Education Commons^™

Quality Management Of Learning Management Systems: A User Experience Perspective, Panagiotis Zaharias, Christopher Pappas

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Learning Management Systems (LMS) have been the main vehicle for delivering and managing e-learning courses in educational, business, governmental and vocational learning settings. Since the mid-nineties there is a plethora of LMS in the market with a vast array of features. The increasing complexity of these platforms makes LMS evaluation a hard and demanding process that requires a lot of knowledge, time, and effort. Nearly 50% of respondents in recent surveys have indicated they seek to change their existing LMS primarily due to user experience issues. Yet the vast majority of the extant literature focuses only on LMS capabilities in …

From Instructivism To Connectivism: Theoretical Underpinnings Of Moocs, Matt Crosslin

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

While the first MOOCs were connectivist in their approach to learning, later versions have expanded to include instructivist structures and structures that blend both theories. From an instructional design standpoint the differences are important. This paper will examine how to analyze the goals of any proposed MOOC to determine what the epistemological focus should be. This will lead to a discussion of types of communication needed—based on analysis of power dynamics—to design accurately within the determined epistemology. The paper also explores later stages of design related to proper communication of the intended power structure or theoretical design as these relate …

Participant Experience Of The First Massive Open Online Course (Mooc) From Pakistan, Syed Hani Abidi, Aamna Pasha, Syed Ali

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Background: In recent years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have steadily gained popularity. It appears, however, that MOOC learners are concentrated mostly in the affluent English-speaking countries. MOOCs’ free-of-cost, easy accessibility should make them obviously attractive to participants from low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC). The reason why LMIC enrollments in MOOCs are so low is therefore unclear. In the year 2014, the first MOOC was launched from Pakistan. We administered a survey to the enrollees of this MOOC to explore concerns, fears, and limitations that might be deterring the LMIC audience from participating in MOOCs.

Methods: The MOOC was a three-week course …

Who Is A Student: Completion In Coursera Courses At Duke University, Molly Goldwasser, Chris Mankoff, Kim Manturuk, Lorrie Schmid, Keith E. Whitfield

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Much of the interest in MOOCs centers on questions about who completes them. Duke’s Coursera-based Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) confirm many demographic trends previously delineated by researchers at peer institutions. As found in previous research, this study found individuals who speak English as a first language and who already earned at least a bachelor’s degree are the most likely to complete a Coursera course. MOOC researchers to date have not, however, developed clear operational definitions about who constitutes a learner at the outset of the course. This paper proposes some possible definitions to standardize future research. Further, this study …

Foreword: Mooc Studies Well Past The Year Of The Mooc, Alan Girelli, Leslie Limon

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

As we move nearly a half-decade beyond The New York Times’ declaring 2012 the "Year of the MOOC," the range of discussants involved in discourse on MOOCs has narrowed, yet the sophistication of scholarship produced continues to deepen. This second in a two-part series of special issues of Current Issues in Emerging eLearning celebrates this rich, new scholarship on MOOC theory and practice. Volume 3, Issue 1: MOOC Design and Delivery: Opportunities and Challenges presents an underlying argument: that the MOOC frontier can inform our decisions regarding all manner of educational approaches, from clickers in the classroom to evolving …

How The Community Became More Than The Curriculum: Participant Experiences In #Rhizo14, Sarah Honeychurch, Bonnie Stewart, Maha Bali, Rebecca J. Hogue, Dave Cormier

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

The paper outlines participant experiences in a rhizomatic MOOC, #rhizo14. We begin with a brief outline of the structure of the course before presenting our five participant narratives to illustrate our beliefs that, for us, the #rhizo14 community became more than the curriculum. We then discuss some of the common themes in our narratives: the role that the Facebook group held in fostering our feelings of community, how the diversity of voices in the course promoted learning and engagement of group members, the formation of sub-communities with diverse interests, and the flexibility of participation that the course encouraged. While acknowledging …

Moving Beyond Mooc Mania: Lessons From A Faculty-Designed Mooc, Julia Parra

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have attracted fame, perhaps even notoriety, in recent years. However, we have yet to articulate clearly the purpose and potential for MOOCs. Moreover, we lack established best practices in the process of designing MOOCs. We lack models for practical use by faculty and early career instructional designers, whose group members function with limited resources but would like to engage in the intriguing process of MOOC design. The first goal for this case study is to demonstrate how a MOOC titled Adventures in Learning Design, Technology, and Innovation (#LDTIMOLO) was developed following the ADDIE framework and …

What Is It Like To Learn And Participate In Rhizomatic Moocs? A Collaborative Autoethnography Of #Rhizo14, Maha Bali, Sarah Honeychurch, Keith Hamon, Rebecca J. Hogue, Apostolos Koutropoulos, Scott Johnson, Ronald Leunissen, Lenandlar Singh

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

In January 2014, we participated in a connectivist-style massive open online course (cMOOC) called "Rhizomatic Learning – The community is the curriculum" (#rhizo14). In rhizomatic learning, teacher and student roles are radically restructured. Course content and value come mostly from students; the teacher, at most, is a curator who provides a starting point and guidance and sometimes participates as a learner. Early on, we felt that we were in a unique learning experience that we wanted to capture in writing. Explaining #rhizo14 to others without the benefit of traditional processes, practices, roles, or structures, however, presented a challenge. We invited …

Closing The Loop: Building Synergy For Learning Through A Professional Development Mooc About Flipped Teaching, Donna Harp Ziegenfuss

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

This case study describes how a MOOC, funded through an NSF grant, was used to create and assess faculty professional development. The MOOC, designed and developed using a backward design process, guided participants through an online project-based learning experience that integrated learning about the flipped classroom and about how to flip a classroom as the participants designed flipped teaching materials. The course structure involved an introduction to flipped teaching and learning content, experimented with flipped ideas and concepts, and emphasized reflection and sharing of experiences with peers.

Although mentoring faculty in flipped pedagogical design was the primary MOOC goal, the …

Learning Through Design: Mooc Development As A Method For Exploring Teaching Methods, Robin Bartoletti

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Exploring new pedagogical approaches and technologies in learning experiences such as MOOCs offers educators a clear opportunity to reflect on and expand their teaching methods and document effective practices. However, while research has affirmed the value of self-reflection as an important means to improve one’s pedagogical practices, very limited data about self-reflection during course design exists for online instructors in higher education. A team of MOOC course designers thus seized the opportunity to investigate whether they could improve their teaching practices by engaging in a connectivist and reflective process to create an innovative MOOC. The MOOC design team for Educational …

Applying A Community Of Inquiry Instrument To Measure Student Engagement In Large Online Courses, Carol A.V. Damm

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

The similarity of structure shared by Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and traditional online college courses creates the opportunity to evaluate MOOC and related course offerings using a validated evaluation instrument, the Community of Inquiry (CoI) survey, to measure Teaching, Social, and Cognitive Presences (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) in college-level online courses. In this study, the survey has been adapted to evaluate instances of student engagement in large online courses offered at low cost by a publishing firm. The courses suffer from two of the standard problems associated with MOOCs: high dropout rates and inconsistent participation among all but …

Current Issues In Emerging Elearning, Volume 3, Issue 1

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

No abstract provided.