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 - Renz, Jan A1 - Shams, Ahmed A1 - Meinel, Christoph T1 - Offline-Enabled Web-based E-Learning for Improved User Experience in Africa T2 - 2017 IEEE Africon N2 - Web-based E-Learning uses Internet technologies and digital media to deliver education content to learners. Many universities in recent years apply their capacity in producing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). They have been offering MOOCs with an expectation of rendering a comprehensive online apprenticeship. Typically, an online content delivery process requires an Internet connection. However, access to the broadband has never been a readily available resource in many regions. In Africa, poor and no networks are yet predominantly experienced by Internet users, frequently causing offline each moment a digital device disconnect from a network. As a result, a learning process is always disrupted, delayed and terminated in such regions. This paper raises the concern of E-Learning in poor and low bandwidths, in fact, it highlights the needs for an Offline-Enabled mode. The paper also explores technical approaches beamed to enhance the user experience inWeb-based E-Learning, particular in Africa. KW - Educational Technology KW - E-Learning KW - Internet KW - Bandwidth KW - Mobile Learning KW - Mobiles KW - MOOC KW - Offline-Enabled KW - Ubiquitous Y1 - 2017 SN - 978-1-5386-2775-4 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/AFRCON.2017.8095574 SN - 2153-0025 SP - 736 EP - 742 PB - IEEE 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 - 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 -