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“One video fit for all”
(2023)
Online learning in mathematics has always been challenging, especially for mathematics in STEM education. This paper presents how to make “one fit for all” lecture videos for mathematics in STEM education. In general, we do believe that there is no such thing as “one fit for all” video. The curriculum requires a high level of prior knowledge in mathematics from high school to get a good understanding, and the variation of prior knowledge levels among STEM education students is often high. This creates challenges for both online teaching and on-campus teaching. This article presents experimenting and researching on a video format where students can get a real-time feeling, and which fits their needs regarding their existing prior knowledge. They have the possibility to ask and receive answers during the video without having to feel that they must jump into different sources, which helps to reduce unnecessary distractions. The fundamental video format presented here is that of dynamic branching videos, which has to little degree been researched in education related studies. The reason might be that this field is quite new for higher education, and there is relatively high requirement on the video editing skills from the teachers’ side considering the platforms that are available so far. The videos are implemented for engineering students who take the Linear Algebra course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in spring 2023. Feedback from the students gathered via anonymous surveys so far (N = 21) is very positive. With the high suitability for online teaching, this video format might lead the trend of online learning in the future. The design and implementation of dynamic videos in mathematics in higher education was presented for the first time at the EMOOCs conference 2023.
xMOOCs
(2023)
The World Health Organization designed OpenWHO.org to provide an inclusive and accessible online environment to equip learners across the globe with critical up-to-date information and to be able to effectively protect themselves in health emergencies. The platform thus focuses on the eXtended Massive Open Online Course (xMOOC) modality – contentfocused and expert-driven, one-to-many modelled, and self-paced for scalable learning. In this paper, we describe how OpenWHO utilized xMOOCs to reach mass audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; the paper specifically examines the accessibility, language inclusivity and adaptability of hosted xMOOCs. As of February 2023, OpenWHO had 7.5 million enrolments across 200 xMOOCs on health emergency, epidemic, pandemic and other public health topics available across 65 languages, including 46 courses targeted for the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results suggest that the xMOOC modality allowed OpenWHO to expand learning during the pandemic to previously underrepresented groups, including women, participants ages 70 and older, and learners younger than age 20. The OpenWHO use case shows that xMOOCs should be considered when there is a need for massive knowledge transfer in health emergency situations, yet the approach should be context-specific according to the type of health emergency, targeted population and region. Our evidence also supports previous calls to put intervention elements that contribute to removing barriers to access at the core of learning and health information dissemination. Equity must be the fundamental principle and organizing criteria for public health work.
In an effort to describe and produce different formats for video instruction, the research community in technology-enhanced learning, and MOOC scholars in particular, have focused on the general style of video production: whether it is a digitally scripted “talk-and-chalk” or a “talking head” version of a learning unit. Since these production styles include various sub-elements, this paper deconstructs the inherited elements of video production in the context of educational live-streams. Using over 700 videos – both from synchronous and asynchronous modalities of large video-based platforms (YouTube and Twitch), 92 features were found in eight categories of video production. These include commonly analyzed features such as the use of green screen and a visible instructor, but also less studied features such as social media connections and changing camera perspective depending on the topic being covered. Overall, the research results enable an analysis of common video production styles and a toolbox for categorizing new formats – independent of their final (a)synchronous use in MOOCs. Keywords: video production, MOOC video styles, live-streaming.
Founded in 2013, OpenClassrooms is a French online learning company that offers both paid courses and free MOOCs on a wide range of topics, including computer science and education. In 2021, in partnership with the EDA research unit, OpenClassrooms shared a database to solve the problem of how to increase persistence in their paid courses, which consist of a series of MOOCs and human mentoring. Our statistical analysis aims to identify reasons for dropouts that are due to the course design rather than demographic predictors or external factors.We aim to identify at-risk students, i.e. those who are on the verge of dropping out at a specific moment. To achieve this, we use learning analytics to characterize student behavior. We conducted data analysis on a sample of data related to the “Web Designers” and “Instructional Design” courses. By visualizing the student flow and constructing speed and acceleration predictors, we can identify which parts of the course need to be calibrated and when particular attention should be paid to these at-risk students.
The main aim of this article is to explore how learning analytics and synchronous collaboration could improve course completion and learner outcomes in MOOCs, which traditionally have been delivered asynchronously. Based on our experience with developing BigBlueButton, a virtual classroom platform that provides educators with live analytics, this paper explores three scenarios with business focused MOOCs to improve outcomes and strengthen learned skills.
