TY - GEN A1 - Teusner, Ralf A1 - Matthies, Christoph A1 - Staubitz, Thomas T1 - What Stays in Mind? BT - Retention Rates in Programming MOOCs T2 - IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-1-5386-1174-6 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8658890 SN - 0190-5848 PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - GEN A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Wilkins, Christian A1 - Hagedorn, Christiane A1 - Meinel, Christoph T1 - The Gamification of a MOOC Platform T2 - Proceedings of 2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) N2 - Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have left their mark on the face of education during the recent years. At the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany, we are actively developing a MOOC platform, which provides our research with a plethora of e-learning topics, such as learning analytics, automated assessment, peer assessment, team-work, online proctoring, and gamification. We run several instances of this platform. On openHPI, we provide our own courses from within the HPI context. Further instances are openSAP, openWHO, and mooc.HOUSE, which is the smallest of these platforms, targeting customers with a less extensive course portfolio. In 2013, we started to work on the gamification of our platform. By now, we have implemented about two thirds of the features that we initially have evaluated as useful for our purposes. About a year ago we activated the implemented gamification features on mooc.HOUSE. Before activating the features on openHPI as well, we examined, and re-evaluated our initial considerations based on the data we collected so far and the changes in other contexts of our platforms. KW - MOOC KW - Gamification KW - e-learning KW - Massive Open Online Courses Y1 - 2017 SN - 978-1-5090-5467-1 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2017.7942952 SN - 2165-9567 SP - 883 EP - 892 PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - GEN A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Teusner, Ralf A1 - Meinel, Christoph T1 - MOOCs in Secondary Education BT - Experiments and Observations from German Classrooms T2 - 2019 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) N2 - Computer science education in German schools is often less than optimal. It is only mandatory in a few of the federal states and there is a lack of qualified teachers. As a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) provider with a German background, we developed the idea to implement a MOOC addressing pupils in secondary schools to fill this gap. The course targeted high school pupils and enabled them to learn the Python programming language. In 2014, we successfully conducted the first iteration of this MOOC with more than 7000 participants. However, the share of pupils in the course was not quite satisfactory. So we conducted several workshops with teachers to find out why they had not used the course to the extent that we had imagined. The paper at hand explores and discusses the steps we have taken in the following years as a result of these workshops. KW - MOOC KW - Secondary Education KW - School KW - Teamwork KW - K-12 KW - Programming course KW - Java KW - Python Y1 - 2019 SN - 978-1-5386-9506-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2019.8725138 SN - 2165-9567 SP - 173 EP - 182 PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Serth, Sebastian A1 - Thomas, Max A1 - Ebner, Martin A1 - Koschutnig-Ebner, Markus A1 - Rampelt, Florian A1 - von Stetten, Alexander A1 - Wittke, Andreas ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - A metastandard for the international exchange of MOOCs BT - the MOOChub as first prototype JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The MOOChub is a joined web-based catalog of all relevant German and Austrian MOOC platforms that lists well over 750 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Automatically building such a catalog requires that all partners describe and publicly offer the metadata of their courses in the same way. The paper at hand presents the genesis of the idea to establish a common metadata standard and the story of its subsequent development. The result of this effort is, first, an open-licensed de-facto-standard, which is based on existing commonly used standards and second, a first prototypical platform that is using this standard: the MOOChub, which lists all courses of the involved partners. This catalog is searchable and provides a more comprehensive overview of basically all MOOCs that are offered by German and Austrian MOOC platforms. Finally, the upcoming developments to further optimize the catalog and the metadata standard are reported. