The Use of Asynchronous Discussion to Support Collaborative Learning in an Online Programme

This study argues that student to student conversations in groups have a significant impact on learning. Previous studies have focused on the potential impact of individual contributions in these learning conversations. This study challenges this view and suggests that measuring these individual contributions cannot, on their own, improve the student experience and impact on student performance. A case study design was used to explore what was happening in an online collaborative group task. This was achieved by examining the dialogic interactions in asynchronous online discussions being used in the group collaborative process. The dataset for this investigation was a large corpus of online posts by eight postgraduate student groups working on a group task. The data was analysed using framework analysis. Developed by Richie and Spencer (1994), framework analysis is a matrix based method which allows the researcher to demonstrate how the data was managed and allows the researcher to move back and forth between different levels of abstraction whilst still keeping sight of the “raw” data. The central component of framework analysis is the development of a thematic framework. This thesis also examined quantitative data related to the number, length and frequency of discussion posts within and across each of the groups. Overall a typology of three dialogic types were identified and ten key characteristics of these groups were also identified. This thesis found that the predictive value of monitoring the use of time was very low if this is the only indicator used. The dialogic types identified in the findings were found to be significant. Their presence or absence in the group communications had the potential to help educators predict whether the group would go on to meet the criteria for the task in the time allocated. The group characteristics also contributed to this prediction and there appeared to be a cumulative effect the more characteristics that were present. This suggests that the group conversations had a significant impact on individual and group achievement. The findings of this thesis have significant implications for how we understand student to student interactions and their impact on learning. This study has used online student group conversations. However, the findings do not only have impact for student conversations in online learning but relate to all forms of learning. Revealing the impact of these interactions to educational designers and teachers can help support students in group learning. In addition, if students understand the impact group conversations have on their learning and achievement and that of their peers, sharing this information has the potential to significantly improve their performance and learning experience. This study recommends further research be carried out into student to student dialogue to explore further how learning is impacted by group conversations. It is recommended that this exploration should focus on theory generating research to help address the theoretical gaps that exist in understanding how students learn in collaboration with each other. This should be utilised to enhance student experience, performance and achievement

Teaching at Scale: Instructor Experiences with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

MOOCs are large online courses in which any individual with access to the internet can enroll, usually for free. Distance and online education are not new, but the scale and scope of MOOCs raise novel questions about access to higher education, faculty work, and the adoption of new technologies for teaching and learning. There is little literature on the motivations, experiences and behaviors of faculty who teach MOOCs. This dissertation study seeks to illuminate this unexamined aspect of faculty work by answering the following research question: Why do faculty teach MOOCs, and how do their beliefs and experiences inside and outside the university shape their MOOC experience? I investigate the question of why university faculty decide to participate in a new and potentially risky form of online teaching, and how their beliefs, values, and experiences are connected with, and/or shape, their MOOC teaching practices. I conducted a single-institution interview study of MOOC faculty at the University of Michigan. Michigan was an early partner of Coursera, a MOOC company, which announced its first set of offerings in April 2012. My methodology is derived from recent approaches to phenomenology (e.g. Seidman, 2005). I interviewed 16 U-M faculty and instructors who had taught at least one MOOC as of March, 2015. I also conducted observations at events where MOOC instructors were presenting as panelists and likely to be in attendance, and collected contextual information from publicly available videos, news coverage, and articles that involved the participants. Using a phenomenological approach to interviewing and analysis, I conducted multiple interviews with each participant, focusing on their lived experience and meaning-making of the MOOC experience. The professional growth perspective outlined by O’Meara, Terosky, and Neumann (2008) provides a set of sensitizing concepts for my approach to understanding MOOC faculty. The findings provide a set of profiles of the study participants as well as thematic analysis on participants’ motivations for MOOC teaching, and their experiences. I identified four major reasons why instructors chose to teach a MOOC. There was rarely a single motivating factor, but rather several considerations that contributed to the decision. They were: Desire for a platform, interest in experimentation, altruism, and an aim to raise the profile of either themselves or their programs. Among the experiences of MOOC faculty, I note several themes, including: MOOC instructors’ assertions that they learned a great deal about teaching from doing the MOOC; the contrast between participants who felt isolated in their MOOC work and those who made connections; the increased visibility that came with MOOC teaching, which was sometimes a source of awkwardness and discomfort; and the balancing act MOOC teaching required, because of the enormous time demands of producing a MOOC and the already busy lives of successful faculty. This study makes several contributions to the research on faculty work lives. First, provides insight into the experiences of faculty adopting a new educational technology in the early stage of development; MOOCs are new learning technologies that affect the way faculty teach, learn, and interact with students and that thus deserve study. It also evaluates the faculty growth framework, which is relatively new, as an analytical lens, as well as suggest possible expansions to the framework based on the findings emerging from my study.PHDHigher EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145913/1/mollyak_1.pd

Adoption and Impact of OER in the Global South

Education in the Global South faces several key interrelated challenges, for which Open Educational Resources (OER) are seen to be part of the solution. These challenges include: unequal access to education; variable quality of educational resources, teaching, and student performance; and increasing cost and concern about the sustainability of education. The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project seeks to build on and contribute to the body of research on how OER can help to improve access, enhance quality and reduce the cost of education in the Global South. This volume examines aspects of educator and student adoption of OER and engagement in Open Educational Practices (OEP) in secondary and tertiary education as well as teacher professional development in 21 countries in South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia. The ROER4D studies and syntheses presented here aim to help inform Open Education advocacy, policy, practice and research in developing countries

Open

"Affordable education. Transparent science. Accessible scholarship. These ideals are slowly becoming a reality thanks to the open education, open science, and open access movements. Running separate—if parallel—courses, they all share a philosophy of equity, progress, and justice. This book shares the stories, motives, insights, and practical tips from global leaders in the open movement.

