how do learners in moocs attempt to resolve challenges they face?
TRANSCRIPT
AERA 2016 Washington, DC
How do learners in MOOCs attempt to resolve challenges they face?
George Veletsianos, Justin Reich, Laura Pasquini Royal Roads University, MIT, U of North TX
Attrition and Persistence
• Greatest attention in the MOOC literature • We know that students stop, we know a bit
about why they stop (e.g., time), but we don’t know how they respond to challenges generally.
• Although promising, Data Mining and Big Data methodologies have generated very few insights
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The unresolved question that we sought to answer…
How do learners attempt to resolve challenges they face? In what ways do they self-remediate? How do these strategies relate to Big Data?
The study
4 HarvardX courses 30-45 minute skype interviews 4 semi-structured interview protocols 92 individuals
• 22 – 81 yrs old (mean=45) • 63M / 29F • N America (>50%), Europe, (>25%), S
America, Asia, Africa, Australia.
Analytic methods
Analysis
Identify passages describing how learners attempt to resolve challenges they are facing
3 researchers à Constant comparative process
Codes (62, 58, 39 unique codes)à themes
The results
Challenges Time Intellectual difficulties
How were these resolved?
3 Themes
The results
Illustra)on:NY)mes:h2p://well.blogs.ny)mes.com/2013/09/19/what-a-messy-desk-says-about-you/?_r=0
The results
Broadercontext
Broaderonlineenvironment
At their workstations
The results
Broadercontext
Within the broader online environment
At their workstations
The results
Within the broader context of their life
Within the broader online environment
At their workstations
Implications
Stopping as a self-remediation strategy “Success” is complicated
Methodological diversity Designing interventions to support learners • Consider courses as network nodes • Notetaking strategies
We’d love your feedback!
This presentation: www.slideshare.com/veletsianos
Thank you