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624154 SP - 147 EP - 161 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Meinel, Christoph T1 - Graded Team Assignments in MOOCs BT - Effects of Team Composition and Further Factors on Team Dropout Rates and Performance T2 - SCALE N2 - The ability to work in teams is an important skill in today's work environments. In MOOCs, however, team work, team tasks, and graded team-based assignments play only a marginal role. To close this gap, we have been exploring ways to integrate graded team-based assignments in MOOCs. Some goals of our work are to determine simple criteria to match teams in a volatile environment and to enable a frictionless online collaboration for the participants within our MOOC platform. The high dropout rates in MOOCs pose particular challenges for team work in this context. By now, we have conducted 15 MOOCs containing graded team-based assignments in a variety of topics. The paper at hand presents a study that aims to establish a solid understanding of the participants in the team tasks. Furthermore, we attempt to determine which team compositions are particularly successful. Finally, we examine how several modifications to our platform's collaborative toolset have affected the dropout rates and performance of the teams. KW - Teamwork KW - MOOCs KW - Team-based Learning KW - Team Assessment KW - Peer Assessment KW - Project-based learning Y1 - 2019 SN - 978-1-4503-6804-9 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3330430.3333619 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - GEN A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Meinel, Christoph T1 - Collaborative Learning in MOOCs - Approaches and Experiments T2 - 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference N2 - This Research-to-Practice paper examines the practical application of various forms of collaborative learning in MOOCs. Since 2012, about 60 MOOCs in the wider context of Information Technology and Computer Science have been conducted on our self-developed MOOC platform. The platform is also used by several customers, who either run their own platform instances or use our white label platform. We, as well as some of our partners, have experimented with different approaches in collaborative learning in these courses. Based on the results of early experiments, surveys amongst our participants, and requests by our business partners we have integrated several options to offer forms of collaborative learning to the system. The results of our experiments are directly fed back to the platform development, allowing to fine tune existing and to add new tools where necessary. In the paper at hand, we discuss the benefits and disadvantages of decisions in the design of a MOOC with regard to the various forms of collaborative learning. While the focus of the paper at hand is on forms of large group collaboration, two types of small group collaboration on our platforms are briefly introduced. KW - MOOC KW - Collaborative learning KW - Peer assessment KW - Team based assignment KW - Teamwork Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-1-5386-1174-6 SN - 0190-5848 PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - THES A1 - Staubitz, Thomas T1 - Gradable team assignments in large scale learning environments BT - collaborative learning, teamwork, and peer assessment in MOOCs BT - Kollaboratives Lernen, Teamarbeit und Peer Assessment in MOOCs N2 - Lifelong learning plays an increasingly important role in many societies. Technology is changing faster than ever and what has been important to learn today, may be obsolete tomorrow. The role of informal programs is becoming increasingly important. Particularly, Massive Open Online Courses have become popular among learners and instructors. In 2008, a group of Canadian education enthusiasts started the first Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs to prove their cognitive theory of Connectivism. Around 2012, a variety of American start-ups redefined the concept of MOOCs. Instead of following the connectivist doctrine they returned to a more traditional approach. They focussed on video lecturing and combined this with a course forum that allowed the participants to discuss with each other and the teaching team. While this new version of the concept was enormously successful in terms of massiveness—hundreds of thousands of participants from all over the world joined the first of these courses—many educators criticized the re-lapse to the cognitivist model. In the early days, the evolving platforms often did not have more features than a video player, simple multiple-choice quizzes, and the course forum. It soon became a major interest of research to allow the scaling of more modern approaches of learning and teaching for the massiveness of these courses. Hands-on exercises, alternative forms of assessment, collaboration, and teamwork are some of the topics on the agenda. The insights provided by cognitive and pedagogical theories, however, do not necessarily always run in sync with the needs and the preferences of the majority of participants. While the former promote action-learning, hands-on-learning, competence-based-learning, project-based-learning, team-based-learning as the holy grail, many of the latter often rather prefer a more laid-back style of learning, sometimes referred to as edutainment. Obviously, given the large numbers of participants in these courses, there is not just one type of learners. Participants are not a homogeneous mass but a potpourri of individuals with a wildly heterogeneous mix of backgrounds, previous knowledge, familial and professional circumstances, countries of origin, gender, age, and