Design Science MOOC : a framework of good practice pedagogy in a novel E-Learning platform eLDa

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have taken higher educational establishments of the western world by storm with large amounts of funding diverted into developing and delivering a wide variety of online, massparticipation courses. Many claims have been made relating to their potential for providing free, high quality education to everyone, no matter what their situation or geographical position. In practice however, there is little evidence as yet of the desired democratisation of education, with lack of support for students, an absence of pedagogy and very high drop out rates. This project is concerned with MOOC evaluation. It aims to understand the reasons why students drop out and to implement and assess the effectiveness of measures to address specific areas relating to attrition. The theoretical framework of this study is applying design science research methodology (DSRM) in creating and developing a learning tool as an instrument for the research investigation. My research goal is on designing, implementing and evaluating solutions to mitigate these problems. Enabled by developing network and Cloud technologies, MOOCs are credited with the potential to provide free, open, high quality (yet low cost) education for large classes. However, current efforts are lacking in the necessary pedagogy and framework necessary to provide suitable materials for different learners and supporting individuals in their different learning paths. This is one of the major contributory factors to the extremely high drop out rates currently observed. This research exposes the learners’ choice of studies from the perspective of analytics and survey responses. It further described the features in the tool and the good practice to be considered while developing an online learning syste

Data Visualization in Online Educational Research

This chapter presents a general and practical guideline that is intended to introduce the traditional visualization methods (word clouds), and the advanced visualization methods including interactive visualization (heatmap matrix) and dynamic visualization (dashboard), which can be applied in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research. This chapter also presents the potentials of each visualization method for assisting researchers in choosing the most appropriate one in the web-based research study. Graduate students, educational researchers, and practitioners can contribute to take strengths from each visual analytical method to enhance the reach of significant research findings into the public sphere. By leveraging the novel visualization techniques used in the web-based research study, while staying true to the analytical methods of research design, graduate students, educational researchers, and practitioners will gain a broader understanding of big data and analytics for data use and representation in the field of education

The Importance of Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics for Improving Teaching and Learning: An Issue Brief

“The words educational data mining and learning analytics are frequently used interchangeably, despite their being an increase in their investigation and implementation. This may be as a result of the fact that both areas have similar conceptual components. One way to ensure precision, homogeneity, and consistency It aims to pinpoint themes that are similar to and different from one other in the two domains as they develop. This a topic modelling study of papers on educational data mining and learning analytics was carried out in the elucidate the two areas' respective themes. In particular, we used structural topic modelling to find the two domains' subjects from the abstracts. For instructional purposes, we use structural topic modelling on N 1 4192 articles. For both educational data and survey data, we infer five-topic models analytics for mining and learning. While there may be disciplinary variations in research, our findings show that beyond their various lineages, there is no evidence to indicate a clear separation between the two disciplines. the area of educational research on the uses of advanced statistical methods is trending toward convergence for improving teaching and learning, discover how to mine massive data streams for insights that may be put to use. Over the past five years, both areas have converged on a growing emphasis on student behaviour. This study topic has advanced greatly, and a variety of related words, including Academic Analytics, Institutional Analytics, Teaching Analytics, Data-Driven Education, Data-Driven Decision-Making in Education, Big Data in Education, and Educational Data Science, are now used in the paper. The main publications, significant turning points, cycle of knowledge discovery, primary educational settings, specialised tools, freely accessible datasets, widely used methodologies, primary goals, and anticipated trends in this field of study are reviewed to provide the state of the art at this time

Multimedia learning: principles of learning and instructional improvement in Massive, Open, Online Courses (MOOCS)

With good reason, many initial Massive, Open, Online Course (MOOC) studies conducted in the first three years of widespread MOOC hype and adoption have focused on retention rates and completion issues. No longer a new modality, many of the retention questions have now been answered as researchers provided skeptics with myriad examples of success stories and better perspectives on how to examine retention and student success in the massive space [Koller, D., Ng, A., Do, C., & Chen, Z. (2013); Kizilcec, R., Piech, C., & Schneider, E. (2013); Reich, J. (2014); Zheng, S., Rosson, M., Shih, P., & Carroll, J. (2015)]. To fulfill the promise and potential for MOOCs, the enormity of the scale must complement, rather than limit high quality learning outcomes. There has been extensive research (Richard Mayer, et al.) on enhanced learning using multimedia (words and pictures) presentations in clinical settings -- can we see the same success in a MOOC field setting? Consistent with the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML) and Richard E. Mayer’s research with colleagues (Mayer & Bove, 1996; Harp & Mayer, 1998; Moreno & Mayer, 2000; Mayer & Jackson, 2005; Mayer, 2009), I found that learners in the Fall 2015 MOOC offering of “Microeconomic Principles” were able to build more meaningful connections between words and pictures than with words alone as reflected in their performance on practice quizzes across three different course modules. This finding has a number of implications for instructional design. First, we see that designing assessment feedback to only include verification feedback (acknowledgement of only a correct or incorrect answer) does not produce any positive impact on performance and should not be considered a useful treatment for students other than to simply verify their progress. Second, utilizing any type of instant elaboration feedback has an immediate impact on student performance. A text narrative providing the student with additional information about the misunderstood subject matter produces better student performance results, up to 3.4 times better, than a student who did not receive any elaboration feedback (text or multimedia). Third, designing quiz feedback to instantly (dynamically) deploy a multimedia video that covers the topic has the greatest impact on learning performance. Students who had the opportunity to learn the concept visually through the use of pictures, video and audio performed 5.3 times better than a student who did not receive multimedia feedback. This was true of all learners independent of age, gender, level of education and English-language ability. It was also true across four different types of questions reflecting the first four levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. There are a number of follow-up studies that will need to be conducted (discussed later in the dissertation), but these are important findings in a quasi-new delivery format that is still finding its bearings. The results are particularly significant in the MOOC space where scale is observed as an advantage despite its nuanced challenges. In a course with tens of thousands of learners, it is not possible for the instructor, or even teaching assistants and community forum managers to provide real-time content feedback. Spending more time on the already detailed design process for MOOCs would only be worthwhile if we had empirical evidence of actual impact on learner performance. As I conclude by discussing where massive, open, online courses may be headed next, multimedia quiz feedback can now be seen as one of a host of emerging design strategies in the massive space that promotes learning while embracing the scale of the course environment

