Education Commons^™

“Technology Is Great, But It’S Really Time-Consuming:” Understanding Students’ Digital Academic Lives, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

Digital technology has become integral to higher education, incorporated by colleges and universities into teaching, student support and operations. We know that undergraduates lead busy lives, especially those attending commuter universities, and that they bring their prior experiences with technology with them into their college careers. However, while technology access and use in our everyday lives and workplaces has increased in the past few decades, it is not as ubiquitous as we might wish, and our students do encounter barriers to learning and connecting with digital technologies.

We draw on our decade of research on the experiences of CUNY undergraduate …

Effects Of Pre-Tests And Feedback On Performance Outcomes In Massive Open Online Courses:What Works And What Doesn’T?, Maria Janelli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This experimental study examined the effects of pre-tests and feedback on learning outcomes in a five-week massive open online course (MOOC). The participants (N = 399) were adults from around the world who self-enrolled in the American Museum of Natural History’s (AMNH) climate change MOOC (called Our Earth’s Future) offered on the Coursera platform. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Learners in the first treatment group took pre-tests without receiving feedback. Learners in the second treatment group took pre-tests and received basic (correct/incorrect) feedback. Learners in the third treatment group took pre-tests and received elaborate feedback. The …