Does a Peer Recommender Foster Students' Engagement in MOOCs?

International audienceOverall the social capital of MOOCs is under-exploited. For most students in MOOCs, autonomous learning often means learning alone. Students interested in adding a social dimension to their learning can browse discussion threads, join social medias and may decide to message other students… but usually in a random way. This common isolation might be a contributing factor on student attrition rate and on their general learning experience. To foster learners' persistence in MOOCs, we propose to enhance the MOOC experience with a recommender which provides each student with an individual list of rich-potential contacts, created in real-time on the basis of their own profile and activities. This paper describes a controlled study conducted from Sept. to Nov. 2015 during a MOOC on Project Management. A recommender panel was integrated to the users' interface and allowed to manage contacts, send them an instant message or consult their profile. The population (N = 8,673) was randomly split into 2 parts: a control group, without any recommendations, and an experimental group in which students could choose to activate and use the recommender. After having demonstrated that these populations were similar up to the activation of the recommender, we evaluate the effect of the recommender on the basis of four pillars of learners' persistence: attendance, completion, success and participation. Results suggest that the recommender improved all these four factors: students were much more likely to persist and engage in the MOOC if they received recommendations than if they did not

Increasing MOOC completion rates through social interactions: a recommendation system

International audienceE-learning research shows students who interact with their peers are less likely to drop out from a course, but is this applicable to MOOCs? This paper examines MOOC attrition issues and how encouraging social interactions can address them: using data from 4 sessions of the GdP MOOC, a popular Project Management MOOC, we confirm that students displaying a high level of social interaction succeed more than those who don't. We successively explore two approaches fostering social interactions: 1) in MOOC GdP5, we give access to private group forums, testing various group types and sizes, 2) in MOOC GdP6, we implement a recommendation system, suggesting relevant chat contacts using demographic and progression criteria. This papers presents our preliminary findings

Automatic Identification of Questions in MOOC Forums and Association with Self-Regulated Learning

International audienceDiscussion forums can be a rich source to analyze students' questions but it can be challenging to find relevant categories of questions. We considered here students' posts from the discussion forum of four editions of a same French MOOC on Project Management. We extended a coding scheme to annotate questions based on their content (course vs. non course) and trained 3 stages of an automatic annotation model. Then we studied the correlation between the nature of the questions asked and students' performance and self-regulation. The results are promising and reveal, for the minority of students active on forums, the possibility to use this feature to better estimate their performance and some of their self-regulation skills based on questions they ask

Towards Improving Students’ Forum Posts Categorization in MOOCs and Impact on Performance Prediction

International audienceGoing beyond mere forum posts categorization is key to understand why some students struggle and eventually fail in MOOCs. We propose here an extension of a coding scheme and present the design of the associated automatic annotation tools to tag students’ questions in their forum posts. Working of four sessions of the same MOOC, we cluster students’ questions and show how the obtained clusters are consistent across all sessions and can be sometimes correlated with students’ success in the MOOC. Moreover, it helps us better understand the nature of questions asked by successful vs. unsuccessful students

MESURER L'ESPRIT D'ENTREPRENDRE DES ELEVES INGENIEURS

La création d'entreprises innovantes est un enjeu économique vital pour l'Europe. Mais comment la développer chez les jeunes ? Comment favoriser l'éclosion d'un esprit d'entreprendre qui impulserait à la fois une dynamique d'innovation dans les grandes entreprises et la création d'entreprises nouvelles ? Si un consensus existe quant à ces nécessités, les moyens de développement et de stimulation de cet esprit ne sont pas complètement connus. Notamment parce que la notion « d'esprit d'entreprise » ou celle « d'esprit d'entreprendre » restent encore difficile à définir, à quantifier et à relier à la prise effective d'initiatives, ce qui rend délicate la mesure de l'impact des stratégies de sensibilisation ou de formation.Le propos de notre recherche est de définir ce qu'est l'esprit d'entreprendre chez les élèves ingénieur, et la manière avec laquelle il se manifeste. Il s'agit de formuler un cadre d'analyse d'une définition et de mesure du développement de l'esprit d'entreprendre chez les élèves ingénieurs au fil de leur cursus. Nous nous appuyons pour ce faire sur un modèle exploratoire de l'esprit d'entreprendre que nous avons bâti sur la base d'une étude extensive de la littérature en gestion, sociologie, psychologie et sciences de l'éducation appliquées ou non au champ de l'entrepreneuriat (Verzat, Bachelet, Hannachi et Frugier 03). La démarche que nous proposons s'appuie sur une étude quantitative longitudinale auprès de l'ensemble des élèves de l'école pendant trois années.Nous présenterons notre modèle de recherche, puis nous détaillerons la fabrication du questionnaire et son mode d'administration par web. Enfin nous proposerons quelques premiers résultats obtenus lors de notre première campagne d'enquête auprès d'élèves ingénieurs de première année.entrepreneuriat, esprit d'entreprendre, esprit d'entreprise, grande école, université

Optimal Experience in Adult Learning: Conception and Validation of the Flow in Education Scale (EduFlow-2)

