scholarly journals The use of gamification in xMOOCs about energy: Effects and predictive models for participants’ learning

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elvira G Rincon Flores ◽  
Juanjo Mena ◽  
María Soledad Ramírez Montoya ◽  
Raul Ramirez Velarde
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Models ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
National Laboratory ◽  
Analytical Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Academic Degree ◽  
Added Benefit ◽  
The Relationship

Open access education has significantly grown in strength as a new way of fostering innovation in schools. Such is the case of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which have the added benefit of encouraging the democratisation of learning. In this sense, the Bi-National Laboratory on Smart Sustainable Energy Management and Technology Training between Mexico and the United States of America was launched with the purpose of trying MOOC technology and measuring its impact on the academic, business, and social sectors. Under this scenario, this study aimed to show the relationship between using gamification and level of performance in a MOOC on energy topics. The methodology was quantitative, using the course analytical data for socio-demographic information and predictive models. A total of 6246 participants enrolled in the MOOC and 1060 finished it. The results showed that participants aged between 20 and 50 had the highest completion rates in the gamified challenge; the higher academic degree, the more inclined participants were to solve the gamified challenge; and no such distinction exists by gender.

scholarly journals Studying Learner Behavior in Online Courses With Free-Certificate Coupons: Results From Two Case Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Littenberg-Tobias ◽  
José A. Ruipérez-Valiente ◽  
Justin Reich
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Learning Behavior ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Influence Behavior

The relationship between pricing and learning behavior is an important topic in research on massive open online courses (MOOCs). We report on two case studies where cohorts of learners were offered coupons for free certificates to explore how price reductions might influence behavior in MOOC-based online learning settings. In Case Study 1, we compare participation and certification rates between courses with and without free-certificate coupons. In the courses with a free-certificate track, participants signed up for the verified-certificate track at higher rates, and completion rates among verified students were higher than in the paid-certificate track courses. In Case Study 2, we compare learner behavior within the same courses by whether they received access to a free-certificate track. Access to free certificates was associated with lower certification rates, but overall, certification rates remained high, particularly among those who viewed the courses. These findings suggest that some incentives, other than simply the cost of paying for a verified-certificate track, may motivate learners to complete MOOCs.

Massive Open Online Courses and Completion Rates

2017 ◽  
pp. 24-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Sue Schulze ◽  
Doug Leigh ◽  
Paul Sparks ◽  
Elio Spinello
Keyword(s):  
Online Education ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Educational Experiences ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
Self Directed Learning ◽  
Directed Learning ◽  
The Relationship

Millions of adults have registered for massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, yet little research exists on how effective MOOCs are at meeting the needs of these learners. Critics of MOOCs highlight that completion rates can average fewer than 5%. Such low completion rates raise questions about the effectiveness of MOOCs and whether all adults have the skills and abilities needed for success. MOOCs have the potential to be powerful change agents for universities and students, but it has previously been unknown whether these online courses serve more than just the most persistent, self-directed learners. This study explored the relationship between self-directed learning readiness and MOOC completion percents among adults taking a single Coursera MOOC. By examining self-directed learning - the ability to take responsibility for one's own educational experiences - and MOOC completion rates, this research may help to confirm the knowledge and skills needed to be a successful adult learner in the 21st century, as well as how to improve online education offered to adult learners.

scholarly journals Initial trends in enrolment and completion of massive open online courses

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katy Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Online Courses ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Course Length

<p>The past two years have seen rapid development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) with the rise of a number of MOOC platforms. The scale of enrolment and participation in the earliest mainstream MOOC courses has garnered a good deal of media attention. However, data about how the enrolment and completion figures have changed since the early courses is not consistently released. This paper seeks to draw together the data that has found its way into the public domain in order to explore factors affecting enrolment and completion. The average MOOC course is found to enroll around 43,000 students, 6.5% of whom complete the course. Enrolment numbers are decreasing over time and are positively correlated with course length. Completion rates are consistent across time, university rank, and total enrolment, but negatively correlated with course length. This study provides a more detailed view of trends in enrolment and completion than was available previously, and a more accurate view of how the MOOC field is developing.</p>

scholarly journals Troubleshooters for Tasks of Introductory Programming MOOCs

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Lepp ◽  
Tauno Palts ◽  
Piret Luik ◽  
Kaspar Papli ◽  
Reelika Suviste ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Online Courses ◽  
Assessment System ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
Automated Assessment ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
Help Systems ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Learning Programming

Learning programming has become more and more popular and organizing introductory massive open online courses (MOOCs) on programming can be one way to bring this education to the masses. While programming MOOCs usually use automated assessment to give feedback on the submitted code, the lack of understanding of certain aspects of the tasks and feedback given by the automated assessment system can be one persistent problem for many participants. This paper introduces troubleshooters, which are help systems, structured like decision trees, for giving hints and examples of certain aspects of the course tasks. The goal of this paper is to give an overview of usability (benefits and dangers) of, and the participants’ feedback on, using troubleshooters. Troubleshooters have been used from the year 2016 in two different programming MOOCs for adults in Estonia. These MOOCs are characterized by high completion rates (50–70%), which is unusual for MOOCs. Data is gathered from the learning analytics integrated into the troubleshooters’ environment, letters from the participants, questionnaires, and tasks conducted through the courses. As it was not compulsory to use troubleshooters, the results indicate that only 19.8% of the users did not use troubleshooters at all and 10% of the participants did not find troubleshooters helpful at all. The main difference that appeared is that the number of questions asked from the organizers about the programming tasks during the courses via helpdesk declined about 29%.

