Before the Digital Age , distance learning appeared in the form of correspondence courses in the s—s and later radio and television broadcast of courses and early forms of e-learning. Typically fewer than five percent of the students would complete a course. Sandel and "Human Anatomy" with Marian Diamond were reaching millions.
Within the OER movement the Wikiversity was found in and the first open course on the platform was organised in Ten—week course with more than 70 students was used to test the idea of making Wikiversity an open and free platform for education in the tradition of Scandinavian free adult education, Folk High School and the free school movement. CCK08, which was led by George Siemens of Athabasca University and Stephen Downes of the National Research Council , consisted of 25 tuition-paying students in Extended Education at the University of Manitoba , as well as over online students from the general public who paid nothing.
As MOOCs developed with time, multiple conceptions of the platform seem to have emerged. Mostly two different types can be differentiated: those that emphasize a connectivist philosophy, and those that resemble more traditional courses. This may include emphasizing collaborative development of the MOOC. They are characterized by a specified aim of completing the course obtaining certain knowledge certification of the subject matter. They are presented typically with a clearly specified syllabus of recorded lectures and self-test problems.
However, some providers require paid subscriptions for acquiring graded materials and certificates. They employ elements of the original MOOC, but are, in some effect, branded IT platforms that offer content distribution partnerships to institutions. Many universities scrambled to join in the "next big thing", as did more established online education service providers such as Blackboard Inc , in what has been called a "stampede.
The industry has an unusual structure, consisting of linked groups including MOOC providers, the larger non-profit sector, universities, related companies and venture capitalists. In the fall of Stanford University launched three courses. Enrollment quickly reached , students.
Reginald F. Miles, M. Prior to the s, web conferencing was reserved mainly for business users or those who could afford expensive high-speed Internet and costly equipment. Davies, R. About A.
Following the publicity and high enrollment numbers of these courses, Thrun started a company he named Udacity and Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng launched Coursera. Harvard joined the group, renamed edX, that spring, and University of California, Berkeley joined in the summer. Google will work on the core platform development with edX partners. In addition, Google and edX will collaborate on research into how students learn and how technology can transform learning and teaching.
Before each MOOC tended to develop its own delivery platform. It is available to the public under the Affero GPL open source license, which requires that all improvements to the platform be publicly posted and made available under the same license. By November , EdX offered 94 courses from 29 institutions around the world. The number of courses offered has since increased dramatically: As of January , Edx offers courses, Coursera offers courses and Udacity offers more than courses.
Early cMOOCs such as CCK08 and ds used innovative pedagogy, with distributed learning materials rather than a video-lecture format, and a focus on education and learning, and digital storytelling respectively [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]. As of February dozens of universities had affiliated with MOOCs, including many international institutions. A range of courses have emerged; "There was a real question of whether this would work for humanities and social science", said Ng. However, psychology and philosophy courses are among Coursera's most popular. Student feedback and completion rates suggest that they are as successful as math and science courses [57] even though the corresponding completion rates are lower.
The MOOC is used as a way to offer high-schools the opportunity to provide programming courses for their students, even if no local premises or faculty that can organize such courses exist. LRN project. In March , Coursolve piloted a crowdsourced business strategy course for organizations with the University of Virginia. In May Coursera announced free e-books for some courses in partnership with Chegg , an online textbook-rental company.
Students would use Chegg's e-reader , which limits copying and printing and could use the book only while enrolled in the class. Participants gain access to the university's global network of robotic telescopes , including those in the Chilean Andes and Australia.
In January , Brown University opened its first "game-ified" course on Edx. It featured a storyline and plot to help Leila, a lost humanoid wandering different worlds, in which a learner had to play mini games to advance through the course. The Pacific Open Learning Health Net , set up by the WHO in , developed an online learning platform in for continuing development of health professionals. By June more than 1. By March , Coursera alone had registered about 2. Fewer students enrolled from areas with more limited access to the internet, and students from the People's Republic of China may have been discouraged by Chinese government policies.
Koller stated in May that a majority of the people taking Coursera courses had already earned college degrees. A study from Stanford University's Learning Analytics group identified four types of students: auditors, who watched video throughout the course, but took few quizzes or exams; completers, who viewed most lectures and took part in most assessments; disengaged learners, who quickly dropped the course; and sampling learners, who might only occasionally watch lectures.
