Engaged learning in MOOCs: a study using the UK Engagement Survey

This study sets out to answer the question: how can we know what learning is taking place in MOOCs? From this starting point, the study then looks to identify MOOCs’ potential for future use in HE? Using a specially-adapted version of the HEA’s UK Engagement Survey (UKES) 2014, the research team at the University of Southampton asked participants who had completed one of two MOOCs delivered through the FutureLearn platform and designed and run at the university about their experiences as learners and their engagement with their respective MOOC. The results also show that both of the MOOCs were successful in enabling many participants to feel engaged in intellectual endeavours such as forming new understandings, making connections with previous knowledge and experience, and exploring knowledge actively, creatively and critically. In response to the open access approach – in which no one taking part in a MOOC is required to have a minimum level of previous educational achievement - the report shows that persistent learners engaged, regardless of prior educational attainment

Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas

Using a dataset containing nearly 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 community and technical college students in Washington State, this study examines how well students adapt to the online environment in terms of their ability to persist and earn strong grades in online courses relative to their ability to do so in face-to-face courses. While all types of students in the study suffered decrements in performance in online courses, some struggled more than others to adapt: males, younger students, Black students, and students with lower grade point averages. In particular, students struggled in subject areas such as English and social science, which was due in part to negative peer effects in these online courses

Three Essays on the Impact of Cost-saving Strategies on Student Outcomes

For two decades, state financing of higher education has been on the decline and the situation has exacerbated since the onset of the economic recession, where the US state systems have resorted to a substantial cut of funding for higher education. Faced with the challenges of limited resources for financial pressure and an increasing demand, community colleges either have taken or are considering taking a series of cost-saving strategies. Some of the most prominent trends seen in the past decades include sharp expansions in distance education offerings through online coursework, an increasing reliance on part-time adjunct faculty, and a heated discussion about slashing expenditures on remedial education. Yet, many researchers argue that these strategies might be implemented at the cost of poorer educational quality and less desirable student outcomes. My dissertation assesses the impacts of several important strategies that community colleges are engaged in an era of financial constraints on student academic outcomes and educational equality. In Chapter One, Shanna Smith Jaggars and I examine the fast growth of distance education and its impacts on student outcomes relative to traditional face-to-face delivery format. Based on a large administrative data set from Washington State, we found robust negative estimates for online learning in terms of both course persistence and course grade. While all types of students in the study suffered decrements in performance in online courses, we also identified strong variations across subpopulations and academic subject areas. Chapter Two is prompted by the spiraling increase in part-time faculty hiring in open-access two-year community colleges. Based data from a large community college system, I identified a positive impact of taking one's first course in a subject area on his contemporaneous course performance but negative impacts on subsequent course outcomes and enrollment patterns. Finally, Chapter Three is inspired by the heated debate related to the effectiveness of college remediation. Exploiting discontinuities in students' probability of receiving remediation both around the college-level cut off and the cut off for short versus long sequence of remediation, I found small and insignificant impacts of remediation for students on the margin of needing remediation, but significantly negative influence on students receiving long sequence of remediation compared to those who received short sequence. These results suggest that some cost-saving strategies that colleges are recently engaged may bring negative impacts on student learning outcomes, and therefore policymakers and college administrators may need to take steps to ensure the quality of education offered to students before enacting policies that would incentivize an accelerated expansion of online enrollments, and overreliance on adjunct instructors. Additionally, the insignificant and negative impact of remediation suggests that the huge investment in remediation may not have been effectively utilized to serve its purpose and colleges will need to explore ways to improve its effectiveness

Student Demographic And Academic Characteristics That Predict Community College Student Success In Online Courses

Online student success is a concern for higher education institutions especially community colleges with open enrollment admission. This study analyzed online student success using online GPA (dependent variable) and both demographic and academic characteristics of online students (independent variables) to determine which characteristics significantly correlated to and predicted student success in online courses. The sample included an unduplicated count of 4,046 online students enrolled in at least one online course during fall 2015 and spring 2016 at a public, Midwestern community college. Six research questions and twelve hypotheses were used to determine which independent variables led online students to a higher online GPA. Analysis was completed separately for students taking at least one online course and students taking only online courses using descriptive statistics, t tests, correlation coefficients, cross-tabulations, and logistic regression. The most significant finding was a large, positive relationship between cumulative GPA and online GPA. There was also a significant, positive correlation between online GPA and cumulative credit hours as well as online GPA and number of online courses taken. There was a significant, negative correlation between online GPA and course withdrawals. Additionally, a higher online GPA was identified for older, female, and White online students while a lower online GPA was found for Black online students. Findings also indicated a significant difference in online GPA for both online student groups based on computer experience and remedial coursework along with a significant difference in online GPA just for online only students based on financial aid

Pedagogy in Online Graduate Business Learning Environments

Many higher education institutions have decided to offer graduate business online courses and full degree online programs. Offering a quality education for graduate business students online is of concern to business school professors, administrators, and students. Instructors are concerned with the content, delivery method, and level of student achievement. Instructional design support for the online instructors is often lacking in the online curriculum and pedagogy, leaving the faculty with a great deal of freedom to create their own course content, structure, and delivery without any formal distance education training. For this reason, it is imperative for universities to establish online best practices guidelines. This study examined the pedagogical beliefs and best practices of professors who are considered experts in the field of teaching in online graduate business programs. The panel was composed of thirty-six business professors from various AACSB accredited universities who have taught online graduate business courses. The Delphi method was employed to examine the study’s research questions given that the subjects were geographically dispersed across three countries. Iterative questioning allowed professors to give meaningful input on pedagogical best practices for online teaching; the anonymity afforded by the method enabled leaders to freely express their perspectives. Data collected indicated that professors who teach online need support from a central location on their campus so that they can master the technology provided to them by the university, and more importantly, learn the pedagogical principles of teaching online. There was a clear consensus that incentives to professors and a top-down commitment would encourage faculty to discuss online pedagogy with their colleagues, but also design, develop and implement more online graduate business courses. Professors identified what they believed to be the ideal number of students for an online graduate business course, and set forth guidelines for building rapport with students and for electronic mail correspondence with students. Findings also included the most ineffective pedagogical principles that professors employ when teaching online

The Role of the School Psychologist in K-12 Online and Blended Learning Environments

With the appropriate preparation and training, school psychologists are uniquely suited to provide support within the K-12 online learning environment for students, teachers, administrators, and families. The preparation and training needs at the level of graduate training and professional development are highlighted. Specific emphasis is placed on the adaptation of the school psychologist’s functions in the areas of consultation, intervention, assessment, and counseling. Additionally, the development of better credentialing models for interstate service delivery and the need for empirical research related to school safety are discussed

\u27A Ship Leading Itself ... \u27: A Study of Two Methods to Teach the Public Speaking Course

With the advent of the Internet, more and more classes are being moved to that medium. This study looks at using that medium to assist classroom instruction. Teaching the Public Speaking class with online-assistance requires placing the majority of the content online and using classroom instruction for individual conferences between the student and instructor to prepare for presentations. This study investigated the outcomes of this method of instruction and compared them to the traditional lecture/discussion method of teaching the class. The outcomes investigated concerned student perceptions of course satisfaction and preparedness for speeches, their willingness to communicate, and their immediacy with the instructor (verbal, nonverbal and total immediacy). An instrument was developed and used in this study to measure skills needed to become information competent. A Post Hoc analysis examined student perceptions of learning the course concepts, instruction in the course, and communication with the instructor. With 232 participants (147 traditional and 85 online-assisted), all hypotheses were supported. Students\u27 perception of their willingness to communicate and information competency increased through the course. Online-assisted students perceived greater increases in their willingness to communicate and information competency skills compared to traditional students. Also, online-assisted students felt greater immediacy (verbal, nonverbal, and total) with the instructor than the traditional students. Finally online-assisted students reported greater course satisfaction and preparedness for presentations. In the Post Hoc analysis, online-assisted students perceived a greater perception of learning, better instruction of concepts, and better communication than the traditional students reported. The study introduced a new instrument to quantitatively measure information competency, the Information Competency Assessment Instrument. The instrument was found to be very reliable. In a validity study, it was found to have good content and predictive validity. Conclusion, limitations and future research were discussed. Also, recommendations were suggested for those that would be interested in using the online-assisted method to teach the Public Speaking course

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse