MOOC RESEARCH: WHAT CAN WE DO WITH BIG DATA?

GARY W. MATKIN, PH.D.

DEAN, CONTINUING EDUCATION, DISTANCE LEARNING, AND SUMMER SESSION

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

OPEN EDUCATION CONSORTIUM GLOBAL CONFERENCE

BANFF, ALBERTA, CANADA

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2015

What Can MOOCs Tell Us About the Future Of Education?

MOOCs AND BIG DATA: 2014 OVERVIEW

• OpenCourseWare website: 2.7 million page views

• YouTube: 1.5 million visits

• OpenChem: 5.5 million minutes watched

• MOOCs: 1.3 million participants (2013-2015)

UCI’S EXPERIENCE WITH OER• Three channels

• UCI OCW• YouTube• MOOCs (Coursera, Canvas)

UC IRVINE’S OCW• 2014 average visits per month was 27,722

• 2015 monthly average is 53,762 for January – March

• Over 430,000 page views per month

UCI on YouTubeAs of the end of December 2014, UCI’s YouTube channel had received:

• 1.5 million visits

• 13 million minutes watched

UCI MOOCs1.3 MILLION PARTICIPANTS IN COURSERA & COURSERA COURSES (TOTAL AS OF MARCH 2015)

• 249,067 in Career Readiness courses

• 683,146 in Undergraduate courses

• UCI was one of the first Coursera partners to adopt the “always open” format for presenting course sequences.

TYPES OF MOOC RESEARCH• Use of MOOCs

• Impact of MOOCs

• MOOCs and Learning

UCI CAREER READINESS• Majority of students are ages 25-34

• A majority of students are taking the specialization to learn new skills and to advance in their careers

• 40% of responders said they plan on earning a verified certificate

• The majority of responders are from North America (34%), but a large portion are from Europe (26%) and Asia (21%)

• 73% have enrolled in a MOOC

• 60% hold full-time jobs, working 40+ hours a week

• Highly educated: 35% Bachelor’s, 34% Master’s and 6% Ph.D., Law or Medical degree

• 46% had never heard of UCI prior to enrolling in this MOOC

USE OF MOOCS: WHO USES MOOCS• MOOC users are typically

• 25-64 years old• Well educated and economically advantaged• Informal learners• Pursuing a personal interest• Residents of a country other than the U.S.• Male

IMPACT OF MOOCs: GENERAL• Prompts discussion of higher education and its reaction

to technology

• Pushes online education forward on campuses

• Become objects for government policy

• Proved promise for addressing worldwide issue over access and affordability

• MOOCs and academic credit

• MOOCs and credentialing

THE IMPACT OF MOOCs: SPECIFIC (THE FUTURE)• Deserving audiences

• Research objects

• Translations and localizations

UC IRVINE’S CSET OCWOVER 30,000 PAGE VIEWS THE FRIDAY PRIOR TO THE EXAM

MOOCS AND LEARNING• Flipped classroom

• Informal learning

• At risk students

• Universal courses

• Course commons

UC IRVINE’S OPEN CHEMISTRYOver 630,000 views in 2014Over 5.5 million minutes watched in 2014

UC IRVINE’S PRE-BIOLOGY RESEARCH• UCI counseled at-risk,

entering freshmen to take a Pre-Biology MOOC offered through Coursera

• Incentive to complete the course with “Distinction” to transfer into biology as a major more quickly

• 450 UCI students joined 37,000 students who enrolled in the MOOC

• Students who completed the MOOC did significantly better than the two control groups

UCI MATH COURSE RESEARCH• Data includes student grades and final exam scores from

face-to-face, online, and MOOC versions of Pre-Calculus and similar grades and final exam scores in a subsequent Calculus course

• Students in online vs. on-ground Pre-Calculus courses performed comparably on equivalent final exams

• Students in online courses spend more time on task in the course than on-ground students

• MOOC students who opt to use the paid ALEKS software in parallel with the course achieve and complete the course at a higher level than those who did not

• There are no discernible differences in subsequent Calculus course success between students taking on-ground and online courses

BARRIERS TO MOOC RESEARCH• Personally identifiable information (and FERPA)

• Ownership of data

• Messy data

• Intellectual property

THE FUTURE• Collaborative efforts to coordinate research

• Institutional stakes in research

• Replicability

• Dissemination

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Visit UC Irvine’s Open Education Website: http://ocw.uci.edu

Or contact Gary W. Matkin at gmatkin@uci.edu

Download this presentation at www.slideshare.net/garymatkin/oec2015