An Investigation Into The Accessibility Of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are an evolution of open online learning that enables people to study online and for little or no cost. MOOCs can provide learners with the flexibility to learn, opportunities for social learning, and the chance to gain new skills and knowledge. While MOOCs have the potential to also bring these benefits to disabled learners, there is little understanding of how accessibility is embedded in the creation of MOOCs. The goal of this research has been to understand the accessibility barriers in MOOCs and to develop processes to identify and address those barriers. In the extant literature, the expectations of disabled learners when they take up MOOCs are not discussed and studies on MOOCs that report demographic data of learners do not consider disabled learners. However, disabled learners can face difficulties in accessing MOOCs, and certain learning designs of MOOCs may affect their engagement, causing them to miss out on opportunities offered by MOOCs. Technologies and the learning design approaches for MOOCs need to be as accessible as possible, so that learners can use MOOCs in a range of contexts, including via assistive technologies. This research has investigated the current state of accessibility in MOOCs. It has involved the following: Interviews with 26 MOOC providers; including software developers, accessibility managers, inclusion designers, instructional designers, course editors and learning media developers; Comparative quantitative survey data involving disabled and non-disabled learners participating in 14 MOOCs; Interviews with 15 disabled learners which have captured their experiences; and An accessibility audit was devised and then used to evaluate MOOCs from 4 major platforms: FutureLearn, edX, Coursera and Canvas. This audit comprises 4 components: technical accessibility, user experience (UX), quality and learning design; 10 experts were involved in its design and validation. This research programme has yielded an understanding of how MOOC providers cater for disabled learners, the motivations of disabled learners when taking part in MOOCs, and how MOOCs should be designed to be accessible for disabled learners. A range of barriers to accessibility in MOOCs have been identified, and an accessibility audit for MOOCs has been proposed. An open online learning environment should take into account learners’ abilities, learning goals, where learning takes place, and the different devices learners use. The research outcomes will be beneficial to MOOC providers to support the accessible design of MOOCs, including the educational resources and the platforms where the MOOCs are hosted. The ultimate beneficiaries of this research project are MOOC learners because accessible MOOCs will help support their lifelong learning and provide re-skilling opportunities

Indicators for enhancing learners’ engagement in massive open online courses: A systematic review

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have paved a new learning path for the 21st-century world. The potential to reach a massive geographically dispersed audience is one of the major advantages of MOOCs. Moreover, they can be offered on a self-paced and self-regulated basis and have become an integral part of lifelong learning, especially in workplaces. However, one persistent problem is the lack of learners’ engagement. A harmonisation of studies providing a holistic view into aggregating indicators for enhancing learners’ engagement in MOOCs is lacking. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated MOOC adoption, and learners’ engagement in MOOCs has become even more essential for the success of this educational innovation. We examine the existing literature to derive indicators important for enhancing learners’ engagement in MOOC learning environments. Using a systematic approach, 83 empirical studies were examined, and 10 indicators were identified as important considerations for enhancing learners’ engagement while designing MOOCs—from initiatives for individual learners to platform and instructional design perspectives. We also present a table describing these indicators and offer a structured discussion on each one. We believe the results provide guidelines for MOOC designers and instructors, educational policymakers, higher education institutions, and MOOC engagement researchers.Peer reviewe

Sentiment Analysis in Digital Spaces: An Overview of Reviews

Sentiment analysis (SA) is commonly applied to digital textual data, revealing insight into opinions and feelings. Many systematic reviews have summarized existing work, but often overlook discussions of validity and scientific practices. Here, we present an overview of reviews, synthesizing 38 systematic reviews, containing 2,275 primary studies. We devise a bespoke quality assessment framework designed to assess the rigor and quality of systematic review methodologies and reporting standards. Our findings show diverse applications and methods, limited reporting rigor, and challenges over time. We discuss how future research and practitioners can address these issues and highlight their importance across numerous applications.Comment: 44 pages, 4 figures, 6 tables, 3 appendice

Open educational resources and practices in China: a systematic literature review