so on. For the majority of participants, a full-time job and/or a family often just does not leave enough room for more time intensive tasks, such as practical exercises or teamwork. Others, however, particularly enjoy these hands-on or collaborative aspects of MOOCs. Furthermore, many subjects particularly require these possibilities and simply cannot be taught or learned in courses that lack collaborative or hands-on features. In this context, the thesis discusses how team assignments have been implemented on the HPI MOOC platform. During the recent years, several experiments have been conducted and a great amount of experience has been gained by employing team assignments in courses in areas, such as Object-Oriented Programming, Design Thinking, and Business Innovation on various instances of this platform: openHPI, openSAP, and mooc.house N2 - In einer Zeit stetigen Wandels und immer schneller wechselnder Technologien nimmt das lebenslange Lernen einen immer höheren Stellenwert ein. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) sind ein hervorragendes Werkzeug, um in kurzer Zeit und mit vergleichsweise wenig Aufwand breite Teile der Bevölkerung zu erreichen. Das HPI leistet mit der eigenen Plattform openHPI und den für diverse Partner betriebenen Plattformen openSAP, OpenWHO und mooc.house sowohl im deutschsprachigen Raum als auch international einen wichtigen Beitrag zu digitalen Aufklärung. In vielen Bereichen ist die Plattform State of the Art und ist den international bekannteren Plattformen zumindest ebenbürtig. Gerade bei der Entwicklung und Anwendung von neuen Lehr- und Lernmethoden und deren technischer Unterstützung ist openHPI auch international richtungsweisend. Die vorliegende Dissertation befasst sich mit den Möglichkeiten der technischen und didaktischen Unterstützung von bewertbaren Aufgabenstellungen in MOOCs, die im Team zu bearbeiten sind. Durch die Größe der Kurse—in der Regel steht hier ein kleines Teaching Team mehreren tausend Teilnehmern gegenüber—ist eine manuelle Bewertung der Teilnehmenden durch die Lehrenden nicht möglich. Hier wird eine der alternativen Möglichkeiten zur Bewertung von Aufgaben, das sogenannte Peer Assessment, eingesetzt und für die speziellen Gegebenheiten der Bearbeitung von Aufgaben im Team angepasst. In den vergangenen fünf Jahren wurde eine iterative Langzeitstudie durchgeführt, bei der verschiedene qualitative und quantitative Methoden der Auswertung eingesetzt wurden. Das Ergebnis dieser Forschungsarbeit ist eine tiefgehende Einsicht in die Mechanismen der Teamarbeit in skalierenden digitalen Lernplattformen sowie eine Reihe von Empfehlungen zur weiteren Verbesserung der kollaborativen Eigenschaften der HPI-Plattformen, die zum Teil bereits umgesetzt wurden bzw. gerade umgesetzt werden. T2 - Benotete Teamaufgaben in skalierenden E-Learning-Systemen KW - massive open online courses KW - MOOC KW - collaborative learning KW - online learning KW - teamwork KW - peer assessment KW - digital learning KW - eLearning KW - collaborative work KW - kollaboratives Lernen KW - kollaboratives Arbeiten KW - digitales Lernen KW - MOOC KW - Massive Open Online Courses KW - Online-Lernen KW - Peer Assessment KW - Teamarbeit KW - eLearning Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-471830 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Serth, Sebastian A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - van Elten, Martin A1 - Meinel, Christoph ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi T1 - Measuring the effects of course modularizations in online courses for life-long learners T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Reihe der Digital Engineering Fakultät N2 - Many participants in Massive Open Online Courses are full-time employees seeking greater flexibility in their time commitment and the available learning paths. We recently addressed these requirements by splitting up our 6-week courses into three 2-week modules followed by a separate exam. Modularizing courses offers many advantages: Shorter modules are more sustainable and can be combined, reused, and incorporated into learning paths more easily. Time flexibility for learners is also improved as exams can now be offered multiple times per year, while the learning content is available independently. In this article, we answer the question of which impact this modularization has on key learning metrics, such as course completion rates, learning success, and no-show rates. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of longer breaks between modules on these metrics. According to our analysis, course modules facilitate more selective learning behaviors that encourage learners to focus on topics they are the most interested in. At the same time, participation in overarching exams across all modules seems to be less appealing compared to an integrated exam of a 6-week course. While breaks between the modules increase the distinctive appearance of individual modules, a break before the final exam further reduces initial interest in the exams. We further reveal that participation in self-paced courses as a preparation for the final exam is unlikely to attract new learners to the course offerings, even though learners' performance is comparable to instructor-paced courses. The results of our long-term study on course modularization provide a solid foundation for future research and enable educators to make informed decisions about the design of their courses. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Reihe der Digital Engineering Fakultät - 17 KW - Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) KW - course design KW - modularization KW - learning path KW - flexibility KW - e-learning KW - assignments KW - self-paced learning Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-589182 IS - 17 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Serth, Sebastian A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - van Elten, Martin A1 - Meinel, Christoph ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi T1 - Measuring the effects of course modularizations in online courses for life-long learners JF - Frontiers in Education N2 - Many participants in Massive Open Online Courses are full-time employees seeking greater flexibility in their time commitment and the available learning paths. We recently addressed these requirements by splitting up our 6-week courses into three 2-week modules followed by a separate exam. Modularizing courses offers many advantages: Shorter modules are more sustainable and can be combined, reused, and incorporated into learning paths more easily. Time flexibility for learners is also improved as exams can now be offered multiple times per year, while the learning content is available independently. In this article, we answer the question of which impact this modularization has on key learning metrics, such as course completion rates, learning success, and no-show rates. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of longer breaks between modules on these metrics. According to our analysis, course modules facilitate more selective learning behaviors that encourage learners to focus on topics they are the most interested in. At the same time, participation in overarching exams across all modules seems to be less appealing compared to an integrated exam of a 6-week course. While breaks between the modules increase the distinctive appearance of individual modules, a break before the final exam further reduces initial interest in the exams. We further reveal that participation in self-paced courses as a preparation for the final exam is unlikely to attract new learners to the course offerings, even though learners' performance is comparable to instructor-paced courses. The results of our long-term study on course modularization provide a solid foundation for future research and enable educators to make informed decisions about the design of their courses. KW - Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) KW - course design KW - modularization KW - learning path KW - flexibility KW - e-learning KW - assignments KW - self-paced learning Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.1008545 SN - 2504-284X VL - 7 PB - Frontiers CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Meinel, Christoph A1 - Willems, Christian A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Sauer, Dominic A1 - Hagedorn, Christiane T1 - openHPI T1 - openHPI BT - 10 Years of MOOCs at the Hasso Plattner Institute BT - 10 Jahre MOOCs am Hasso-Plattner-Institut N2 - On the occasion of the 10th openHPI anniversary, this technical report provides information about the HPI MOOC platform, including its core features, technology, and architecture. In an introduction, the platform family with all partner platforms is presented; these now amount to nine platforms, including openHPI. This section introduces openHPI as an advisor and research partner in various projects. In the second chapter, the functionalities and common course formats of the platform are presented. The functionalities are divided into learner and admin features. The learner features section provides detailed information about performance records, courses, and the learning materials of which a course is composed: videos, texts, and quizzes. In addition, the learning materials can be enriched by adding external exercise tools that communicate with the HPI MOOC platform via the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard. Furthermore, the concept of peer assessments completed the possible learning materials. The section then proceeds with further information on the discussion forum, a fundamental concept of MOOCs compared to traditional e-learning offers. The section is concluded with a description of the quiz recap, learning objectives, mobile applications, gameful learning, and the help desk. The next part of this chapter deals with the admin features. The described functionality is restricted to describing the news and announcements, dashboards and statistics, reporting capabilities, research options with A/B testing, the course feed, and the TransPipe tool to support the process of creating automated or manual subtitles. The platform supports a large variety of additional features, but a detailed description of these features goes beyond the scope of this report. The chapter then elaborates on common course formats and openHPI teaching