An iMOOC experience
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This document summarizes the iMOOC – Essentials of Clear Writing MOOC offered at NUS from September to November 2013. It provided an overview of the course content which focused on essay structure, language accuracy, idiomatic expressions, and coherence/conciseness. It also reported statistics on course registration, participation levels for video lectures, in-video quizzes and exercises. Survey results showed most participants wanted to improve their writing skills and felt the course met its objectives, with many reporting increased confidence and a willingness to take another MOOC.
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An iMOOC experience
- 1. BuzzEd 2014 iMOOC – Essentials of Clear Writing Susan Tan Jeffrey Mok CELC
- 2. Background • • • • • • Internal iMOOC Non credit bearing Five-week long course From 30 Sept to 1 Nov 2013 Opened to students and staff at NUS Aim: level up the writing skills
- 3. Preparation Conceptualization (May-Jun 2013) – 4 discussion sessions of two hours each (8 hr) Promo video – each drafted script was edited by Kenneth (2 hr) Each topic – materials, writing script, preparing slides (12 hr) – recording (between 6-12 hr) – writing exercises (8 hr)
- 4. Content Four topics: • Structure of an essay • Language accuracy • Idiomatic expressions • Coherence, conciseness and clarity
- 5. Delivery • Each week, one topic; last week was wrap-up • Had three 30-minute segments • 10 to 12-minute lecture (included in-video quizzes) • 20 minutes of practice exercises • Discussion forum • https://nus.coursera.org/clearwriting001/wiki/orientation
- 6. Statistics Registration and participation • Weekly – “registrant” refers to those who registered – “participant” refers to those who registered and viewed and/or attempted exercises. Pre and post survey • Profile • Motivation • Satisfaction
- 7. Results of surveys Table 1. Registration numbers over five weeks Week 1 Week 2 784 94 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 81 42 Total Number of active participants: 909 8.3% did nothing after registration 36 Total 1096
- 8. level of participation: video Table 2. No. of participants who viewed video (cumulative) Total Lecture view Total Lecture unique view Week Week Week Week Week 1 2 3 4 5 759 616 456 390 636 309 159 109 99 112
- 9. level of participation: in-video quizzes Table 3. No. of participants who attempted in-video quizzes (cumulative) Week Week Week Week Week Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 1203 997 681 598 840 11 Total In-video Quiz Total unique In- 136 video Quiz 107 61 60 59 1
- 10. level of participation: exercises Table 4. No. of participants who attempted exercises (cumulative) Week Week Week Week Week 1 2 3 4 5 169 275 249 277 339 Total exercises Total unique exercises 56 57 46 44 41
- 11. rate of change of lectures viewed Figure 1. Number of participants who viewed lecture videos by topic
- 12. participants who viewed lecture videos Week Lesson/Segment 1 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Body Paragraphs 1.3 Conclusion 2 2.1 Tense Shifts 2.2 Subject Verb Agreement 2.3 Nominalistaion 3 3.1 Agree – with, to, on 3.2 Whereby 3.3 In addition, Moreover 4 4.1 Coherence 4.2 Clarity 4.3 Conciseness 5 5.1 Structure of Essay 5.2 Language Focus 5.3 Idiomatic Expressions 5.4 Coherence, Clarity, Conciseness Participant 567 350 260 240 195 182 137 122 117 108 95 96 86 71 73 70 % Viewed 100% 62% 46% 42% 34% 32% 24% 22% 21% 19% 17% 17% 15% 13% 13% 12%
- 13. participants who attempted quizzes Figure 2. Number of participants who attempted quizzes
- 14. pre-course surveys findings (N=418) motivation of doing the course? • almost all wants to improve their writing skills • a few hope to use the skills learned to handle the Qualifying English Test • a few mentioned to handle English for Academic Purposes module ES1102
- 15. post-course surveys findings (N=25) persistence in doing the course? • desire to test their knowledge • consolidate the skills learned • All agreed that the course had met its objectives • 23 said that their experience has been very positive or positive
- 16. post-course surveys findings (N=25) • 9 reported feeling confident of the ability in the four targeted areas • 19 reported that they were somewhat confident • 22 respondents said that they would consider taking another MOOC
- 17. Conclusions • As the number of participants is small (namely 1096 registrants and 909 active registrants) and this is a short course, the statistics presented in this report may not be conclusive. • Nonetheless, they do reflect the general trend observed in MOOCs. • Most importantly, results of the Post-course survey (though small) are encouraging. • Further analysis will have to be done for better insights and learning points.