The concepts of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP), regarded as two pillars of the broader open education movement, have been evolving since the concept of OER was first coined in the 2012 Paris Declaration. Several research studies have been conducted to investigate the impacts of OER and OEP adoption and implementation in universities. However, most of those studies have focused on western and developed countries, and little information is known about developing countries, especially Asian ones. Particularly, China was one of the first Asian countries to adopt open education and its related strategies following the MIT OpenCourseWare conference in Beijing in 2003. This study conducts a systematic literature review to investigate the current state of the art of OER and OEP in China. The findings show that several governmental, organizational, and institutional initiatives have been launched to facilitate OER adoption in China. They also show that while several OEPs have been implemented, there is still a continuous need to work on these practices and further investigate their impacts on learning outcomes and behaviors, as no current reviewed study has done so. Finally, a generic framework of OER and OEP challenges is presented along with recommendations to further enhance the adoption of OER and OEP in Chin

Open World Learning

This book provides state-of-the-art contemporary research insights into key applications and processes in open world learning. Open world learning seeks to understand access to education, structures, and the presence of dialogue and support systems. It explores how the application of open world and educational technologies can be used to create opportunities for open and high-quality education. Presenting ground-breaking research from an award winning Leverhulme doctoral training programme, the book provides several integrated and cohesive perspectives of the affordances and limitations of open world learning. The chapters feature a wide range of open world learning topics, ranging from theoretical and methodological discussions to empirical demonstrations of how open world learning can be effectively implemented, evaluated, and used to inform theory and practice. The book brings together a range of innovative uses of technology and practice in open world learning from 387,134 learners and educators learning and working in 136 unique learning contexts across the globe and considers the enablers and disablers of openness in learning, ethical and privacy implications, and how open world learning can be used to foster inclusive approaches to learning across educational sectors, disciplines and countries. The book is unique in exploring the complex, contradictory and multi-disciplinary nature of open world learning at an international level and will be of great interest to academics, researchers, professionals, and policy makers in the field of education technology, e-learning and digital education

Open World Learning

This book provides state-of-the-art contemporary research insights into key applications and processes in open world learning. Open world learning seeks to understand access to education, structures, and the presence of dialogue and support systems. It explores how the application of open world and educational technologies can be used to create opportunities for open and high-quality education. Presenting ground-breaking research from an award winning Leverhulme doctoral training programme, the book provides several integrated and cohesive perspectives of the affordances and limitations of open world learning. The chapters feature a wide range of open world learning topics, ranging from theoretical and methodological discussions to empirical demonstrations of how open world learning can be effectively implemented, evaluated, and used to inform theory and practice. The book brings together a range of innovative uses of technology and practice in open world learning from 387,134 learners and educators learning and working in 136 unique learning contexts across the globe and considers the enablers and disablers of openness in learning, ethical and privacy implications, and how open world learning can be used to foster inclusive approaches to learning across educational sectors, disciplines and countries. The book is unique in exploring the complex, contradictory and multi-disciplinary nature of open world learning at an international level and will be of great interest to academics, researchers, professionals, and policy makers in the field of education technology, e-learning and digital education

The nature of peer-feedback in a MOOC:a case study

The present research study aimed to describe the nature of peer-feedback in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offered by a German University. The MOOC was team-based, it offered the support of different actors, and allowed learners to participate in two different roles: students or supporters. Considering participants’ diversity and voluntary participation in the MOOC, three aspects of feedback were explored: 1) the quantity and quality of feedback provided throughout the course; 2) the feedback provided by students and supporters; and 3) the feedback provided by females and males in their roles as students and supporters. For this purpose, the method of content analysis and a regression model with a Poisson distribution were employed. Findings from the research study indicate a positive trend in the quantity of peer-feedback provided throughout the course, a constant use of those types of feedback expected to support the formative function of assessment, and an alternate use in other types of feedback identified as quality feedback. A statistically significant difference could be established between both roles. Supporters used a set of types of feedback more often than students. Finally, although no statistically significant differences could be established between both genders, differences could be established in relation to the types of feedback used in the role they had performed. The study concludes that the purpose and value of assessment were not threatened by the peer-feedback offered by its participants, despite their diversity and voluntary participation. Additionally, it recommends to present assessment criteria principally as a suggestion. Lastly, it encourages researchers on the field to inquire into a) mechanisms that motivate learners to engage in the voluntary activity of peer-assessment, thereby contributing to a sustainable participation throughout a complete course; and b) understanding participants’ commonalities, needs and expectations by analysing the feedback they provide

