scholarly journals Contextualizing the Global Standards for Designing Online Courses: A Design-Based Research Approach for Developing Small Private Open Courses

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Mohamed S.
Author(s):  
Andrea Hall ◽  
Jan Herrington

<span>An effective online learning community requires the development of social presence, as this helps learners to project themselves online and feel a sense of community. A literature review found that cultural preferences are important in developing relationships online, which may explain why some learners in international contexts may not participate in the learning community, with an unsuccessful online experience as a result. The effect of culture in the development of a learning community was investigated using a design-based research approach, in two fully online courses for faculty at a university in the Sultanate of Oman. It was found that the participants, all from an Arabic cultural background, preferred to develop responsible relationships before they went online, and preferred to use tools such as synchronous chat that gave increased immediacy to the learning context.</span>


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Ivens ◽  
Monika Oberle

Grounded in a design-based research approach, the aim of this article is to determine whether scientific evaluations help to (a) identify and fix problems in educational interventions and (b) eventually foster a more effective and positive evaluated intervention. Therefore, data from a longer-term evaluation of short digital simulation games about the European Parliament for civic education in schools were used. The data included three cycles of interventions with pre- and post-evaluations starting with the first prototype in 2015/2016 (n = 209), the second cycle in 2017/18 (n = 97), and the last one in 2019/20 (n = 222). After each evaluation, major problems and critiques regarding the simulation game were discussed with the developers, and changes were implemented in the game design. The four most important problems, the processes by which they were improved and the reactions of the participants in the following evaluations are pointed out in the article. A comparison of the last and first evaluation cycle showed an overall improvement of the simulation game regarding its effectiveness in transferring EU knowledge and the participants’ general satisfaction with the simulation game. This study underlines the value of the design-based research approach for developing educational interventions and can be useful for further work on civic education measures and the implementation of digital simulation games.


2014 ◽  
Vol 76 (6) ◽  
pp. 408-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua S. White ◽  
April C. Maskiewicz

Using a design-based research approach, we developed a data-rich problem (DRP) set to improve student understanding of cellular respiration at the ecosystem level. The problem tasks engage students in data analysis to develop biological explanations. Several of the tasks and their implementation are described. Quantitative results suggest that students from the experimental class who participated in the DRP showed significant gains on cellular respiration posttest items, and students from the control class who participated in a non-DRP task showed no significant gains. Qualitative results from interviews and written responses showed that students from the experimental class progressed to deeper “levels of achievement” in cellular respiration. The data-rich tasks promote student understanding of cellular respiration, matter transformation, decomposition, and energy transformation – all goals recommended by the Next Generation Science Standards.


Author(s):  
Khe Foon Hew ◽  
Chen Qiao ◽  
Ying Tang

Although massive open online courses (MOOCs) have attracted much worldwide attention, scholars still understand little about the specific elements that students find engaging in these large open courses. This study offers a new original contribution by using a machine learning classifier to analyze 24,612 reflective sentences posted by 5,884 students, who participated in one or more of 18 highly rated MOOCs. Highly rated MOOCs were sampled because they exemplify good practices or teaching strategies. We selected highly rated MOOCs from Coursetalk, an open user-driven aggregator and discovery website that allows students to search and review various MOOCs. We defined a highly rated MOOC as a free online course that received an overall five-star course quality rating, and received at least 50 reviews from different learners within a specific subject area. We described six specific themes found across the entire data corpus: (a) structure and pace, (b) video, (c) instructor, (d) content and resources, (e) interaction and support, and (f) assignment and assessment. The findings of this study provide valuable insight into factors that students find engaging in large-scale open online courses.


Author(s):  
Nina Vyatkina

Data-Driven Learning (DDL), or a corpus-based method of language teaching and learning, has been developing rapidly since the turn of the century and has been shown to be effective and efficient. Nevertheless, DDL is still not widely used in regular classrooms for a number of reasons. One of them is that few workable pedagogical frameworks have been suggested for integrating DDL into language courses and curricula. This chapter describes an exemplar of a practical application of such a pedagogical framework to a high-intermediate university-level German as a foreign language course with a significant DDL component. The Design-Based Research approach is used as the main methodological framework. The chapter concludes with a discussion of wider pedagogical implications.


Author(s):  
Richard Osborne ◽  
Elisabeth Dunne ◽  
Paul Farrand

Current pressures in higher education around student employability are driving new initiatives for change. Assessment is also a topic of debate, as it is a key driver of student behaviour, yet often falls behind other metrics in national surveys. In addition, increasing focus on digital literacies is catalysing new appreciations of what emerging digital culture might mean for both students and staff. These three highly topical challenges were jointly explored by the University of Exeter’s Collaborate project, which aimed to create employability-focused assessments enhanced by technology. By combining existing research on assessment with grounded data derived from local stakeholders, the project has developed a model for assessment design which embeds employability directly into the curriculum. Digital technologies have been aligned with this model using a “top trump” metaphor, where key affordances of technologies are highlighted in the context of the model. This paper explores the design-based research approach taken to develop this model and associated “top trumps”, along with results from the first practical iteration. Results suggest that the model is effective in supporting the design of an “authentic” assessment and that a targeted affordances approach can support the alignment of specific technologies with a particular pedagogic design.Keywords: employability; assessment; authentic; affordance; evaluation(Published: 6 September 2013)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2013, 21: 21986 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.21986


Author(s):  
David Parsons ◽  
Rosemary Stockdale

Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are the subject of increasing interest for educators and trainers. In the context of software development, they are beginning to see increasing use both as learning spaces and as a richer means of collaboration for virtual teams. This chapter reflects on a project that developed and evaluated a virtual agile software development workshop hosted in the Open Wonderland MUVE, designed to help learners to understand the basic principles of some core agile software development techniques. The work took a design-based research approach, following a reflective path of development through two major iterations. The authors trace the research process from a real world implementation of the “agile hour” workshop to its virtual incarnation, describing the design philosophy and the constructed virtual artifacts. They conclude by reflecting on the insights into learner perceptions and practical implementations gained from building and evaluating the Open Wonderland workshop.


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