Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (2) (remove)
Year of publication
- 2022 (2) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (2)
Language
- English (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2)
Keywords
- Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) (1)
- assignments (1)
- course design (1)
- e-learning (1)
- flexibility (1)
- learning path (1)
- modularization (1)
- self-paced learning (1)
Evaluating creativity of verbal responses or texts is a challenging task due to psychometric issues associated with subjective ratings and the peculiarities of textual data. We explore an approach to objectively assess the creativity of responses in a sentence generation task to 1) better understand what language-related aspects are valued by human raters and 2) further advance the developments toward automating creativity evaluations. Over the course of two prior studies, participants generated 989 four-word sentences based on a four-letter prompt with the instruction to be creative. We developed an algorithm that scores each sentence on eight different metrics including 1) general word infrequency, 2) word combination infrequency, 3) context-specific word uniqueness, 4) syntax uniqueness, 5) rhyme, 6) phonetic similarity, and similarity of 7) sequence spelling and 8) semantic meaning to the cue. The text metrics were then used to explain the averaged creativity ratings of eight human raters. We found six metrics to be significantly correlated with the human ratings, explaining a total of 16% of their variance. We conclude that the creative impression of sentences is partly driven by different aspects of novelty in word choice and syntax, as well as rhythm and sound, which are amenable to objective assessment.
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.