moocs and participatory learning

8/9/2019 MOOCS and Participatory Learning

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Student EngagementIn the context of Massive Open Online Courses

Student Engagement

Student engagement refers to how much effort and interest a student is willing to invest in

learning. Participation is one measure of student engagement that pertains to how involved the student isin his learning environment. Research studies on the learning process have revealed several

interconnected factors that affect student engagement motivation, interest, responsibility, self-

regulation, skill acquisition, to name a few as well as psychological and environmental factors. Student

engagement is being studied in order to help educational institutions determine what measures or

interventions to take to improve the learning process in a diversified student body.

study defining school engagement as a multidimensional construct !cognitive, affective, and

behavioural" e#amines school structure, environment, curriculum relevance, teacher-student relationships,

student-peer relationships, and providing students with the choice and freedom to make decisions and

their relation to student engagement !$ang and %ccles, &'()". *he results of the study validate previous

research showing that students are more likely to participate if their environment is socially supportive

and that they value learning more if they are allowed to pursue their own interests, are given clear

e#pectations, and are assessed constructively and consistently. +iving students the freedom to choose

what type of task to accomplish is only effective if the choices are related to the students personal

interests.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)

assive pen nline /ourses are online courses that allows anyone with 0nternet to access

various learning materials !videos, readings, activities, e#ercises, etc." on a sub1ect matter. 0nteractive user

forums and communities are provided to encourage collaboration among peers and professors alike !2uan

and Powell, &'()". pen access to educational resources is an aspect of distance learning3 aiming to

provide education to third world countries as well as places affected by terrorism and war. 4ased on two

distinct pedagogies, /s are divided into two types5 /onnectivist /s and /ontent-based

/s. /onnectivist /s are based on the connectivist approach to learning which emphasi6e peer

review and group collaboration. /ontent-based /s on the other hand, rely on automated feedback

based on ob1ective, online assessments.

7owever, /s being 1ust recently introduced innovations, still have quite a few issues that

have to be resolved. 8ue to the rather large and continuously growing collection of /s online, it is

difficult to evaluate their quality. *he lack of a standardi6ed structure of /s make it hard to ascertain

whether or not a specific course is established. nother problem is the assessment of the learners as well


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as certification and credit due to them. Sub1ects such as literature and philosophy require more than an

automated computeri6ed checking of learners output. *he rather large population of a single course

renders it impossible to be checked by a single 1udge while employing multiple 1udges introduce a whole

new set of biases. ther possible concerns are cheating, plagiarism, and the concept of digital literacy.

Student Engagement and MOOCs

s more individuals around the world embrace massive open online courses as a successful

development in terms of distance learning, several studies regarding the implications and effects, pros and

cons, qualities and components of /s emerge.

Participation is considered to be an intrinsic part of learning which is why /onnectivist /s

or c/s target peer collaboration. Special interest groups and forums are formed in order to

encourage learners to e#change ideas and think amongst themselves.

&'() study conducted by oon-7eum /ho and 4. 9oon :im e#amines self-regulating

behaviour of students in their interaction with both their peers and their teachers in the conte#t of online

learning. 0t aims to determine which variables !age, gender, grade, the e#tent of mastery goal orientation,

importance of interacting with an instructor, importance of interacting with other students, and instructor

scaffolding for interaction" had a correlation to the self-regulating behaviour of students in the conte#t of

online learning. ;'< student participants enrolled in online courses wherein there was no face-to face

contact with either their professor or their peers. ccording to self-reports by the students, part of the

coursework involved collaborative and participatory tasks. fter the online courses, the researchers

administered surveys regarding the students perceived importance on his instructor, peers, and mastery of

the course content as well as the students perception of his instructors ability to interact and provide

scaffolding. *he results of this study indicate that the instructors= scaffolding for interaction most

significantly affected students self-regulating behaviours.

nother study by >engfeng :e and :ui ?ie !&''@", observes the contingencies between the

design of learning engagement and online course models, as well as online discussion types and self-

perceived and observable learning performance. *he studys results has similarities to /ho and :ims

study on self-regulatory behaviour. $ell-structured content together with support from instructors and

peers tend to reinforce knowledge-constructive interaction. /ollaborative learning and discussion are

more likely to encourage higher-level learning.

*hese results poses concerns for /s since most /s do not have utili6e instructor interaction

due to the sheer number of students enrolled in one course. 8espite the presence of learning forums where


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online students are given the chance to ask questions, not all will be recogni6ed by the instructor.

7owever, collaboration between peers and an integrated online course model prove to significantly

improve online students perception of their learning satisfaction and performance thus motivating them

to increase student engagement behaviours.

0n another study conducted by Pu-Shih /hen and colleagues !&'('", the Aational Survey of

Student %ngagement, which is a survey intended to measure the time and energy spent by students in the

pursuit of education, was administered to . G ?ie, :. !&''@"

*oward deep learning for adult students in online courses.

Internet and Higher

Education (& !&''@" ()F(;H
http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2013/667http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2013/667

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