An Investigation on Optimal Text Length

for MOOCs

Tiffany Wong & Meghan Morrissey

MOTIVATION

• IMPORTANCE OF READINGS FOR HUMANITY COURSES

• LACK OF RESEARCH ON THE EFFECT OF TEXT LENGTH ON LEARNING IN AN ONLINE CONTEXT

• RESEARCH INFORMED PRACTICE

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

READINGREADING READINGREADING READINGREADING READINGREADING

ASSESSMENTASSESSMENT

READINGREADING

GROUP BGROUP B

GROUP AGROUP A

RESULTS• NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE ON:

• MINI COURSE CERTIFICATION RATE

• MODULE ASSESSMENT CORRECT ANSWER RATES

• READING COMPREHENSIVE QUESTION CORRECT ANSWER RATES

GROUP A (THREE SEGMENTS) B (TEN SEGMENTS)

NUMBER OF STUDENTS WHO OPENED READING 603 703

MEAN TOTAL TIME SPENT (SECS) 436.47 599.97

MEDIAN TOTAL TIME SPENT (SECS) 92.51 189.97

FRACTION WHO VIEWED ALL SECTIONS 0.514 0.256

RECOMMENDATIONS

• MORE RESEARCH (REPLICATE DESIGN) AND COLLABORATION