Posts tagged moocs
MOOCs and their Effect on the Institution
Paper was published in journal Foro de Educación.
Abstract
Four years after the introduction of MOOCs – which were proclaimed to be «the end of education as we know it» in 2012 – the role and effect of these free, online courses is becoming clearer. The online means of delivery to the heterogeneous audiences of MOOCs have enabled and compelled instructors and course teams to develop innovative and flexible learning materials. We can analyse the data on the study behaviour of learners to identify which course elements are effective. In addition, the integration of elements of MOOCs in campus education has resulted in promising outcomes and positive reactions from both students and teachers. On the level of the institution, we also see the effect of MOOCs: ranging from new possibilities in communication and branding, to new needs for faculty development and the support organisation. Furthermore, MOOCs play a role in the unbundling of education, e.g. the learning experience and the assessment tasks now can be uncoupled and may be delivered by different institutions and by different means: the learning experience may be in the form of a MOOC and the assessment may be a written exam at an institution.
Reference
Kiers, J. (2016). MOOCs and their Effect on the Institution: Experiences in Course Design, Delivery and Evaluation; Research; Faculty Development; Unbundling and Credits for MOOCs. Foro de Educación, 14(21), 133-149. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/fde.2016.014.021.007
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Learning Transfer: Does It Take Place in MOOCs? An Investigation into the Uptake of Functional Programming in Practice
Paper presented at the Learning @ Scale 2016 conference in Edinburgh.
Abstract
The rising number of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) enable people to advance their knowledge and competencies in a wide range of fields. Learning though is only the first step, the transfer of the taught concepts into practice is equally important and often neglected in the investigation of MOOCs. In this paper, we consider the specific case of FP101x (a functional programming MOOC on edX) and the extent to which learners alter their programming behaviour after having taken the course. We are able to link about one third of all FP101x learners to GitHub, the most popular social coding platform to date and contribute a first exploratory analysis of learner behaviour beyond the MOOC platform. A detailed longitudinal analysis of GitHub log traces reveals that (i) more than 8% of engaged learners transfer, and that (ii) most existing transfer learning findings from the classroom setting are indeed applicable in the MOOC setting as well.
Reference
Guanliang Chen, Dan Davis, Claudia Hauff, and Geert-Jan Houben. 2016. Learning Transfer: Does It Take Place in MOOCs? An Investigation into the Uptake of Functional Programming in Practice. In Proceedings of the Third (2016) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (L@S ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 409-418. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2876034.2876035