Open edX is an incredible platform to deliver MOOCs and SPOCs, designed to be robust and support hundreds of thousands of students at the same time. Nevertheless, it lacks a lot of the fine-grained functionality needed to handle students individually in an on-campus course. This short session will present the ongoing project undertaken by the 6 public universities of the Region of Madrid plus the Universitat Politècnica de València, in the framework of a national initiative called UniDigital, funded by the Ministry of Universities of Spain within the Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia of the European Union. This project, led by three of these Spanish universities (UC3M, UPV, UAM), is investing more than half a million euros with the purpose of bringing the Open edX platform closer to the functionalities required for an LMS to support on-campus teaching. The aim of the project is to coordinate what is going to be developed with the Open edX development community, so these developments are incorporated into the core of the Open edX platform in its next releases. Features like a complete redesign of platform analytics to make them real-time, the creation of dashboards based on these analytics, the integration of a system for customized automatic feedback, improvement of exams and tasks and the extension of grading capabilities, improvements in the graphical interfaces for both students and teachers, the extension of the emailing capabilities, redesign of the file management system, integration of H5P content, the integration of a tool to create mind maps, the creation of a system to detect students at risk, or the integration of an advanced voice assistant and a gamification mobile app, among others, are part of the functionalities to be developed. The idea is to transform a first-class MOOC platform into the next on-campus LMS.
Many prediction tasks can be done based on users’ trace data. In this paper, we explored convergent thinking as a personality-related attribute and its relation to features gathered in interactive and non-interactive tasks of an online course. This is an under-utilized attribute that could be used for adapting online courses according to the creativity level to enhance the motivation of learners. Therefore, we used the logfile data of a 60 minutes Moodle course with N=128 learners, combined with the Remote Associates Test (RAT). We explored the trace data and found a weak correlation between interactive tasks and the RAT score, which was the highest considering the overall dataset. We trained a Random Forest Regressor to predict convergent thinking based on the trace data and analyzed the feature importance. The result has shown that the interactive tasks have the highest importance in prediction, but the accuracy is very low. We discuss the potential for personalizing online courses and address further steps to improve the applicability.
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.
This paper presents a new design for MOOCs for professional development of skills needed to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals – the CoMOOC or Co-designed Massive Open Online Collaboration. The CoMOOC model is based on co-design with multiple stakeholders including end-users within the professional communities the CoMOOC aims to reach. This paper shows how the CoMOOC model could help the tertiary sector deliver on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) – including but not limited to SDG 4 Education – by providing a more effective vehicle for professional development at a scale that the UNSDGs require. Interviews with professionals using MOOCs, and design-based research with professionals have informed the development of the Co-MOOC model. This research shows that open, online, collaborative learning experiences are highly effective for building professional community knowledge. Moreover, this research shows that the collaborative learning design at the heart of the CoMOOC model is feasible cross-platform Research with teachers working in crisis contexts in Lebanon, many of whom were refugees, will be presented to show how this form of large scale, co-designed, online learning can support professionals, even in the most challenging contexts, such as mass displacement, where expertise is urgently required.
Thai MOOC academy
(2023)
Thai MOOC Academy is a national digital learning platform that has been serving as a mechanism for promoting lifelong learning in Thailand since 2017. It has recently undergone significant improvements and upgrades, including the implementation of a credit bank system and a learner’s eportfolio system interconnected with the platform. Thai MOOC Academy is introducing a national credit bank system for accreditation and management, which allows for the transfer of expected learning outcomes and educational qualifications between formal education, non-formal education, and informal education. The credit bank system has five distinct features, including issuing forgery-prevented certificates, recording learning results, transferring external credits within the same wallet, accumulating learning results, and creating a QR code for verification purposes. The paper discusses the features and future potential of Thai MOOC Academy, as it is extended towards a sandbox for the national credit bank system in Thailand.
