Abstract:
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a type of online course
designed using principles of education technology. It enables a massive number
of participants to learn online in any course at any time. This affordance of
scaling and open access to education is considered as the globalized solution for
acquiring 21st century skills. However, unrealistic to the vision, pragmatically,
MOOCs are facing challenges. Mainly the content-driven pedagogical structure
with limited system design implications caused fewer interactions and isolations,
thereby resulted in higher dropouts.
Since MOOCs are introduced recently, the problems faced by participants
or its effectiveness are less understood. Thus, a systematic understanding of
arising problems and solutions to this newly emerged phenomenon is well
needed. In this thesis, I explored MOOCs with a holistic view of understanding
emerging problems with empirical pieces of evidence—whether MOOCs meet
the 21st century skill requirements; what factors are affecting the effectiveness of
a MOOC; how can we improve the effectiveness of MOOCs. By exploring the
above questions, this thesis mainly contributes to 1) provide empirical evidence
of the challenges that MOOCs are facing, 2) solicit a framework to identify the
effectiveness of MOOCs, 3) design a novel peer review mechanism, and 4)
develop the novel system PeerCollab to improve effectiveness of MOOCs.
The research begun with exploratory research methods with active data
collection using MOOC users. The analysis conducted using a combined
approach of qualitative and quantitative methods to understand the challenges
and explore the factors affecting the effectiveness of MOOCs. Initially, surveys
were used to identify whether MOOC platforms are providing necessary 21st
century skills such as collaborative skills, creativity skills, communications
skills, and critical thinking skills. Next, a longitudinal qualitative study was used
to gather MOOC experience using participants over 24 months period of time.
Results of the qualitative study were incorporated to build an instrument to
evaluate MOOCs' effectiveness. The instrument was empirically verified and
validated using 121 MOOC participants.
The initial survey to explore 21st century skills yielded results from 391
MOOC participants across six platforms. Descriptive statistics depicted that
majority of participants reflect the gap in MOOCs to provide 21st century skills.
Next, the qualitative analysis using Grounded Theory (GT) and quantitative
analysis using Factor Analysis (FA) resulted in a detailed10-dimensional
framework to evaluate MOOC effectiveness.
Based on the high ranked dimensions in the framework such as
Technology, Collaborativeness, Interactivity and Assessment, two systems were
designed and developed to demonstrate the improved effectiveness in MOOCs.
First, the “Identified Peer Review” (IPR) system demonstrated how peer identity,
incentive algorithm, and effective communication in peer review enhance the
MOOC's effectiveness. Next, the PeerCollab system demonstrated how social
presence can integrate using theories of communities of practices (CoP) into
MOOCs and thereby improve effectiveness. This system also demonstrated an
articulation of CoP to MOOCs by a novel process named Rapid Communities on
MOOCs (RCoM) design with four phases, viz. Cluster, Orient, Focus, and
iii
Network. Evaluations of the systems demonstrated the challenges and
possibilities of integrating such systems into MOOCs and provided a direction to
build effective interventions.
These systems collectively empower interactions in isolated distributed
individuals and form communities to work collectively bridging the gap to meet
the 21st century skills. The work of this thesis actively contributes to the nuance
of technologies that can be used in society specifically for large scale open and
distributed learning contexts.
Citation:
Gamage, S.D. (2021). Improving the effectiveness of MOOCs to meet the 21st century challenges [Doctoral dissertation, University of Moratuwa]. Institutional Repository University of Moratuwa. http://dl.lib.uom.lk/handle/123/18702