Abstract
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provision has proliferated over the past four years and millions of learners have participated. However, it is widely acknowledged that the number of completions is disturbingly low and MOOC drop-out rates have been a prominent issue of discussion. Currently, most MOOC analysis focuses on aspects such as patterns of engagement and prediction of dropout using data obtained by applying learning analytics to the large amounts of data gathered. In contrast, the effectiveness of teaching and learning programs in traditional face-to-face Higher Education (HE) settings is increasingly being assessed by measures linked to the promotion of student engagement. Internationally, student engagement surveys are being used to provide profiles of the effectiveness of teaching and learning within and between courses. In this paper we consider MOOC participation and drop-out issues emerging from the literature, and provide an overview of the student engagement surveys now widely used in HE. MOOC pedagogy is examined from the perspective of student engagement and we identify the need for a similar model adapted to MOOCs which could provide both a framework for course development and an instrument to assess aspects of teaching and learning in existing courses.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Altbach, P.: MOOCs as neocolonialism: who controls knowledge? Int. High. Educ. 75, 5–7 (2014)
Baron, P., Corbin, L.: Student engagement: rhetoric and reality. High. Educ. Res. Dev. 31(6), 759–772 (2012)
Belanger, Y., Thornton, J.: Bioelectricity: a quantitative approach. Duke Universitys First MOOC. Technical report, Duke University (2013). Accessed 19 March 2013
Ben-Ari, M.M.: Moocs on introductory programming: a travelogue. ACM Inroads 4(2), 58–61 (2013)
Christensen, G., Steinmetz, A., Alcorn, B., Bennett, A., Woods, D., Emanuel, E.: The MOOC phenomenon: who takes massive open online courses and why?
Clow, D.: MOOCs and the funnel of participation. In: Third Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (2013)
Conole, G.: MOOCs as disruptive technologies: strategies for enhancing the learner experience and quality of MOOCs. Revista de Educación a Distancia 39, 1–17 (2013)
Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/. Accessed 21 February 2015
Creelman, A., Ehlers, U., Ossiannilsson, E.: Perspectives on mooc quality-an account of the efquel mooc quality project. INNOQUAL-Int. J. Innov. Qual. Learn. 2(3) (2014)
Daniel, J.: Making sense of moocs: musings in a maze of myth, paradox and possibility. J. Interact. Media Educ. 3 (2012)
Devlin, K.: MOOC Mania Meets the Sober Reality of Education. Huffington Post, 19 August 2013
Ecclestone, M.: MOOCs as a professional development tool for librarians. Can. J. Libr. Inf. Pract. Res. 8(2) (2013)
edX. https://www.edx.org/. Accessed 21 February 2015
Escher, G., Noukakis, D., Aebischer, P.: Boosting higher education in africa through shared massive open online courses (MOOCs). In: Education, Learning, Training: Critical Issues for Development, p. 195 (2014)
Furedi, F., Attwood, R.: Satisfaction and its discontents. The Times Higher Education Supplement, 2040, March 2012
Jordan, K.: Initial trends in enrolment and completion of massive open online courses. Int. Rev. Res. Open Distrib. Learn. 15(1), 133–160 (2014)
Kizilcec, R., Piech, C., Schneider, E.: Deconstructing disengagement: analyzing learner subpopulations in massive open online courses. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge, pp. 170–179. ACM (2013)
Knox, J., Ross, J., Sinclair, C., Macleod, H., Bayne, S.: Mooc feedback: pleasing all the people? In: Invasion of the MOOCs, pp. 98–104. Parlor Press (2014)
Kuh, G.: The national survey of student engagement: conceptual framework and overview of psychometric properties, pp. 1–26. Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, Bloomington (2001)
Liyanagunawardena, T., Williams, S., Adams, A.: The impact and reach of moocs: a developing countries perspective. eLearning Papers (33) (2013)
Nanfito, M.: MOOCs: Opportunities, Impacts, and Challenges: Massive Open Online Courses in Colleges and Universities (2013)
NSSE: North American National Survey of Student Engagement. http://nsse.iub.edu. Accessed 10 March 2014
Pascarella, E., Seifert, T., Blaich, C.: How effective are the nsse benchmarks in predicting important educational outcomes? Change: Mag. High. Learn. 42(1), 16–22 (2010)
Porter, S.: Do college student surveys have any validity? Rev. High. Educ. 35(1), 45–76 (2011)
Quaye, S., Harper, S. (eds.): Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Diverse Populations, 2nd edn. Routledge, New York (2014)
Ramesh, A., Goldwasser, D., Huang, B., Daume III, H., Getoor, L.: Learning latent engagement patterns of students in online courses. In: Twenty-Eighth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2014)
Read, T., Rodrigo, C.: Toward a quality model for uned moocs. eLearning Papers (37) (2014). http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/en/elearning_papers
Rivard, R.: Measuring the MOOC dropout rate. Inside Higher Ed., 8 March 2013
Rosewell, J., Jansen, D.: The openuped quality label: benchmarks for moocs. INNOQUAL: Int. J. Innov. Qual. Learn. 2(3), 88–100 (2014)
Sandeen, C.: Integrating MOOCS into traditional higher education: the emerging MOOC 3.0 era. Change: Mag. High. Learn. 45(6), 34–39 (2013)
Sinclair, J., Boyatt, R., Foss, J., Rocks, C.: A tale of two modes: initial reflections on an innovative MOOC. In: Uden, L., Sinclair, J., Tao, Y.-H., Liberona, D. (eds.) LTEC 2014. CCIS, vol. 446, pp. 49–60. Springer, Heidelberg (2014)
Sinclair, J., Boyatt, R., Rocks, C., Joy, M.: Massive open online courses (MOOCs): a review of usage and evaluation. Int. J. Learn. Technol. (2015) (accepted for publication)
Sinha, T., Li, N., Jermann, P., Dillenbourg, P.: Capturing “attrition intensifying” structural traits from didactic interaction sequences of mooc learners. In: Proceedings of the Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing Workshop (2014)
Umbach, P., Wawrzynski, M.: Faculty do matter: the role of college faculty in student learning and engagement. Res. High. Educ. 46(2), 153–184 (2005)
Vihavainen, A., Luukkainen, M., Kurhila, J.: Multi-faceted Support for MOOC in Programming. In: SIGITE 2012 (2012)
Welsh, D.H., Dragusin, M.: The new generation of massive open online course (moocs) and entrepreneurship education. Small Bus. Inst.\({\textregistered }\) J. 9(1), 51–65 (2013)
Yang, D., Sinha, T., Adamson, D., Rose, C.: Turn on, tune in, drop out: anticipating student dropouts in massive open online courses. In: Proceedings of the 2013 NIPS Data-Driven Education Workshop, vol. 10, p. 13 (2013)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sinclair, J., Kalvala, S. (2015). Engagement Measures in Massive Open Online Courses. In: Uden, L., Liberona, D., Welzer, T. (eds) Learning Technology for Education in Cloud. LTEC 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 533. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22629-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22629-3_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-22628-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-22629-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)