While the formulation of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, including the experience dimensions, has remained stable since its introduction in 1975, its dedicated measurement tools, research methodologies, and fields of application, have evolved considerably. Among these, education stands out as one of the most active. In recent years, researchers have examined flow in the context of other theoretical constructs such as motivation. The resulting work in the field of education has led to the development of a new model for understanding flow experience in education, specifically dedicated to adult learning. As a result of both a meticulous analysis of existing models and consideration of more recent developments, a new flow scale has thus been developed. The aim of this study is therefore twofold: to validate the new flow measurement scale dedicated to the educational environment, EduFlow-2, and to test a new theoretical model. Students taking a course (N = 6,596), some on-site and others in a MOOC, participated. Several scales were administered online at the end of the participants' course during the 2017 academic year. The factor structure of EduFlow-2 was tested using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling. Several models were tested. The model with a second-order factor best fit the data. We tested the invariance of the flow scale measure for gender and for the type of training (MOOC/on-site). We were able to show that the flow scale is invariant of the modalities of these two variables. Results revealed good psychometric qualities for the scale, making it suitable for both on-site and distance learning. The analysis also revealed significant relationships with the classic variables of motivation, self-efficacy, learning climate, and life satisfaction. Furthermore, all four dimensions of the model were found to be adequate and consistent with the underlying theoretical arguments. In the end, this new, short flow scale and the theoretical model were demonstrated to be promising for future studies in the field of education

Organisation et gestion des risques en salle des marches financiers : appareil, marche, réseau.

How do organizations working in a simultaneously complex, competitive and turbulent environment manage risk? Most traders buy and sell over a hundred million dollars daily, and there are often more than one hundred operators on a dealing floor.This empirical study draws over three years of participant observation in a trading room and forty interviews in Paris, London and Hong Kong.There are three main contributions to this research:1. The development of concepts guiding the understanding of the unique phenomenon of dealing rooms: the position, the correlation of financial instruments and the desk as a combination of a trading strategy and a product.2. The building of a model guiding the understanding of organizations. This model is based on three fundamental forms: the Hierarchy, the Market and the Network. We redefine them as ideal types through regulation, coordination and adaptation.3. These ideal types allow for analytical charting encompassing risk-management strategies. This makes it possible to draw up a falsifiable hypothesis: are trading rooms plural organizations?We show the relevance of our ideal types and of their complex interactions. Chinese Walls and Product Lines are explained as an application of this approach. Some distinctive features of dealing rooms are also explained: their perpetual state of transformation and their distinctiveness from other forms of organization.Facing a "crisis of the understanding of organizations", we suggest a new approach to risk-management and bring a contribution to the question of the "nature of the firm". Parallels with other organizations - in Simultaneous Engineering, Control Towers and News Agencies - are suggested. Our research also highlights the inadequacy of risk-control strategies in use and suggests ways of improvement.Comment des organisations intervenant dans un environnement à la fois complexe, concurrentiel et très turbulent gèrent-elles le risque ? Les salles des marchés des capitaux rassemblent ainsi des dizaines d'opérateurs brassant chacun plus d'un milliard de francs par jour.Nous conduisons notre recherche à travers une approche empirique : d'abord pendant une période d'observation participante de trois ans, puis en menant une quarantaine d'entretiens à Paris, Londres et Hong Kong.Nos apports sont triples :1. L'observation en salle des marchés s'applique à un objet émergent et original. Nous proposons trois notions pour le décrire : celle de position, celle de corrélation des instruments financiers et celle de desk, définie à partir d'une grille d'analyse associant métiers et produits.2. Nous construisons notre problématique à partir des trois formes fondamentales de l'action organisée que sont l'appareil hiérarchique, le marché et le réseau. Nous les constituons en idéaltypes en tant que dispositifs de régulation, de coordination et d'adaptation d'un système.3. En 'déclinant' ceux-ci, nous établissons une grille d'analyse des modalités de gestion des risques dans l'organisation. Nous discutons ainsi notre hypothèse centrale selon laquelle les salles des marchés constituent des organisations plurielles.Nous démontrons ainsi la pertinence des idéaltypes et de leurs interactions, en particulier à travers les dispositifs organisationnels que sont les "murs de Chine" et les "lignes produits". Enfin, nous explicitons les particularités des salles des marchés : le mouvement de réorganisation continuelle dont elles sont le théâtre et leur spécificité par rapport aux autres organisations.Face à la crise d'interprétation de l'organisation, nous proposons donc une nouvelle approche de la gestion des risques. Des parallèles sont évoqués : tours de contrôle, ingénierie simultanée, agences de presse. Enfin, notre recherche pointe l'insuffisance de l'approche actuelle par le contrôle des risques et propose des pistes d'amélioration

Toward a typology of MOOC activity patterns - Learners who never rest?

International audienceThis paper aims at understanding MOOC learners' activity patterns, taking into account factors like personal schedule, traditional working hours, do-mestic time, nighttime and their relation with MOOC course opening hours, live sessions, essay submission deadlines... Are MOOC learners adopting nonstandard learning schedules? Does the MOOC schedule determine the connection patterns of the learners? Four search topics and findings emerge from our research A/ Observations related to the density of learning activity B/ A weekly typology of learning days, C/ Attraction for a “live” contact point, D/ The “21:00 effect”. Finally, we suggest a series of best practices for MOOC design