A literature synthesis of personalised technology-enhanced learning: what works and why

Personalised learning, having seen both surges and declines in popularity over the past few decades, is once again enjoying a resurgence. Examples include digital resources tailored to a particular learner’s needs, or individual feedback on a student’s assessed work. In addition, personalised technology-enhanced learning (TEL) now seems to be attracting interest from philanthropists and venture capitalists indicating a new level of enthusiasm for the area and a potential growth industry. However, these industries may be driven by profit rather than pedagogy, and hence it is vital these new developments are informed by relevant, evidence-based research. For many people, personalised learning is an ambiguous and even loaded term that promises much but does not always deliver. This paper provides an in-depth and critical review and synthesis of how personalisation has been represented in the literature since 2000, with a particular focus on TEL. We examine the reasons why personalised learning can be beneficial and examine how TEL can contribute to this. We also unpack how personalisation can contribute to more effective learning. Lastly, we examine the limitations of personalised learning and discuss the potential impacts on wider stakeholders

Socializing on MOOCs: comparing university and self-enrolled students

International audienceMOOCs are becoming more and more integrated in the higher education landscape of learning, with many institutions now pushing their students towards MOOC as part of their curriculum. But what does it mean for other MOOC learners? Are these students socializing the same way when they have an easier possibility to interact with classmates offline? Is the fact that they do not personally choose to enroll in a MOOC also having an effect? In this paper, we compare university-enrolled students to other MOOC participants and in particular other self-enrolled students, to examine how and why they socialize on and around the MOOC. Using data from two French MOOCs in project management, we show that university-enrolled students are less attracted by forums and seem to interact less than others when the workload increases , which could lead to misleading conclusions when analyzing data. We therefore encourage MOOC researchers to be particularly mindful of this new trend when performing social network analyses

Developing world MOOCs: A curriculum view of the MOOC landscape

MOOCs offer opportunities but are also pose the danger of further exacerbating existing educational divisions and deepening the homogeneity of global knowledge systems. Like many universities globally, South African university leaders and those responsible for course, curriculum, and learning technology development are coming to grips with the implications and possibilities of online and open education for their own institutions. What opportunities do they offer to universities, especially from the point of view of research-focused campus-based institutions which have not yet engaged with MOOCs and have little history with online courses? Given the complexities of the MOOC-scape, this paper provides a means for contextualising the options within an institutional landscape of educational provision as possibilities for MOOC creation, use and adaptation. This takes into account what is currently available and identifies what new opportunities can be explored. Refining this further, a categorisation of existing MOOCs is provided that maps to broad institutional interests. The notion of courses offered by universities as being either primarily ‘inward’ or ‘outward’ facing is explained. Five categories of MOOCs are described: Category One, Teaching Showcase; Category Two, Gateway Skills; Category Three, Graduate Skills; Category Four, Professional Skills and Category Five, Research Showcase. These are elaborated on and examples provided. This taxonomy provides a nuanced way of understanding MOOCs and MOOC type courses in order for educators to strategically prioritise and decision makers to support the full gamut of emergent opportunities

Unravelling the dynamics of instructional practice: a longitudinal study on learning design and VLE activities

Substantial progress has been made in understanding how teachers design for learning. However, there remains a paucity of evidence of the actual students' response towards leaning designs. Learning analytics has the power to provide just-in-time support, especially when predictive analytics is married with the way teachers have designed their course, or so-called a learning design. This study investigates how learning designs are configured over time and their impact on student activities by analyzing longitudinal data of 38 modules with a total of 43,099 registered students over 30 weeks at the Open University UK, using social network analysis and panel data analysis. Our analysis unpacked dynamic configurations of learning designs between modules over time, which allows teachers to reflect on their practice in order to anticipate problems and make informed interventions. Furthermore, by controlling for the heterogeneity between modules, our results indicated that learning designs were able to explain up to 60% of the variability in student online activities, which reinforced the importance of pedagogical context in learning analytics

How to bring forth good social learning in teacher education through technology

A core theme of this context statement is the contribution that digital technology can make to social learning in online and face-to-face contexts. The work contributes to the field of educational technology across sectors, by considering some of the obstacles currently facing practitioners such as new curricula, new pedagogical approaches and the fast pace of change. I present a rationale for technology supporting social learning and discuss several significant themes, such as the role of learning communities in supporting the co-creation of knowledge, the pedagogic approaches that support computational thinking, digital literacy and mobile learning, and the potential of international projects and online courses to make purposeful connections between teachers and learners. Looking firstly with a distant lens at the forms of technology-enabled learning communities (TELCs) in my public works, and then with a closer lens at the interactions and behaviours within them, I present a characterisation of the learning landscape that involves a topology and typology of TELCs. These consist of five distinct forms of TELCs together with a set of five dualities that describe conditions for knowledge-building. This framework contributes towards an understanding of the epistemology of TELCs within the context of my public works. It offers descriptive and diagnostic tools for analysing the nature of learning, knowing and knowledge-building within TELCs, and demonstrates how some key variables are interrelated. As such, it has relevance to the design and evaluation of social online learning and makes a contribution to the debate around theories of learning in a digital age

Theoretical Development of Connectivism through Innovative Application in China

As a learning theory that reveals a new learning in the Internet environment, connectivism has become a popular academic topic at the forefront of online learning. The MOOC Research Team at the Distance Education Research Centre at Beijing Normal University designed and developed the first massive open online course, adapting a connectivist (cMOOC) approach in China. Using the data collected from six offerings of the cMOOC over 3 years, the big data paradigm was used for data analysis including complex network analysis, content analysis, text mining, behaviour sequence analysis, epistemic network analysis, and statistical and econometric models. This paper summarizes the findings of the patterns of connectivist learning, including a) the basic characteristics and evolutional patterns of complex networks, b) the characteristics and modes of knowledge production, c) the patterns of instructional interactions, and d) the relationships between pipe and content and between facilitators and learners. It is expected that the outcome of this study could make contributions to understanding the changes of online learning in depth and further promote the theoretical development and practical application of a connectivist approach

Dynamics of MOOC Discussion Forums

In this integrated study of dynamics in MOOCs discussion forums, we analyze the interplay of temporal patterns, discussion content, and the social structure emerging from the communication using mixed methods. A special focus is on the yet under-explored aspect of time dynamics and influence of the course structure on forum participation. Our analyses show dependencies between the course structure (video opening time and assignment deadlines) and the overall forum activity whereas such a clear link could only be partially observed considering the discussion content. For analyzing the social dimension we apply role modeling techniques from social network analysis. While the types of user roles based on connection patterns are relatively stable over time, the high fluctuation of active contributors lead to frequent changes from active to passive roles during the course. However, while most users do not create many social connections they can play an important role in the content dimension triggering discussions on the course subject. Finally, we show that forum activity level can be predicted one week in advance based on the course structure, forum activity history and attributes of the communication network which enables identification of periods when increased tutor supports in the forum is necessary