activities at the HPI. The chapter concludes with some best practices for course design and delivery. The third chapter provides insights into the technology and architecture behind openHPI. A special characteristic of the openHPI project is the conscious decision to operate the complete application from bare metal to platform development. Hence, the chapter starts with a section about the openHPI Cloud, including detailed information about the data center and devices, the used cloud software OpenStack and Ceph, as well as the openHPI Cloud Service provided for the HPI. Afterward, a section on the application technology stack and development tooling describes the application infrastructure components, the used automation, the deployment pipeline, and the tools used for monitoring and alerting. The chapter is concluded with detailed information about the technology stack and concrete platform implementation details. The section describes the service-oriented Ruby on Rails application, inter-service communication, and public APIs. It also provides more information on the design system and components used in the application. The section concludes with a discussion of the original microservice architecture, where we share our insights and reasoning for migrating back to a monolithic application. The last chapter provides a summary and an outlook on the future of digital education. N2 - Anlässlich des 10-jährigen Jubiläums von openHPI informiert dieser technische Bericht über die HPI-MOOC-Plattform einschließlich ihrer Kernfunktionen, Technologie und Architektur. In einer Einleitung wird die Plattformfamilie mit allen Partnerplattformen vorgestellt; diese belaufen sich inklusive openHPI aktuell auf neun Plattformen. In diesem Abschnitt wird außerdem gezeigt, wie openHPI als Berater und Forschungspartner in verschiedenen Projekten fungiert. Im zweiten Kapitel werden die Funktionalitäten und gängigen Kursformate der Plattform präsentiert. Die Funktionalitäten sind in Lerner- und Admin-Funktionen unterteilt. Der Bereich Lernerfunktionen bietet detaillierte Informationen zu Leistungsnachweisen, Kursen und den Lernmaterialien, aus denen sich ein Kurs zusammensetzt: Videos, Texte und Quiz. Darüber hinaus können die Lernmaterialien durch externe Übungstools angereichert werden, die über den Standard Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) mit der HPI MOOC-Plattform kommunizieren. Das Konzept der Peer-Assessments rundet die möglichen Lernmaterialien ab. Der Abschnitt geht dann weiter auf das Diskussionsforum ein, das einen grundlegenden Unterschied von MOOCs im Vergleich zu traditionellen E-Learning-Angeboten darstellt. Zum Abschluss des Abschnitts folgen eine Beschreibung von Quiz-Recap, Lernzielen, mobilen Anwendungen, spielerischen Lernens und dem Helpdesk. Der nächste Teil dieses Kapitels beschäftigt sich mit den Admin-Funktionen. Die Funktionalitätsbeschreibung beschränkt sich Neuigkeiten und Ankündigungen, Dashboards und Statistiken, Berichtsfunktionen, Forschungsoptionen mit A/B-Tests, den Kurs-Feed und das TransPipe-Tool zur Unterstützung beim Erstellen von automatischen oder manuellen Untertiteln. Die Plattform unterstützt außerdem eine Vielzahl zusätzlicher Funktionen, doch eine detaillierte Beschreibung dieser Funktionen würde den Rahmen des Berichts sprengen. Das Kapitel geht dann auf gängige Kursformate und openHPI-Lehrveranstaltungen am HPI ein, bevor es mit einigen Best Practices für die Gestaltung und Durchführung von Kursen schließt. Zum Abschluss des technischen Berichts gibt das letzte Kapitel eine Zusammenfassung und einen Ausblick auf die Zukunft der digitalen Bildung. Ein besonderes Merkmal des openHPI-Projekts ist die bewusste Entscheidung, die komplette Anwendung von den physischen Netzwerkkomponenten bis zur Plattformentwicklung eigenständig zu betreiben. Bei der vorliegenden deutschen Variante handelt es sich um eine gekürzte Übersetzung des technischen Berichts 148, bei der kein Einblick in die Technologien und Architektur von openHPI gegeben wird. Interessierte Leser:innen können im technischen Bericht 148 (vollständige englische Version) detaillierte Informationen zum Rechenzentrum und den Geräten, der Cloud-Software und dem openHPI Cloud Service aber auch zu Infrastruktur-Anwendungskomponenten wie Entwicklungstools, Automatisierung, Deployment-Pipeline und Monitoring erhalten. Außerdem finden sich dort weitere Informationen über den Technologiestack und konkrete Implementierungsdetails der Plattform inklusive der serviceorientierten Ruby on Rails-Anwendung, die Kommunikation zwischen den Diensten, öffentliche APIs, sowie Designsystem und -komponenten. Der Abschnitt schließt mit einer Diskussion über die ursprüngliche Microservice-Architektur und die Migration zu einer monolithischen Anwendung. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 148 KW - openHPI KW - MOOC KW - digital learning platform KW - digital enlightenment KW - lifelong learning KW - openHPI KW - MOOC KW - digitale Lernplattform KW - digitale Aufklärung KW - lebenslanges Lernen Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-560208 SN - 978-3-86956-544-6 SN - 1613-5652 SN - 2191-1665 IS - 148 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER -