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The Value of Engineering MOOCs from a Learner’s Perspective
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This paper looks at the perceived value students adhere to the DelftX MOOC engineering courses they have taken, in other words what is the course worth in the context of their learning needs? Are you doing the course because you are curious, you want to get more knowledgeable on the topic, you need to know something related to your work, you do it for other professional reasons. This research will not cover all arguments as it is a first endeavor to get to know the learner better from the value perspective.
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Engagement with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at the University of Edinburgh has emerged from its strategic priorities to explore and innovate in the area of online and technologically supported approaches to teaching and learning. This paper provides an account of analysis aimed at understanding who Edinburgh MOOC learners are, who elects to participate and the aspirations of that population, and the place that the MOOC will occupy in the University’s online learning ecology. The analysis addresses a number of predictions that have been made about MOOCs since 2012, including their use for providing educational opportunities to the disadvantaged; global uptake of online learning; growth of an ‘educational imperialism’; and the claim that ‘MOOCs are for male geeks’, and concludes with some observations about the University of Edinburgh’s future plans in this space.
The Delft University of Technology (TUD) deployed her first generation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in 2013-2014 delivered through the edX platform. These DelftX MOOCs were engineering courses designed at the level equivalent to that of a bachelor-program entry level. Almost 140 thousand students registered, around 3,7% received certificates of completion, and the rest participated to a degree reflective of their needs. To better understand and ultimately enhance the MOOCs, TUD conducted the collection and analysis of data about learners and their contexts. This exploratory paper focuses on the specific analyses pertinent to describing the demographics of an Engineering MOOC participant, as observed in the first generation of TUD MOOCs. The implications of the observed participant demographics are analysed and discussed.
“Circuits and Electronics” (6.002x), which began in March 2012, was the first MOOC developed by edX, the consortium led by MIT and Harvard. Over 155,000 students initially registered for 6.002x, which was composed of video lectures, interactive problems, online laboratories, and a discussion forum. As the course ended in June 2012, researchers began to analyze the rich sources of data it generated. This article describes both the first stage of this research, which examined the students’ use of resources by time spent on each, and a second stage that is producing an in-depth picture of who the 6.002x students were, how their own background and capabilities related to their achievement and persistence, and how their interactions with 6.002x’s curricular and pedagogical components contributed to their level of success in the course.
Rebooting MOOC Research: Improve assessment, data sharing, and experimental design
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