scholarly journals Mining of Completion Rate of Higher Education Based on Fuzzy Feature Selection Model and Machine Learning Techniques

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tahseen A. Wotaifi
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Fuzzy Logic ◽  
Feature Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ratio Method ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Academic Degree ◽  
Attribute Evaluation ◽  
Fuzzy Logic Technique

In the context of the great change in the labor market and the higher education sector, great attention is given to individuals with an academic degree or the so-called graduates class. However, each educational institution has a different approach towards students who wish to complete their university degree. This study aims at (1) identifying the most important factors that directly affect the completion, and (2) predicting the completion rates of students for university degrees according to the system of higher education in the United States. Unlike previous studies, this project contributes to the use of the fuzzy logic technique on three methods for feature selection, namely the Correlation Attribute Evaluation, Relief Attribute Evaluation, and Gain Ratio Method. Since these three methods give different weight to the same attribute, the fuzzy logic technique has been used to get one weight for the attribute. A great challenge faced throughout this study is the curse of dimensionality, because the college scorecard dataset launched by the US Department of Education contains approximately (8000) educational institutions and (1825) features. Applying the method used in this study to identify important features lead to their reduction to only (79). Accordingly, two models have been used to predict the completion rates of students for their university studies which are the Random Forest and the Support Vector Regression with a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) value of (0.068) and (0.097) respectively.

scholarly journals MOOC Success Factors: Proposal of an Analysis Framework

10.28945/3861 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 233-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Azevedo ◽  
Margarida M. Marques
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Analysis Framework ◽  
Factors Analysis ◽  
Future Work

Aim/Purpose: From an idea of lifelong-learning-for-all to a phenomenon affecting higher education, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can be the next step to a truly universal education. Indeed, MOOC enrolment rates can be astoundingly high; still, their completion rates are frequently disappointingly low. Nevertheless, as courses, the participants’ enrolment and learning within the MOOCs must be considered when assessing their success. In this paper, the authors’ aim is to reflect on what makes a MOOC successful to propose an analysis framework of MOOC success factors. Background: A literature review was conducted to identify reported MOOC success factors and to propose an analysis framework. Methodology: This literature-based framework was tested against data of a specific MOOC and refined, within a qualitative interpretivist methodology. The data were collected from the ‘As alterações climáticas nos média escolares - Clima@EduMedia’ course, which was developed by the project Clima@EduMedia and was submitted to content analysis. This MOOC aimed to support science and school media teachers in the use of media to teach climate change Contribution: By proposing a MOOC success factors framework the authors are attempting to contribute to fill in a literature gap regarding what concerns criteria to consider a specific MOOC successful. Findings: This work major finding is a literature-based and empirically-refined MOOC success factors analysis framework. Recommendations for Practitioners: The proposed framework is also a set of best practices relevant to MOOC developers, particularly when targeting teachers as potential participants. Recommendation for Researchers: This work’s relevance is also based on its contribution to increasing empirical research on MOOCs. Impact on Society: By providing a proposal of a framework on factors to make a MOOC successful, the authors hope to contribute to the quality of MOOCs. Future Research: Future work should refine further the proposed framework, by in testing it against data collected in other MOOCs.

scholarly journals Framework for Personalizing Mooc Courses based on Learners’ Stress Levels Towards Increased Course Completion Rates

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 2721-2724
Keyword(s):  
Online Courses ◽  
Course Completion ◽  
Content Delivery ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
Online Learners ◽  
Learning Platform ◽  
Stress Levels ◽  
Open Nature

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) has gained a huge popularity amongst the current generation students mainly because of its open nature and its ubiquity. MOOC made it possible for thousands of aspiring learners to learn from their favorite Universities. Though this online learning platform has its advantages, many studies have proved that these massive courses are suffering from tremendous rates in students’ dropouts. This study surveys the major causes of dropouts and would try to link the MOOC failures with the learners’ stress levels. The study also proposes a framework which could be used while designing MOOC courses and will help MOOC providers to personalize the content delivery according to the online learners’ stress levels.

scholarly journals From crowdsourcing data to network building: Reflections on conducting research in the open

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-327
Author(s):  
Katy Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Online Courses ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Network Building ◽  
Social Media Tools ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Recent Project

This commentary presents an account of a recent project as an example of engaged research. The project focused on collecting and analysing the completion rates of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It began informally, through blogging, and developed into a funded research project with formal academic outputs. In addition to its formal outputs, the project is also cited as an example of the benefits of conducting an 'open' research project. This reflective piece tells the story of the project, and discusses the lessons learned about the value of openness and the interplay of different social media tools in the research process.

scholarly journals Massive open online course completion rates revisited: Assessment, length and attrition

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katy Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Online Courses ◽  
Course Completion ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
Attrition Rates ◽  
Start Date ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
Course Length

<p>This analysis is based upon enrolment and completion data collected for a total of 221 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It extends previously reported work (Jordan, 2014) with an expanded dataset; the original work is extended to include a multiple regression analysis of factors that affect completion rates and analysis of attrition rates during courses. Completion rates (defined as the percentage of enrolled students who completed the course) vary from 0.7% to 52.1%, with a median value of 12.6%. Since their inception, enrolments on MOOCs have fallen while completion rates have increased. Completion rates vary significantly according to course length (longer courses having lower completion rates), start date (more recent courses having higher percentage completion) and assessment type (courses using auto grading only having higher completion rates). For a sub-sample of courses where rates of active use and assessment submission across the course are available, the first and second weeks appear to be critical in achieving student engagement, after which the proportion of active students and those submitting assessments levels out, with less than 3% difference between them.</p>

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