Monitoring MOOCs: which information sources do instructors value?

Authors:
Kristin Stephens-Martinez;Marti A. Hearst;Armando Fox
Affiliations:
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA;University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA;University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference
Year:
2014

Citing 9
Cited 0

World Wide Web-course tool: an environment for building WWW-based courses

Proceedings of the fifth international World Wide Web conference on Computer networks and ISDN systems
Visualizing learning activities to support tutors

CHI '99 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
CourseVis: A graphical student monitoring tool for supporting instructors in web-based distance courses

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Educational data mining: a review of the state of the art

IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews
Getting to know your student in distance learning contexts

EC-TEL'06 Proceedings of the First European conference on Technology Enhanced Learning: innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing
Enhancing E-Learning Through Teacher Support: Two Experiences

IEEE Transactions on Education
Deconstructing disengagement: analyzing learner subpopulations in massive open online courses

Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge
Should your MOOC forum use a reputation system?

Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
Promoting active learning & leveraging dashboards for curriculum assessment in an OpenEdX introductory CS course for middle school

Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

For an instructor who is teaching a massive open online course (MOOC), what is the best way to understand their class? What is the best way to view how the students are interacting with the content while the course is running? To help prepare for the next iteration, how should the course's data be best analyzed after the fact? How do these instructional monitoring needs differ between online courses with tens of thousands of students and courses with only tens? This paper reports the results of a survey of 92 MOOC instructors who answered questions about which information they find useful in their course, with the end goal of creating an information display for MOOC instructors. The main findings are: (i) quantitative data sources such as grades, although useful, are not sufficient; understanding the activity in discussion forums and student surveys was rated useful for all use cases by a large majority of respondents, (ii) chat logs were not seen as useful, (iii) for the most part, the same sources of information were seen as useful as found in surveys of smaller online courses, (iv) mockups of existing and novel visualization techniques were responded to positively for use both while the course is running and for planning a revision of the course, and (v) a wide range of views was expressed about other details.