Measuring the success of scaleable open online courses
| Published | November 2014 |
| Journal | Performance Measurement and Metrics Volume 15, Issue 3, Pages 145 - 162 |
| Publisher | Emerald Group Publishing Limited |
ABSTRACT
Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to propose measures of online open course success for non-commercial institutional providers of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other scaleable open online courses (SOOCs).
Design/methodology/approach
– The measures are derived from the characteristics of open online courses, existing knowledge about open online course providers and users and their motivations, and current practice in MOOC evaluation and data analytics.
Findings
– Current practices for evaluation of open online courses are dominated by MOOC analytics which provide insights into user demographics and behaviour with some implications for evaluation of reach and course design but leaving many unknowns. Measures for evaluation of success at the institutional level can be derived from institutional goals for open online courses. Success from the point of view of teachers and technical teams involved in design, development and delivery of open online courses can be derived from team members’ expectations, resources and satisfaction as well as measures of cost and effort compared to budget and benchmarks. Users are classified as registrants (information seekers, window shoppers, samplers), downloaders and participants (starters, partial participants and full participants who are further divided into auditing, active and certificate takers); different measures are appropriate for each group.
Practical implications
– Practitioners and researchers must consider a variety of levels and indicators of success to adequately evaluate open online courses. Tables in the text propose measures, methods, timing and roles.
Originality/value
– This is the first published paper to take a holistic view of open online course evaluation and propose detailed measures.
| Keywords | e-learning · evaluation · MOOC · open online courses · SOOCs · success measures |
| ISSN | 1467-8047 |
| Refereed | Yes |
| DOI | 10.1108/PMM-10-2014-0036 |
| Other information | Performance Measurement Metric |
| Export options | BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar |
AVAILABLE FILES
Viewed by 83 distinct readers
CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS
The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.
Click a star to be the first to rate this document
▶ POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS
Cloud learning activities orchestration for MOOC environments
Hernández, Rocael; Gütl, Christian; Amado-Salvatierra, Hector R.; Uden, Lorna; et al.
In this paper we focus on an approach to using cloud-based (Web 2.0) tools for MOOCs applying a new version of an innovative architecture for `cloud learning activities orchestration' (CLAO). This works presents the ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
Co-regulation in technology enhanced learning environments
Kaplan, Jonathan; Uden, Lorna; Sinclair, Jane; Tao, Yu-Hui; Liberona, Dario
This paper discusses the importance of strategy use in regulating cognitive processes, with a particular interest in co-regulation of the learning by peers in technology enhanced learning environments. Research on ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
MOOCs and academic libraries: a chance or a problem? An overview
Testoni, Laura
Massive open online courses(MOOCs) are online courses free and open to anyone: the MOOCs enrollement is essentially unlimited.
Purpose of this essay is to offer an overview on the debate about the development of the ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
Students’ and instructors’ use of massive open online courses (MOOCs): Motivations and challenges
Hew, Khe Foon; Cheung, Wing Sum
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are among the latest e-learning initiative to attain widespread popularity among many universities. In this paper, a review of the current published literature focusing on the use of ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
Ascertaining the relevance of Open Educational Resources by integrating various quality indicators
Sanz, Javier; Dodero, Juan Manuel; Sánchez, Salvador
The aim of the open educational resource (OER) development movement is to provide free access to high quality educational materials in repositories. However, having access to a large amount of educational materials does ...
Match: e-learning; evaluation
Gamification: A key determinant of massive open online course (MOOC) success
Aparicio, Manuela; Oliveira, Tiago; Bacao, Fernando; Painho, Marco
Massive open online courses (MOOCs), contribute significantly to individual empowerment because they can help people learn about a wide range of topics. To realize the full potential of MOOCs, we need to understand ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
The MOOCs: Origin, characterization, principal problems and challenges in Higher Education
Atiaja, Lourdes Atiaja; Proenza, Rey Segundo
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are an innovation that have attracted public academic attention in recent times, and which have resulted in the evolution of e-learning (electronic learning) and so far have not ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
MOOCs: A learning journey
Smith, Becky; Eng, Min; Cheung, Simon K. S.; Fong, Joseph; et al.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been radically changing the direction of online education in the last few years. Although sharing many common features, there has been an emergence of two distinct varieties of ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
Presentation to UNCTAD's advisory group on "Developing skills, knowledge and capacities through innovation: E-Learning, M-Learning, cloud-Learning"
Downes, Stephen
Match: e-learning; MOOC
Connectivism and connective knowledge: Essays on meaning and learning networks
Downes, Stephen
Connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks. The bulk of this work is devoted to ...
Match: e-learning; MOOC