“How can a course structure be redesigned based on empirical data to enhance the learning effectiveness through a student-centered approach using objective criteria?”, was the research question we asked. “Digital Twins for Virtual Commissioning of Production Machines” is a course using several innovative concepts including an in-depth practical part with online experiments, called virtual labs. The teaching-learning concept is continuously evaluated. Card Sorting is a popular method for designing information architectures (IA), “a practice of effectively organizing, structuring, and labeling the content of a website or application into a structuref that enables efficient navigation” [11]. In the presented higher education context, a so-called hybrid card sort was used, in which each participants had to sort 70 cards into seven predefined categories or create new categories themselves. Twelve out of 28 students voluntarily participated in the process and short interviews were conducted after the activity. The analysis of the category mapping creates a quantitative measure of the (dis-)similarity of the keywords in specific categories using hierarchical clustering (HCA). The learning designer could then interpret the results to make decisions about the number, labeling and order of sections in the course.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) open up new opportunities to learn a wide variety of skills online and are thus well suited for individual education, especially where proffcient teachers are not available locally. At the same time, modern society is undergoing a digital transformation, requiring the training of large numbers of current and future employees. Abstract thinking, logical reasoning, and the need to formulate instructions for computers are becoming increasingly relevant. A holistic way to train these skills is to learn how to program. Programming, in addition to being a mental discipline, is also considered a craft, and practical training is required to achieve mastery. In order to effectively convey programming skills in MOOCs, practical exercises are incorporated into the course curriculum to offer students the necessary hands-on experience to reach an in-depth understanding of the programming concepts presented. Our preliminary analysis showed that while being an integral and rewarding part of courses, practical exercises bear the risk of overburdening students who are struggling with conceptual misunderstandings and unknown syntax. In this thesis, we develop, implement, and evaluate different interventions with the aim to improve the learning experience, sustainability, and success of online programming courses. Data from four programming MOOCs, with a total of over 60,000 participants, are employed to determine criteria for practical programming exercises best suited for a given audience.
Based on over five million executions and scoring runs from students' task submissions, we deduce exercise difficulties, students' patterns in approaching the exercises, and potential flaws in exercise descriptions as well as preparatory videos. The primary issue in online learning is that students face a social gap caused by their isolated physical situation. Each individual student usually learns alone in front of a computer and suffers from the absence of a pre-determined time structure as provided in traditional school classes. Furthermore, online learning usually presses students into a one-size-fits-all curriculum, which presents the same content to all students, regardless of their individual needs and learning styles. Any means of a personalization of content or individual feedback regarding problems they encounter are mostly ruled out by the discrepancy between the number of learners and the number of instructors. This results in a high demand for self-motivation and determination of MOOC participants. Social distance exists between individual students as well as between students and course instructors. It decreases engagement and poses a threat to learning success. Within this research, we approach the identified issues within MOOCs and suggest scalable technical solutions, improving social interaction and balancing content difficulty.
Our contributions include situational interventions, approaches for personalizing educational content as well as concepts for fostering collaborative problem-solving. With these approaches, we reduce counterproductive struggles and create a universal improvement for future programming MOOCs. We evaluate our approaches and methods in detail to improve programming courses for students as well as instructors and to advance the state of knowledge in online education.
Data gathered from our experiments show that receiving peer feedback on one's programming problems improves overall course scores by up to 17%. Merely the act of phrasing a question about one's problem improved overall scores by about 14%. The rate of students reaching out for help was significantly improved by situational just-in-time interventions. Request for Comment interventions increased the share of students asking for help by up to 158%. Data from our four MOOCs further provide detailed insight into the learning behavior of students. We outline additional significant findings with regard to student behavior and demographic factors. Our approaches, the technical infrastructure, the numerous educational resources developed, and the data collected provide a solid foundation for future research.
This research paper provides an overview of the current state of MOOCs (massive open online courses) and universities in Austria, focusing on the national MOOC platform iMooX.at. The study begins by presenting the results of an analysis of the performance agreements of 22 Austrian public universities for the period 2022–2024, with a specific focus on the mention of MOOC activities and iMooX. The authors find that 12 of 22 (55 %) Austrian public universities use at least one of these terms, indicating a growing interest in MOOCs and online learning. Additionally, the authors analyze internal documentation data to share insights into how many universities in Austria have produced and/or used a MOOC on the iMooX platform since its launch in 2014. These findings provide a valuable measure of the current usage and monitoring of MOOCs and iMooX among Austrian higher education institutions. Overall, this research contributes to a better understanding of the current state of MOOCs and their integration within Austrian higher education.