Centralized, Decentralized, Distributed: Disruptive Technology in Distance Education from Sunrise Semester to Present-Day MOOCs

Lessons from early academic television courses from the 1950s guide an assessment of current disruptive technologies that shape Massive Open Online Courses (known as MOOCs) and other informal online learning opportunities today. This dissertation explores some of the unique contributing factors that led to the creation of Sunrise Semester (1957-1982), a popular network television program co-produced by New York University and CBS that offered college credit to viewers. Despite the fact that the show aired at dawn and rarely included one-on-one interactions with professors, Sunrise Semester aired for nearly twenty-five years and attracted a devoted viewership of over two million daily viewers at its peak. The show’s earliest fans were largely female and revealed their identities as housewives, homemakers or “hausfraus” in fan letters written to their pre-dawn professors. Now housed in the NYU Archives, their letters reveal many of the complex contradictions between nascent feminism, television, and power in post-World War II era America. As present day practitioners look to utilize MOOCs as an outreach strategy to bring educational access to scale, innovations from the “golden age” of television offer crucial lessons in how to attract and maintain non-traditional audiences

The muffled accomplishments: South Asian digital learners’ invisible footsteps in MOOCS

Online education has become a popular tool for learning and it has gained incredible positive publicity with the emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Learning through MOOCs has gained momentum over the last few years as prestigious universities and their esteemed faculty members offer more and more courses online. Millions have enrolled in MOOCs and they come not only from developed countries but also many developing countries. India has the second highest enrollment in MOOCs globally. It is imperative to understand the MOOCs user population from developing countries and more specifically, from South Asian countries. MOOCs have been touted as a plausible solution to the developing world’s lack of access to quality higher education because anyone can access the information, as long as they have access to the Internet. However, there have been limited research focused on how MOOCs has changed access and quality of education for students in the Global South. The goal of this research was to understand, interpret and explain the expectations and experiences of the South Asian female learners who have enrolled in at least one MOOC. This study also examines how MOOCs have impacted their personal, academic, and professional lives. It was a qualitative study that incorporated three–phase data collection and triangulation of that data. The researcher’s observations from the MOOCs experience was a backdrop to the development of the data collection tools and the process of data gathering and data analysis. The use of three sources of data for analysis was one of the most significant aspects of this study as it showed how the incorporation of different data sources can provide a more holistic understanding of the online learners when data is collected through online means and there is no scope for in-person interaction or observations of informants. The study findings show that MOOCs have reached a population in developing countries who are self-motivated to learn but do not have access to the most modern and useful tools and resources in their country or educational institutions. The study also shows that MOOCs although have not been able to reach the people who do not have access to higher education, it has greatly impacted and influenced actions and decisions of South Asian female learners who have actively participated in MOOCs in the past. This study highlights the need to increase awareness of MOOCs platforms so that more self-motivated developing country learners with limited resources can access and learn from these extremely rich sources of knowledge and information. It also suggests that these learners can play the bridging role by internalizing the information from MOOCs and then becoming knowledge providers – by bringing the acquired knowledge to the learners in their own country who cannot directly benefit from MOOCs due to limited access to Internet and technology, inadequate computer skills and limited competency in English

Open Education

"This insightful collection of essays explores the ways in which open education can democratise access to education for all. It is a rich resource that offers both research and case studies to relate the application of open technologies and approaches in education settings around the world. Global in perspective, this book argues strongly for the value of open education in both the developed and developing worlds. Through a mixture of theoretical and practical approaches, it demonstrates that open education promotes ideals of inclusion, diversity, and social justice to achieve the vision of education as a fundamental human right. A must-read for practitioners, policy-makers, scholars and students in the field of education.

A Conceptual Framework for Integrating TPB With Context-Relevant Variables to Predict e-Learning Success During the Covid -19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the digitalization of some aspects of our lives including education. However, as we witness a phenomenal rise in the demand for online learning, the decision to migrate to online learning platforms is dependent on the learner’s preparedness to embrace it. The objective of this study is to conceptualize a framework that measures the tendency of learners to adopt online learning in an era characterised by so many disruptions. To do this, we adopt document analysis on databases such as SCOPUS, Web of Science, EBSCO and Google Scholar using Boolean search engines; AND, OR, NOT, *, (), ‘’’’, +, -, &lt;,&gt;. mainly on current scientific manuscripts through the use of the keywords “e-learning”, “theory of planned behaviour”, “Covid 19”, “distance learning”, “environmental factors” and “academic technology adoption”. Subsequently, we integrate the theory of planned behaviour with other context-relevant variables as the bases of the study, and conceptualise a framework to predict e-learning success in the covid-19 era. This study contributes to the scientific body of knowledge on e-learning, particularly from the perspective of a forced mass adoption of e-learning occasioned by a global pandemic.</p