This paper discusses learning at scale from the perspective of two UK Universities engaging in technology enhanced learning. Three case studies are used to illustrate ways in which scale has been achieved. There is diversity in how scale is supported but also common factors. Openness and choice appear as enablers in all cases.
{"title":"Distance learning, OER, and MOOCs: some UK experiences","authors":"E. Scanlon, P. McAndrew, T. O'Shea","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567862","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses learning at scale from the perspective of two UK Universities engaging in technology enhanced learning. Three case studies are used to illustrate ways in which scale has been achieved. There is diversity in how scale is supported but also common factors. Openness and choice appear as enablers in all cases.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89455350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ensuring authorship in online taken exams is a major challenge for e-learning in general and MOOC's in particular. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a method to verify student identities using stylometry. We present a carefully composed feature set and use it with a K-Nearest Neighbor algorithm. We demonstrate that our method can effectively authenticate authors and is robust against imitation attacks.
{"title":"A behavioral biometrics based authentication method for MOOC's that is robust against imitation attempts","authors":"Markus Krause","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567881","url":null,"abstract":"Ensuring authorship in online taken exams is a major challenge for e-learning in general and MOOC's in particular. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a method to verify student identities using stylometry. We present a carefully composed feature set and use it with a K-Nearest Neighbor algorithm. We demonstrate that our method can effectively authenticate authors and is robust against imitation attacks.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75464930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open-ended homework problems such as coding assignments give students a broad range of freedom for the design of solutions. We aim to use the diversity in correct solutions to enhance student learning by automatically suggesting alternate solutions. Our approach is to perform a two-level hierarchical clustering of student solutions to first partition them based on the choice of algorithm and then partition solutions implementing the same algorithm based on low-level implementation details. Our initial investigations in domains of introductory programming and computer architecture demonstrate that we need two different classes of features to perform effective clustering at the two levels, namely abstract features and concrete features.
{"title":"Feature engineering for clustering student solutions","authors":"Elena L. Glassman, Rishabh Singh, Rob Miller","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567865","url":null,"abstract":"Open-ended homework problems such as coding assignments give students a broad range of freedom for the design of solutions. We aim to use the diversity in correct solutions to enhance student learning by automatically suggesting alternate solutions. Our approach is to perform a two-level hierarchical clustering of student solutions to first partition them based on the choice of algorithm and then partition solutions implementing the same algorithm based on low-level implementation details. Our initial investigations in domains of introductory programming and computer architecture demonstrate that we need two different classes of features to perform effective clustering at the two levels, namely abstract features and concrete features.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74183170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lack of teachers to teach computer science (CS) and pedagogically sound introductory CS curricula remain a significant challenge facing secondary schools attempting to teach CS. This paper describes our efforts to design and pilot an online 6-week middle/high school course using Stanford's OpenEdX platform. The pedagogy, curriculum and assessment are guided by learning theory. The course leverages OpenEdX features for contextual discussions and multiple-choice assessments that promote student learning and provide feedback. The paper reports on experiences in using instructor dashboards to identify targets of student difficulty and to aid curriculum redesign.
{"title":"Promoting active learning & leveraging dashboards for curriculum assessment in an OpenEdX introductory CS course for middle school","authors":"Shuchi Grover, R. Pea, S. Cooper","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567883","url":null,"abstract":"Lack of teachers to teach computer science (CS) and pedagogically sound introductory CS curricula remain a significant challenge facing secondary schools attempting to teach CS. This paper describes our efforts to design and pilot an online 6-week middle/high school course using Stanford's OpenEdX platform. The pedagogy, curriculum and assessment are guided by learning theory. The course leverages OpenEdX features for contextual discussions and multiple-choice assessments that promote student learning and provide feedback. The paper reports on experiences in using instructor dashboards to identify targets of student difficulty and to aid curriculum redesign.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78326819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2012, when MOOCs became largely known, media reports were fascinated with the big number of enrollments. The number 150,000 students was mentioned for both Stanford's Artificial Intelligence course and MIT's Circuits and Electronics, to be later followed by the underwhelming completion rates, that often are in the single digit percentages. But what kind of enrollment do these large numbers really show? We try to answer this question by breaking this number into its components, while comparing two successive iterations of the same MOOC offered on the edX platform.
