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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.
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.
In response to the impending spread of COVID-19, universities worldwide abruptly stopped face-to-face teaching and switched to technology-mediated teaching. As a result, the use of technology in the learning processes of students of different disciplines became essential and the only way to teach, communicate and collaborate for months. In this crisis context, we conducted a longitudinal study in four German universities, in which we collected a total of 875 responses from students of information systems and music and arts at four points in time during the spring–summer 2020 semester. Our study focused on (1) the students’ acceptance of technology-mediated learning, (2) any change in this acceptance during the semester and (3) the differences in acceptance between the two disciplines. We applied the Technology Acceptance Model and were able to validate it for the extreme situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. We extended the model with three new variables (time flexibility, learning flexibility and social isolation) that influenced the construct of perceived usefulness. Furthermore, we detected differences between the disciplines and over time. In this paper, we present and discuss our study’s results and derive short- and long-term implications for science and practice.
Ob Online-Kurse, videobasierte Lehrangebote, mobile Applikationen, eigenentwickelte oder kommerzielle Web 2.0-Anwendungen, die Fülle digitaler Unterstützungsangebote ist kaum zu überblicken. Dabei bieten mobile Endgeräte, Web-Anwendungen und Apps Chancen Lehre, Studium und Forschung maßgeblich neu zu gestalten. Im Beitrag wird ein Beschreibungsrahmen für die mediendidaktische Ausgestaltung von Lehr-, Lern- und Forschungsarrangements vorgestellt, der die technischen Gesichtspunkte hervorhebt. Anschließend werden unterschiedliche Nutzungsszenarien unter Einbeziehung digitaler Medien skizziert. Diese werden als Ausgangspunkt genommen um das Konzept einer Systemarchitektur vorzustellen, die es zum einen ermöglicht beliebige Applikationen automatisiert bereit zu stellen und zum anderen die anfallenden Nutzendendaten plattformübergreifend zu aggregieren und für eine Ausgestaltung virtueller Lehr- und Lernräumen zu nutzen.
Students beginning their studies at university face manifold problems such as orientation in a new environment and organizing their courses. This article presents the implementation and successful empirical evaluation of the pervasive browser-based educational game "FreshUP", which aims at helping to overcome the initial difficulties of freshmen. In contrast to a conventional scavenger hunt, mobile pervasive games like FreshUP, bridging in-game and real world activities, have the potential to provide help in a motivating manner using new technology which is currently becoming more and more common. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.