Massive online open courses

1. Engaging with Massive Online Courses
Orgest Shehaj
orgest.shehaj@studio.unibo.it
Alma Mater Studiorum · Università di Bologna
SCUOLA DI SCIENZE
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

2. Index
Introduction
MOOC platforms
Engagement of the Students
Styles of engagement
Course Forum
Lexical analysis
Badge system
Future Work
Conclusion
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

3. Introduction
Massive open online courses have recently garnered widespread
public attention for their potential as a new educational vehicle.
A MOOC integrates the connectivity of social networking, the
facilitation of an acknowledged expert in a field study, and a
collection of freely accessible online resources. A MOOC builds on
the active engagement of several hundred to several thousand
“students” who self-organize their participation according to learning
goals, prior knowledge and skills, and common interests.
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

4. MOOC platforms
There are now multiple MOOC platforms:
Coursera
Udacity
edX
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

5. Engagement of the Students
The students in these courses can engage in a range of activities:
watching lectures
taking quizzes to test their understanding
working on assignments or exams
engaging in a forum where they can seek help, offer advice and
have discussions
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

6. Styles of engagement
In a course we consider the two fundamental activities of viewing a
lecture and handing in an assignment for credit. This suggests
different natural styles of engagement:
Viewers
Solvers
All-rounders
Collectors
Bystanders
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

7. Course Forum
The forums provide a mechanism for students to interact with each
other.
The forum is:
organized in a sequence of threads
a place where students ask questions that other students answer
a place where students engage in discussions about course
content
a place where students weigh in one after another on a
class-related issue
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

8. Course Forum
How the forums are being used?
a single student may contribute many times to the same thread or
most students contribute just once ?
in the forum we find high-activity students who initiate threads
and low-activity students who follow up ?
which students are likely to continue in the course and which are
likely to leave?
how do stronger and weaker students interact on the forum?
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

9. Lexical analysis
We want to understand whether we can analyze student engagement
based on what they write in their posts, can we estimate a student’s
eventual activity level from their early forum posts?
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

10. Badge system
The introduction of a badge produce an incentive for the student.
There are four badge level:
bronze
silver
gold
diamond
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

11. Future Work
For the Future work we can mention the following directions:
personalization and recommendation mechanisms to help
incerase user engagement and learning
identifying effective student behavior and developing methods
that automatically recognize students who require help or are
lacking an understanding of a key concept
understanding and facilitating students' use of forums and
discussion boards
further exploring badges and other incentive mechanisms to not
only increase student engagement but also to help students learn
material more effectively
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

12. Conclusion
We have taken some initial steps toward characterizing the ways in
which students engage with MOOCs.
To shift patterns of student engagement in these courses, and in the
course discussion forums in particular, we have seen a system of
badges designed to produce incentives for activity and contribution.
Engaging with Massive Online Courses

13. References
A.Anderson, D.Huttenlocher, j.Kleinberg, J.Leskovec. Engaging
whit Massive Online Courses
Engaging with Massive Online Courses