{"title":"What does enrollment in a MOOC mean?","authors":"Eni Mustafaraj","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567882","url":null,"abstract":"In 2012, when MOOCs became largely known, media reports were fascinated with the big number of enrollments. The number 150,000 students was mentioned for both Stanford's Artificial Intelligence course and MIT's Circuits and Electronics, to be later followed by the underwhelming completion rates, that often are in the single digit percentages. But what kind of enrollment do these large numbers really show? We try to answer this question by breaking this number into its components, while comparing two successive iterations of the same MOOC offered on the edX platform.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74466172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Online learners need various supports to survive, and it is especially true in the context of MOOCs. Yet, studies documenting the learning progress as a function of learner support are at its inception. Based on self-determination theory and via weekly study group, we devised a series of support strategies to promote the autonomy, relatedness, and competency of MOOCs learners. We evaluated how those support strategies influenced MOOCs learners' retention rate and their self-regulation behaviors such as goal setting, time management, and help seeking. While this study is still on going, initial results showed that participants had higher intrinsic motivation than extrinsic motivation. Furthermore, participants expressed that the weekly meet-up had been very helpful to keep them going, especially when they wanted to give up. Interestingly, participants' learning strategies rarely changed even new strategies had been shared in group. Implications for researchers, designers and MOOCs learners are discussed.
{"title":"Facilitating MOOCs learning through weekly meet-up: a case study in Taiwan","authors":"Pin-Ju Chen, Yang-Hsueh Chen","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567872","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567872","url":null,"abstract":"Online learners need various supports to survive, and it is especially true in the context of MOOCs. Yet, studies documenting the learning progress as a function of learner support are at its inception. Based on self-determination theory and via weekly study group, we devised a series of support strategies to promote the autonomy, relatedness, and competency of MOOCs learners. We evaluated how those support strategies influenced MOOCs learners' retention rate and their self-regulation behaviors such as goal setting, time management, and help seeking. While this study is still on going, initial results showed that participants had higher intrinsic motivation than extrinsic motivation. Furthermore, participants expressed that the weekly meet-up had been very helpful to keep them going, especially when they wanted to give up. Interestingly, participants' learning strategies rarely changed even new strategies had been shared in group. Implications for researchers, designers and MOOCs learners are discussed.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87300289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Konstan, J. Walker, D. Brooks, Keith A. Brown, Michael D. Ekstrand
In Fall 2013 we offered an open online Introduction to Recommender Systems through Coursera, while simultaneously offering a for-credit version of the course on-campus using the Coursera platform and a flipped classroom instruction model. As the goal of offering this course was to experiment with this type of instruction, we performed extensive evaluation including surveys of demographics, self-assessed skills, and learning intent; we also designed a knowledge-assessment tool specifically for the subject matter in this course, administering it before and after the course to measure learning. We also tracked students through the course, including separating out students enrolled for credit from those enrolled only for the free, open course. This article reports on our findings.