Jonathan Haber focused on questions of what students are learning and student demographics. About half the students taking US courses are from other countries and do not speak English as their first language. He found some courses to be meaningful, especially about reading comprehension. Video lectures followed by multiple choice questions can be challenging since they are often the "right questions.
Since engineering courses need prerequisites so at the outset upper-level engineering courses were nearly absent from the MOOC list. Now several universities are presenting undergraduate and advanced-level engineering courses. The professors then spent 8—10 hours per week on the course, including participation in discussion forums.
The medians were: 33, students enrollees; 2, passing; and 1 teaching assistant helping with the class. Unlike traditional courses, MOOCs require additional skills, provided by videographers, instructional designers, IT specialists and platform specialists.
MOOCs typically use cloud computing and are often created with authoring systems. Despite their potential to support learning and education, MOOCs have a major concern related to attrition rates and course drop out. Even though the number of learners who enroll in the courses tends to be in the thousands range, only a very small portion of the enrolled learners complete the course. Others [] [] [] [] [] have also shown attrition rates similar to Coffrin. One example is the course Bioelectricity, in the Fall of at Duke University, where 12, students enrolled, but only 7, ever watched a video, 3, attempted a quiz, attempted the final exam, and passed, earning a certificate.
Before analyzing some factors which is related to attrition rates and course drop out, one important thing should be keep in mind is that average completion rate for MOOCs is not a good indicator. Completion rate can not reflect the overall view of every student because different students have diverse purposes. They drop the course if the course can not satisfy their purpose. However, completion rate is objective enough to reflect engagement of students. Much research has investigated why students drop out of MOOC courses or what factors could contribute to them dropping out.
The authors found that students who serve as authorities in the community seem to be more committed to the community and thus less inclined to drop out the course. Lastly, the analysis of the patterns of attrition in a sub community showed that attrition was related to the engagement of the particular students with one another. Thus, if students start dropping out, then that might cause other students to drop out as they might perceive the environment as less supportive or engaging without their peers.
Other studies focus on exploring how motivation and self-regulated learning could be related to MOOC dropout and attrition. Carson [] investigated characteristics of self-directed learning in students of grades 8—12 who took online courses through a statewide online program. Two of the hypothesis that the study explored were whether there exist underlying distinct classes categories of self-regulated learners and if the membership in these classes was associated with measures such significantly different online course completion, online final grade, or GPA.
The results show that there exist different latent classes of self-regulated learning within the population of online students, designated as high, moderate, and low self-directed learning.
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In addition, the results support the hypothesis that there is an association between the self-directed learning class the student belongs to with the significantly different course completion rate or course achievement course achievement was measured by the completion of the online courses, the final online course grade and the cumulative GPA. In other words, course completion and self-directed learning in students were found to be significantly related.
One online survey published a "top ten" list of reasons for dropping out of a MOOC. Reasons related to poor course design included "lecture fatigue" from courses that were just lecture videos, lack of a proper introduction to course technology and format, clunky technology and abuse on discussion boards. Hidden costs were cited, including required readings from expensive textbooks written by the instructor that also significantly limited students' access to learning material.
Other reasons for the poor completion rates include the workload, length and difficulty of a course. For example, one of the first MOOCs in had registered members, of whom actively interacted at various times. Besides those factors cause the low completion rate in MOOCs, the inequality on receiving knowledge affected by different characters of individual also has huge influence on the consequence of completion rate.
Actually, MOOC is not as fair as we expected. Russian researchers Semenova, T. M , indicate that MOOC is designed to decrease the unequal access to getting knowledge, but that doesn't mean every individual can enjoy the same equality in course completion rate. From their research, there are three main factors cause the inequality, which are degree of education, experience of MOOCs and gender. The effectiveness of MOOCs is an open question as completion rates are substantially less than traditional online education courses.
Perceived reputation and perceived openness were the strongest predictors and have not previously been examined in the context of MOOCs. However research indicates that completion rates is not the right metric to measure success of MOOCs. Alternate metrics are proposed to measure effectiveness of MOOCs and online learning.
Many MOOCs use video lectures , employing the old form of teaching lecturing using a new technology. This approach, he said, dispels 'the medieval set of myths' guiding teacher efficacy and student outcomes, and replaces it with evidence-based, 'modern, data-driven' educational methodologies that may be the instruments responsible for a 'fundamental transformation of education' itself". Some view the videos and other material produced by the MOOC as the next form of the textbook. They viewed the first 4. Students watch lectures online at home and work on projects and interact with faculty while in class.