The massive growth of MOOCs in 2011 laid the groundwork for the achievement of SDG 4. With the various benefits of MOOCs, there is also anticipation that online education should focus on more interactivity and global collaboration. In this context, the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance (GMA) established a diverse group of 17 world-leading universities and three online education platforms from across 14 countries on all six continents in 2020. Through nearly three years of exploration, GMA has gained experience and achieved progress in fostering global cooperation in higher education. First, in joint teaching, GMA has promoted in-depth cooperation between members inside and outside the alliance. Examples include promoting the exchange of high-quality MOOCs, encouraging the creation of Global Hybrid Classroom, and launching Global Hybrid Classroom Certificate Programs. Second, in capacity building and knowledge sharing, GMA has launched Online Education Dialogues and the Global MOOC and Online Education Conference, inviting global experts to share best practices and attracting more than 10 million viewers around the world. Moreover, GMA is collaborating with international organizations to support teachers’ professional growth, create an online learning community, and serve as a resource for further development. Third, in public advocacy, GMA has launched the SDG Hackathon and Global Massive Open Online Challenge (GMOOC) and attracted global learners to acquire knowledge and incubate their innovative ideas within a cross-cultural community to solve real-world problems that all humans face and jointly create a better future. Based on past experiences and challenges, GMA will explore more diverse cooperation models with more partners utilizing advanced technology, provide more support for digital transformation in higher education, and further promote global cooperation towards building a human community with a shared future.
With the growing number of online learning resources, it becomes increasingly difficult and overwhelming to keep track of the latest developments and to find orientation in the plethora of offers. AI-driven services to recommend standalone learning resources or even complete learning paths are discussed as a possible solution for this challenge. To function properly, such services require a well-defined set of metadata provided by the learning resource. During the last few years, the so-called MOOChub metadata format has been established as a de-facto standard by a group of MOOC providers in German-speaking countries. This format, which is based on schema.org, already delivers a quite comprehensive set of metadata. So far, this set has been sufficient to list, display, sort, filter, and search for courses on several MOOC and open educational resources (OER) aggregators. AI recommendation services and further automated integration, beyond a plain listing, have special requirements, however. To optimize the format for proper support of such systems, several extensions and modifications have to be applied. We herein report on a set of suggested changes to prepare the format for this task.
Academia-industry collaborations are beneficial when both sides bring strengths to the partnership and the collaboration outcome is of mutual benefit. These types of collaboration projects are seen as a low-risk learning opportunity for both parties. In this paper, government initiatives that can change the business landscape and academia-industry collaborations that can provide upskilling opportunities to fill emerging business needs are discussed. In light of Japan’s push for next-level modernization, a Japanese software company took a positive stance towards building new capabilities outside what it had been offering its customers. Consequently, an academic research group is laying out infrastructure for learning analytics research. An existing learning analytics dashboard was modularized to allow the research group to focus on natural language processing experiments while the software company explores a development framework suitable for data visualization techniques and artificial intelligence development. The results of this endeavor demonstrate that companies working with academia can creatively explore collaborations outside typical university-supported avenues.
Peer assessment in MOOCs
(2021)
We report on a systematic review of the landscape of peer assessment in massive open online courses (MOOCs) with papers from 2014 to 2020 in 20 leading education technology publication venues across four databases containing education technology-related papers, addressing three research issues: the evolution of peer assessment in MOOCs during the period 2014 to 2020, the methods used in MOOCs to assess peers, and the challenges of and future directions in MOOC peer assessment. We provide summary statistics and a review of methods across the corpus and highlight three directions for improving the use of peer assessment in MOOCs: the need for focusing on scaling learning through peer evaluations, the need for scaling and optimizing team submissions in team peer assessments, and the need for embedding a social process for peer assessment.
This work explores the use of different generative AI tools in the design of MOOC courses. Authors in this experience employed a variety of AI-based tools, including natural language processing tools (e.g. Chat-GPT), and multimedia content authoring tools (e.g. DALLE-2, Midjourney, Tome.ai) to assist in the course design process. The aim was to address the unique challenges of MOOC course design, which includes to create engaging and effective content, to design interactive learning activities, and to assess student learning outcomes. The authors identified positive results with the incorporation of AI-based tools, which significantly improved the quality and effectiveness of MOOC course design. The tools proved particularly effective in analyzing and categorizing course content, identifying key learning objectives, and designing interactive learning activities that engaged students and facilitated learning. Moreover, the use of AI-based tools, streamlined the course design process, significantly reducing the time required to design and prepare the courses. In conclusion, the integration of generative AI tools into the MOOC course design process holds great potential for improving the quality and efficiency of these courses. Researchers and course designers should consider the advantages of incorporating generative AI tools into their design process to enhance their course offerings and facilitate student learning outcomes while also reducing the time and effort required for course development.
openHPI
(2022)
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.
openHPI
(2022)
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.