Citizen-led Work using Social Computing and Procedural Guidance

Online platforms enable people to interact with friends, family, and the world at large. How might people go beyond sharing stories and ideas to building and testing theories in the real world? While many are motivated to dig deeper into their lived experience, limited expertise and lack of platform support make complex activities like experimentation dauntingly hard. Novices benefit greatly from expert guidance: this thesis advocates baking the guidance into the interface itself.This dissertation introduces procedural guidance to build just-in-time expertise for difficult tasks. Procedural guidance has multiple advantages: it is minimal, leverages teachable moments, and can be ability-specific. This dissertation instantiates this insight of procedural guidance through a sequence of increasingly complex social computing systems: Gut Instinct for curating ideas, Docent for generating hypotheses, and Galileo for citizen-led experiments.Gut Instinct hosts online learning materials and enables people to collaboratively brainstorm potential influences on people’s microbiome. Docent explicitly teaches people to create hypotheses by combining personal insights and online learning with task-specific scaffolding. Finally, Galileo reifies experimentation in the software, provides multiple roles for contribution, and automatically manages interdependencies. Multiple evaluations—controlled experiments and field deployments with online communities including American Gut participants—demonstrate that procedural guidance enables people to transform intuitions to hypotheses and structurally-sound experiments. By enabling people to draw on lived experience, this dissertation harbingers a future where people can convert their intuitions to actionable plans and implement these plans with online communities. This dissertation concludes by discussing opportunities for complex work using social computing platforms

Penguatan Pembekalan Kemampuan Pemrograman Dasar bagi Pelajar Sekolah Menengah Umum

Basic programming training that teaches problem-solving logic has developed at all ages, from kindergarten, elementary school to higher education age. This happens because at this time, the concept of computing or informatics thinking has been considered to be a basic requirement in everyday life. Various forms of learning the concept of informatics thinking are designed according to the user's age group so that users can enjoy it. In the community service activities carried out this time, the target of basic programming training is Public High School students, which are open to all schools in Indonesia. This activity was implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic, so this activity was carried out online in the form of a bootcamp through the Zoom meeting application regularly in one month, which was led as a team by a lecturer and several teaching assistants. This training does not stop at delivering material and demonstrations from lecturers but also training assistance conducted by teaching assistants. The material in this training uses the Python programming language. Python was chosen to be used in the training, because currently Python is a programming language that is widely used for simple to complexprogramming such as data mining and machine learning. Participants can access training materials through the Learning Management System created by Universitas Surabaya to support the dissemination of knowledge to the wider community through the Ubaya Global Academy) platform. Based on the evaluation of the activities carried out before and after the activity was carried out, this activity is considered to provide benefits and can be carried out regularly every year and has follow-up classes

The Effects of Social Messaging on Students’ Learning and Intrinsic Motivation in Peer Assessment

This study aims to gain a better understanding of how the newly arisen social messaging may impact the practice of peer assessment. Seventy-nine ESL (English as Second Language) students reviewed each other’s English essays in three peer assessment groups: a three-member group using wiki (wiki group), a three-member group using social messaging (small messaging group), and a six-member group using social messaging (big messaging group). Data analysis suggested that peer assessment facilitated by social messaging can be at least of the same effectiveness as wiki-facilitated peer assessment on ESL students’ writing skills and intrinsic motivation. In addition, the findings indicated that students in the small messaging group outperformed students in the big messaging group on essay writing, and reported a significantly higher rating on Perceived Competence, a positive indicator of the behavioral measures of intrinsic motivation, than students in the big messaging group