Distance Education Administrators Starting Online Programs in Higher Education: A Case Study of the Tasks, Processes, and Challenges of Change to E-Learning

While total enrollment for Title IV universities in the United States has declined 4 percent from 2013-2018, overall online course enrollment has rapidly increased by 22 percent (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). Not long ago, distance education had limited diffusion in universities and was considered a tertiary, experimental “add-on” to education (Burnette, 2015). Now, online learning is becoming a transformative power striking profound influence and change on all aspects of higher education (Otte & Benke, 2006). Beaudoin (2015) claims this may be the most crucial change impacting education since the printing press. This study explores the tasks, processes, and challenges for distance education administrators (DEAs) developing online programs at public universities. This online enrollment growth is managed and sometimes attributed to DEAs responsible for the timely and quality delivery of online courses and programs. DEAs do this by directing tasks and orchestrating people from every level of the organization (Otte & Benke, 2006). DEAs may hold established titles like dean or vice-president, or newer titles like chief learning officer, vice-provost of online education, or director of distance education (Nworie et al., 2012; Shaw et al., 2018). Despite this rapid growth in online public universities and an increase in administrators managing this growth, there is a paucity of literature exploring the experiences of DEAs developing online programs. In this study, I used explanatory case study methodology (Yin, 2018) to answer the research questions and provide rich descriptions of the process of change in developing new online programs at a public university. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with seven administrators responsible for starting different online programs at a single university site. A conceptual change model was created to help guide the inquiry and create a priori themes for analysis. Four progressive change process themes were established in the data: infrastructure, initiate, implement, and institute. A variety of associated tasks with each theme were explored. Additionally, current and future challenges for DEAs were investigated

The Big Five:Addressing Recurrent Multimodal Learning Data Challenges

The analysis of multimodal data in learning is a growing field of research, which has led to the development of different analytics solutions. However, there is no standardised approach to handle multimodal data. In this paper, we describe and outline a solution for five recurrent challenges in the analysis of multimodal data: the data collection, storing, annotation, processing and exploitation. For each of these challenges, we envision possible solutions. The prototypes for some of the proposed solutions will be discussed during the Multimodal Challenge of the fourth Learning Analytics & Knowledge Hackathon, a two-day hands-on workshop in which the authors will open up the prototypes for trials, validation and feedback

Multimodal Challenge: Analytics Beyond User-computer Interaction Data

This contribution describes one the challenges explored in the Fourth LAK Hackathon. This challenge aims at shifting the focus from learning situations which can be easily traced through user-computer interactions data and concentrate more on user-world interactions events, typical of co-located and practice-based learning experiences. This mission, pursued by the multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) community, seeks to bridge the gap between digital and physical learning spaces. The “multimodal” approach consists in combining learners’ motoric actions with physiological responses and data about the learning contexts. These data can be collected through multiple wearable sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This Hackathon table will confront with three main challenges arising from the analysis and valorisation of multimodal datasets: 1) the data collection and storing, 2) the data annotation, 3) the data processing and exploitation. Some research questions which will be considered in this Hackathon challenge are the following: how to process the raw sensor data streams and extract relevant features? which data mining and machine learning techniques can be applied? how can we compare two action recordings? How to combine sensor data with Experience API (xAPI)? what are meaningful visualisations for these data

Next evolution of workforce experiential learning for 21st century global access learners

The rapid pace of technological innovations has created opportunities, but also made it difficult for higher education institutions to keep up with 21st Century workplace readiness skills for students. By the time students graduate from college and enter the workforce, many are lacking the skills and capabilities needed to be proficient in their job functions. These skill and capability gaps are even wider for global access learners, or online learners. Due to new entrants possessing skill and capability gaps, leaders in workforce development, typically housed in learning and development, talent management, or other human resources arm, have taken ownership of providing workplace learning opportunities to close the gaps and allow workers to reach their desired competency level. This qualitative study investigated the strategies and best practices employed by workforce development leaders who are implementing experiential learning opportunities for their global access learners. This phenomenological study investigated insights of 16 workforce development leaders using semi-structured interviews. The study was guided by research questions which focused on the strategies and best practices of workforce development leaders, challenges they face when leading experiential learning across the globe, ways in which they mature learning success outcomes, and recommendations for others seeking to employ learning opportunities for global access learners. The study revealed 35 key findings related to creating a learning culture and establishing a learning ecosystem which contribute toward the success of implementing global access experiential learning