Editor's Notes
- As observed in Table 1, the number of participants is 784 at the start of the course on 30 September 2013. While it drops drastically in Week 2, it is interesting to note there are 36 new registrants in Week 5, the last week of the course. This trend is consistent with that of courses offered as MOOC on Coursera and other similar platforms.
- What is the level of participation over the five weeks (cumulative) of Essentials of Clear Writing?The level of participation may be seen from the number of participants who viewed the video lectures, and attempted the video quizzes and practices at the end of each segment and each week. Table 2 shows that in Week 1, 309 participants viewed the video (unique views). The number of unique views falls by about 50% in Week 2 and stabilizes from Weeks 3 to 5. This number increases slightly in Week 5, which is the Consolidation of the four weeks’ of lessons.
- Table 3 shows the number of participants who attempted the in-video quizzes. The figures show that some participants made several attempts at doing the video quizzes, as reflected when a comparison is done between “total in-video quiz” and “total unique in-video quiz”. This suggests that a number of participants show some degree of persistence and engagement. However, consistent with the trend in lectures viewed, the level of participation falls in Week 2 but stabilizes in the subsequent weeks.
- Table 4 shows the statistics for the number of participants who attempted the practice or homework at the end of each week. The results show that the number of participants who attempted these quizzes is much lower than those who attempted the in-video quizzes. the number of participants who attempted the homework across the weeks does not fall as significantly over time. In fact, the number seems to have stabilized at Week 3, namely at an average of 250 homework attempted by around 40 participants from Weeks 3 to 5. In summary, these statistics reflect trends typical of MOOCs where the level of participation falls quickly especially at the initial weeks before achieving a steady state, which in the case of this MOOC is Week 3.
- What is the level of sustainability for each unit, for lectures viewed and homework attempted? Figure 1 shows an overview of the rate of change over time in terms of lectures viewed. It can be seen that by Week 5 , only 12% of the initial number of 567 participants continued to view the video lectures.
- Further details of the number of participants who viewed the lectures by topic are shown in Table 5. The last column shows the percentage change compared to the number at the start, which is 567 participants. It can be observed that after segment 1.1, the number falls steeply by 62% but the drop rate slows starting Week 2 , namely sustaining at a 2% drop from segment 2.2 to segment 5.4.
- In terms of homework attempted, similar to trend observed in lectures viewed, there was a steep drop from segment 1.1 to segment 1.2 by 55% (see Figure 2). The number of participants who attempted homework is 154 (at the initial stage), which is almost one fifth of those who viewed the lectures.
- Based on results of the pre-and post-course surveys, what is participants’ motivation of doing the course? What is the general impression of the course?There are 418 respondents who completed the Pre-course Survey and for almost all of them the motivation for enrolling in the course was to improve their writing skills. A few expressed that they were hoping to use the skills learned to handle the Qualifying English Test in November 2013 and a few also mentioned that they needed the skills for the English for Academic Purposes module ES1102.
- What motivated these respondents to persist was the desire to test their knowledge and to consolidate the skills learned. This number (25) represents about 44% of the 56 participants who attempted the homework from Week 1 of the course (see Table 4).
- In general the Post-course survey indicates that motivation is a prime determining factor in the successful completion of the course i.e. the viewing of all lecture videos and attempts at the homework. If we consider that at Week 1, 56 unique participants attempted the homework, this final figure of about 23 active participants would represent a healthy 41%.