A Novel Analysis of Readability Indices of MOOC Transcripts for e-Learner Retainment

Abstract

e-learning has become an important part of the education system. This is more so in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a wide range of e-learning platforms available online and offering courses ranging from beginner to advanced levels. Such courses are accessible to nearly everyone around the world who has access to the internet. The readers and learners look for engaging content which will enhance their knowledge and skills in the respective field through e-learning. In order to provide the learners with effective learning, the content should be readable and easy to understand. The motives of the present study are multifold. The presented results will be helpful to the designers as well as creators of e-learning courses in maximizing the learner's attention span, content comprehension, ease of understanding and engagement with the e-course. To the best of our knowledge, this is first formal attempt for the analysis of the transcripts of the e-learning courses. Technically, we deploy five readability indices namely Flesch Readability Index (FRI), Gunning Fog Index (GFI), Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), Coleman-Liau Index (CLI), and Automated Readability Index (ARI) for the study. The calculations have been additionally fortified using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF). More than 1200 transcripts have been analyzed and vital statistics presented. It is concluded that the transcripts for the beginners should have a word range of 600- 900 while that for the intermediate and advanced learners should have an optimum word count value of around 1050.