{"title":"Teaching recommender systems at large scale: evaluation and lessons learned from a hybrid MOOC","authors":"J. Konstan, J. Walker, D. Brooks, Keith A. Brown, Michael D. Ekstrand","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2566244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2566244","url":null,"abstract":"In Fall 2013 we offered an open online Introduction to Recommender Systems through Coursera, while simultaneously offering a for-credit version of the course on-campus using the Coursera platform and a flipped classroom instruction model. As the goal of offering this course was to experiment with this type of instruction, we performed extensive evaluation including surveys of demographics, self-assessed skills, and learning intent; we also designed a knowledge-assessment tool specifically for the subject matter in this course, administering it before and after the course to measure learning. We also tracked students through the course, including separating out students enrolled for credit from those enrolled only for the free, open course. This article reports on our findings.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87808335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Seongtaek Lim, Derrick Coetzee, Bjoern Hartmann, A. Fox, Marti A. Hearst
Peer learning, in which students discuss questions in small groups, has been widely reported to improve learning outcomes in traditional classroom settings. Classroom-based peer learning relies on students being in the same place at the same time to form peer discussion groups, but this is rarely true for online students in MOOCs. We built a software tool that facilitates chat-based peer learning in MOOCs by 1) automatically forming ad-hoc discussion groups and 2) scaffolding the interactions between students in these groups. We report on a pilot deployment of this tool; post-use surveys administered to participants show that the tool was positively received and support the feasibility of synchronous online collaborative learning in MOOCs.
{"title":"Initial experiences with small group discussions in MOOCs","authors":"Seongtaek Lim, Derrick Coetzee, Bjoern Hartmann, A. Fox, Marti A. Hearst","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567854","url":null,"abstract":"Peer learning, in which students discuss questions in small groups, has been widely reported to improve learning outcomes in traditional classroom settings. Classroom-based peer learning relies on students being in the same place at the same time to form peer discussion groups, but this is rarely true for online students in MOOCs. We built a software tool that facilitates chat-based peer learning in MOOCs by 1) automatically forming ad-hoc discussion groups and 2) scaffolding the interactions between students in these groups. We report on a pilot deployment of this tool; post-use surveys administered to participants show that the tool was positively received and support the feasibility of synchronous online collaborative learning in MOOCs.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85285866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The emergence of tablet devices, cloud computing, and abundant online multimedia content presents new opportunities to transform traditional paper-based textbooks into tablet-based electronic textbooks, and to further augment the educational experience by enriching them with relevant supplementary materials. Given a candidate set of relevant educational videos for augmenting an electronic textbook, how do we assign the videos at the appropriate granularity (a collection of logical units in the book)? We propose a rigorous formulation of the video assignment problem and present an algorithm for assigning each video to the optimum subset of logical units. Our experimental evaluation using a diverse collection of educational videos relevant to multiple chapters in a textbook demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed techniques for inferring the granularity at which a relevant video should be assigned.
{"title":"Assigning videos to textbooks at appropriate granularity","authors":"Marios Kokkodis, A. Kannan, K. Kenthapadi","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567880","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567880","url":null,"abstract":"The emergence of tablet devices, cloud computing, and abundant online multimedia content presents new opportunities to transform traditional paper-based textbooks into tablet-based electronic textbooks, and to further augment the educational experience by enriching them with relevant supplementary materials. Given a candidate set of relevant educational videos for augmenting an electronic textbook, how do we assign the videos at the appropriate granularity (a collection of logical units in the book)? We propose a rigorous formulation of the video assignment problem and present an algorithm for assigning each video to the optimum subset of logical units. Our experimental evaluation using a diverse collection of educational videos relevant to multiple chapters in a textbook demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed techniques for inferring the granularity at which a relevant video should be assigned.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90304750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This demonstration will showcase a work in progress that implements a new and unique vision for electronic computer science textbooks. It incorporates a number of active components such as video, code editing and execution, and code visualization as a way to enhance the typical static electronic book format. In addition, the textbook is created with an open source authoring system that has been developed to allow the instructor to customize the content of the active and passive parts of the text.
{"title":"Runestone interactive: tools for creating interactive course materials","authors":"Bradley N. Miller, D. Ranum","doi":"10.1145/2556325.2567887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2567887","url":null,"abstract":"This demonstration will showcase a work in progress that implements a new and unique vision for electronic computer science textbooks. It incorporates a number of active components such as video, code editing and execution, and code visualization as a way to enhance the typical static electronic book format. In addition, the textbook is created with an open source authoring system that has been developed to allow the instructor to customize the content of the active and passive parts of the text.","PeriodicalId":20830,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88557544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}