants. There are multiple reasons for this which vary from course to course. Participants also experience the effects of the courses in differently, but many participants have described them professionally useful. Utilization of the skills learned in the MOOC course are also influenced by the extent to which the employer and work community support the application of new skills. The purpose of this study was to find out why people in the working life attend MOOC courses in the ICT-field and what kind of impacts participants report on the courses. In addition, the way in which employer support is related to the reasons for attending the course and the perceived benefits of the course was also investigated. Methods. The data collection of the study was carried out with an online survey in 2019. The respondents were employed course participants (n = 589). The analysis of the data was carried out by qualitative and quantitative methods. The analysis of the open-ended answers to the questionnaire was performed with a theory-guided content analysis. From the answers to the multiple choice statements of the form, five factors were formed by exploratory factor analysis, which described the reasons and effects of participation in the course. Further analysis of the data included two-stage cluster analysis and analysis of variance. Results and conclusions. The reasons for participants to attend the course were divided into six categories: interest, understanding, benefit for work, promotion of studies, recommendation from others, and flexible execution. The effects experienced by the participants were also divided into six categories: increased understanding and learning of new skills, benefits in current work, benefits in studies, increased study of the topic, career benefits, and increased interest. A quantitative analysis of the data showed that the participants could be divided into a profile of the four beneficiaries through clustering. Widely supported and recognized by the work community, the effects were felt to be more significant than those that utilized working time and were not supported in relation to career advancement, career plans and work or study

Digital accreditations in MOOC-based training on sustainability: Factors that influence terminal efficiency

Digital certificates in massive open online course (MOOC) learning experiences provide alternative credentials linked to lifelong learning. The Bi-National Laboratory on Smart Sustainable Energy Management and Technology Training provided the context for this research. This project was undertaken by Mexican and United States universities, businesses and governmental organisations, having granted 17,776 certifications in sustainability and 10,705 labour competence certificates. The research focused on analysing the factors that promote digital credentials, from the point of view of participant and platform characteristics, in the framework of MOOCs in energy sustainability, through the MexicoX and edX platforms. Using the ex post facto method, two validated instruments were applied to analyse motivation and self-regulation processes. A total of 4,002 useful responses were gathered from participants in 35 MOOC courses. The results account for six determinant factors for digital accreditation: perceived usefulness, self-efficacy, knowledge domain and expertise, group work disposition, achievement drive, and performance strategic thinking. We highlight implications for research on educational innovation and for educational practice in MOOCs. These data may be of interest to academics, researchers and decision-makers interested in training through distance environments. Implications for practice or policy: • Digital certifications in MOOCs are motivation for participants to successfully finish their courses, and this can be leveraged for education and research. • Course leaders need to consider that effective design and implementation of new models for MOOCs may help improve terminal efficiency. • The potential perceived benefits from training on professional performance have the greatest influence on the terminal efficiency of MOOC participants

A collaborative digital pedagogy experience in the tMOOC “Step by step”

This research analysed social MOOCs (sMOOCs), which are characterised by the involvement and the interaction of participants in a model based on intercreativity, with the final objective of transferring knowledge by an agile replicating process. The fieldwork focused on the analysis of the sMOOC “Step by Step” of the European Commission-funded Elearning, Communication and Open-data (ECO) Project, which aims to build and apply an innovative pedagogical model for the the training of e-teachers. This sMOOC reaches out to a specific academic community, providing learners with digital competences in order to transform them in e-teachers. The quantitative analysis was done via an online questionnaire. One of the most significant conclusions, which answers the research questions regarding why and how to make a successful sMOOC, is that the design of collaborative activities increases the involvement of learners with the course and the interaction between participants, independent of age but dependent on area of work. This formative process in turn generates transfer of learning together with the embedded pedagogical transformation in e-teachers. This validates the addition of the transferMOOC (tMOOC) model to the existing typologies of MOOCs

Exploring MOOC Learners’ Behavioural Patterns Considering Age, Gender and Number of Course Enrolments: Insights for Improving Educational Opportunities

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) now offer a variety of options for everyone to obtain a high-quality education. The purpose of this study is to better understand the behaviours of MOOC learners and provide some insights for taking actions that benefit larger learner groups. Accordingly, 2,288,559 learners’ behaviours on 174 MITx courses were analysed. The results show that MOOCs are more attractive to the elderly, male, and highly educated groups of learners. Learners’ performance improves as they register for more courses and improve their skills and experiences on MOOCs. The findings suggest that, in the long run, learners’ adaptation to MOOCs will significantly improve the potential benefits of the MOOCs. Hence, MOOCs should continue by better understanding their learners and providing alternative instructional designs by considering different learner groups. MOOC providers’ decision-makers may take these findings into account when making operational decisions