Archive for the ‘Learners’ Category

Understanding Student Engagement in Large-Scale Open Online Courses: A Machine Learning Facilitated Analysis of Student’s Reflections in 18 Highly Rated MOOCs

Although massive open online courses (MOOCs) have attracted much worldwide attention, scholars still understand little about the specific elements that students find engaging in these large open courses. This study offers a new original contribution by using a machine learning classifier to analyze 24,612 reflective sentences posted by 5,884 students, who participated in one or […]

Development of Youth Digital Citizenship Scale and Implication for Educational Setting

Digital citizens need comprehensive knowledge and technological accessibility to the internet and digital world and teachers have a responsibility to lead them to become digital citizens. However, existing Digital Citizenship Scales contain too broad ranges and do not precisely focus on the target students, so teachers do not have clear criteria for facilitating young people […]

Grit and Intention: Why Do Learners Complete MOOCs?

In recent years there has been considerable interest in how many learners complete MOOCs, and what factors during usage can predict completion. Others, however, have argued that many learners never intend to complete MOOCs, and take MOOCs for other reasons. There has been qualitative research into why learners take MOOCs, but the link between learner […]

Current Practices of Online Instructor Evaluation in Higher Education

As enrollment of students in online courses has steadily increased over the last few decades, very little attention has been given to online instructor evaluation. This is an area of online education that needs additional research to better ascertain the current state of online instructor evaluation as well as discover ways to improve its effectiveness. […]

Students’ Perceptions of Quality Across Four Course Development Models

Four course development models were used within a three-year time frame, allowing for an evaluation of the different models based upon students’ perceptions of the integration of the Quality Matters (QM) Standards, course structure, and quality. The study compared (a) faculty training, (b) instructional designer supported, (c) additional QM training course, and (d) no training […]

Download: Proceedings of the European Distance and E-Learning Network Conference , Genoa, Italy, June 2018

Introduction The demand for people with new, enhanced skills is growing. The volume of information produced and shared in all fields is overwhelming. Building the data economy became part of the EU Digital Single Market. Powerful and sophisticated ICT is part of everyday life, and the world of learning is not an exception. Pressure is […]

Learning Innovation = Residential Education + Online Learning

What would happen if every residential course was designed in the same way as our best online courses? Last week at the Summit for Online Leadership and Administration + Roundtable I was asked to define learning innovation. My answer came in the form of an equation: Learning Innovation = Residential Education + Online Learning Inside […]

Dispelling the misconceptions of online education

We read with interest the recent opinion article, “Online learning isn’t as inclusive as you may think,” originally published by University Affairs in early May. We feel the authors provided a limited perspective regarding online education and online learners. We disagree with several of the authors’ contentions and generalizations, which we outline below. We also direct […]

Applying Learning Analytics to Explore the Effects of Motivation on Online Students’ Reading Behavioral Patterns

This study aims to apply a sequential analysis to explore the effect of learning motivation on online reading behavioral patterns. The study’s participants consisted of 160 graduate students who were classified into three group types:  low reading duration with low motivation, low reading duration with high motivation, and high reading duration based on a second-order […]

Goal Orientation and Academic Performance in Adult Distance Education

Research has shown the importance of goal orientation in predicting academic performance for children, adolescents, and college students in traditional educational settings. Studies on this relationship within adult distance education, however, are lacking. To fill this gap, the present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between goal orientation and academic performance in adult distance […]