Toward Emotionally Accessible Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

This paper outlines an approach to evaluating the emotional content of three Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) using the affective computing approach of prosody detection on two different text-to-speech voices in conjunction with human raters judging the emotional content of course text. The intent of this work is to establish the potential variation on the emotional delivery of MOOC material through synthetic voice

Auditing the accessibility of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

The outcome from the research being reported in this paper is the design of an accessibility audit to evaluate Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for accessibility and to arrive at solutions and adaptations that can meet user needs. This accessibility audit includes expert-based heuristic evaluations and user-based evaluations of the MOOC platforms and individual courses

Statement on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Statement prepared by Felmon Davis and D. E. Wittkower in consultation with the American Philosophical Association’s committee on philosophy and computers

Are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) pedagogically innovative?

While claims about pedagogic innovation in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are common, most reports provide no evidence to justify those claims. This paper reports on a survey aimed at exploring how different stakeholders describe MOOCs, focusing on whether they would consider them pedagogically innovative, and if so, why. Respondents (n = 106) described MOOCs primarily as free, openly accessible online courses that attract large numbers of participants. Views on pedagogic innovation fell into three categories: 1) MOOCs are pedagogically innovative (15.1%). Explanations referred to the massiveness, openness and connectivism. None of the participants offered a clear definition of or criteria for pedagogic innovation. 2) MOOCs are not pedagogically innovative (84.9%). More than half of the respondents added an unsolicited opinion, including strong criticisms of MOOCs. 3) MOOCs may or may not be pedagogically innovative. The evidence suggests that caution should be exercised when characterising MOOCs as pedagogically innovative

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) behind the scenes

Research literature on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is still limited and tends to focus on the learner perspective. This paper reports on the experiences of ten UK-based individuals involved in designing, developing, or delivering MOOCs (learning technologists, coordinators, designers, course builders or facilitators). We focus on the following key areas: 1) reasons to offer MOOCs, 2) design, creation and delivery processes, 3) attainment and course evaluation, and 4) challenges and recommendations for the future. Findings show that MOOCs are usually collaboratively created to “follow the trend”, increase student enrolments, repurpose existing materials and/or address an international audience. The role of the teacher (also in the form of student moderators) centers on maintaining discussions on track. Evaluations of MOOC usually lack agreed indicators of success

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): a Deweyan critique

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Education. Johannesburg, March 2016.“Free quality education for anyone, anywhere” (Khan, 2012:1) is the proclamation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) the world over. There can be no denying that such a proclamation is enticing and exciting. It seems to be intuitively correct that the technology and hyper connectivity that defines this postmodern era should also radically change the way in which education is conducted. In my research I seek to test the authenticity and strength of this claim. To do so I have 1) analysed a number of primary texts from the creators of various MOOCs in order to understand their pedagogy (andragogy); 2) synthesised a number of principles of education from two primary texts published by John Dewey in order to create a theoretical framework; and finally 3) utilised said framework to test the MOOCean conception of education. Throughout the research, I also appeal to multiple secondary sources that deal with certain important concepts and content from the most up-to-date perspectives possible.LG201

Reciprocal Recommender System for Learners in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Massive open online courses (MOOC) describe platforms where users with completely different backgrounds subscribe to various courses on offer. MOOC forums and discussion boards offer learners a medium to communicate with each other and maximize their learning outcomes. However, oftentimes learners are hesitant to approach each other for different reasons (being shy, don't know the right match, etc.). In this paper, we propose a reciprocal recommender system which matches learners who are mutually interested in, and likely to communicate with each other based on their profile attributes like age, location, gender, qualification, interests, etc. We test our algorithm on data sampled using the publicly available MITx-Harvardx dataset and demonstrate that both attribute importance and reciprocity play an important role in forming the final recommendation list of learners. Our approach provides promising results for such a system to be implemented within an actual MOOC.Comment: 10 pages, accepted as full paper @ ICWL 201

Open Educational Resources for Higher Education: A global revolution

Presentation to the University of Chester Annual Staff Conference, 2012.The paper summarises the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and lists the main providers along with an analysis of their potential value for re-purposin

Goal-setting behaviour in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) represent a new and increasingly popular model of online learning course where the learner’s ability sets their learning goals and the emphasis is on creating new knowledge rather than on ’working through structured course materials’. This study set out to investigate the skills and attributes learners need to possess to participate effectively in a MOOC, and in particular: ‘How do participants plan and reflect upon their learning goals within the Change 11 MOOC?’ Participants for this primarily qualitative study were recruited from the Change 11 course cohort. Participants were first invited to complete a self-report instrument to establish a measure of their self-regulation. Semi-structured in-depth interviews (n=27) exploring goal-setting and other learning behaviours were then conducted. Anonymised interviews were analysed and a combination of pre-defined and emergent codes used to categorise the data. Interview data was then analysed against the SR scores derived from the survey instrument. Findings from the study highlight that learners with different self-regulated learning profiles differ in their approach to goal setting and learning in a MOOC, but that other factors are also important with the topic and precise format of the course in particular mediating individual approaches to goal-setting. These findings can help practitioners design more supportive learning environments and learning designs which take account of different learner approaches to goal-setting in MOOCs which, while presently under-researched, are rapidly gaining prominence as a mechanism for delivering learning online

What\u27s old is new again, and what\u27s the value of open

This is the editor\u27s note for this special issue of Current Issues in Emerging eLearning, where the editor discusses Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), as well as the value of openness in education