openHPI - A case-study on the emergence of two learning communities

Grünewald, Franka; Mazandarani, Elnaz; Meinel, Christoph; Teusner, Ralf; Totschnig, Michael; Willems, Christian

doi:10.1109/educon.2013.6530277

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…While the course participants' activity in the forum has a positive influence on their final results [14], only a small percentage actually take part in the forum on a regular basis. In the openHPI course Internetworking with TCT/IP only 20% of the participants posted at least one time in the forum [15].…”

Section: Forum/pin Boardmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Virtual Social Learner Community—Constitutive Element of MOOCs

Meinel

Schweiger

2016

Education Sciences

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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have seen enormous growth throughout the last four years. This format has fundamentally enriched the traditional method of web-based teaching and e-learning. Nevertheless, there have always been skeptical voices who announce the "death of MOOCs". We do not believe in this pessimistic scenario and in this article we will explain how we came to this conclusion. E-learning already existed long before the arrival of the first MOOC. However, e-learning has often shown itself to be merely a source of downloadable learning material, leaving the learner alone in the learning phase. To get through an e-learning program and to actually finish it requires a high level of discipline and motivation. In this way, e-learning has proven itself as a learning method mainly with autodidacts. How have MOOCs changed the landscape of e-learning offers? The evolving MOOC format now combines interactive elements with short video lectures. This is done in a new and playful way with a strong focus on community building. The secret of MOOCs lies in their open accessibility and their incorporation of learning content with social media. The goal of this paper is to describe how MOOCs enforce e-learning activity in a virtual social community-whose importance for learning cannot be over-emphasized. We point out the social learning features currently used in MOOCs and the next steps that must be taken to further improve them. This article is based on the experiences we have made with the MOOC platforms openHPI and openSAP, both powered by the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam.

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Section: Forum/pin Boardmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Virtual Social Learner Community—Constitutive Element of MOOCs

Meinel

Schweiger

2016

Education Sciences

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“…However, qualitative analysis can bring about a more detailed and nuanced understanding of learners that can be absent with a purely quantitative analysis. Previous qualitative studies which have employed thematic analysis within MOOCs have moved away from learner comments and have used learner blogs (Zutshi et al, 2013), MOOC videos (Hui, Yinjuan, Yingshan, & Zenong, 2014), online surveys (Baxter & Haycock, 2014), instructor observations (Grunewald et al, 2013), and twitter comments (Xia, 2014) to gain perspectives on MOOC learner behaviour and attitudes.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They generate large amounts of learner data in the form of participant activity and interactions (Huang, Dasgupta, Ghosh, Manning, & Sanders, 2014;Seaton, Bergner, Chuang, Mitros, & Pritchard, 2014), learner survey results (Fini, 2009), external social media comments (Koutropoulos et al, 2014), interviews (Mackness, Waite, Roberts, & Lovegrove, 2013), focus groups (Firmin et al, 2014), observations (Grunewald et al, 2013), blog entries (Zutshi, O'Hare, & Rodafinos, 2013), and forum comments (Tucker, Pursel, & Divinsky, 2014). These data sources have been analyzed using a wide variety of different qualitative and quantitative methodologies and methods (Gallagher & Savage, 2016;Raffaghelli & Persico, 2014) to understand learner behaviour and frame course design, and determine MOOC success or failure.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Far Cry from School History: Massive Online Open Courses as a Generative Source for Historical Research

Gallagher

2016

IRRODL

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Current research into Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) has neglected the potential of using learner comments for discipline-specific analysis. This article explores how MOOCs, within the historical discipline, can be used to generate, investigate, and document personal narratives, and argues that they serve as a rich platform for historical resource generation. Through these narratives, this research explores changing perceptions of learning; from learning history at school to learning about history in a MOOC. This exploration uses a qualitative thematic analysis of learner comments related to personal narratives of learning history at school from the Trinity College Dublin/Futurelearn "Irish Lives in War and Revolution: 1912-1923" MOOC. These personal narratives were generated both directly and indirectly through four pedagogical tools; reflective questions, multimedia resources, external links, and inter-learner interaction. Broad themes emerged from the analysis of personal narratives including attitudes toward history at school, biased and inadequate teaching, and MOOC teaching compared with school experiences. The analysis demonstrated that MOOCs serve as a generative repository for personal and family historical narratives, and described how MOOCs can change perceptions of teaching and learning history. This paper contributes a novel understanding of MOOCs for discipline-specific analysis, provides a framework for MOOC historical resource generation, and describes changing perceptions of learning from the perspective of MOOC learners.

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“…Furthermore, in average only around 18% of the students are able to finish the courses with a certificate. Students are granted a certificate when they solve more than 50% of the assignments and exams correctly [1] [2]. This paper focuses on an embedded approach to motivate users to increase the activity and certificate rates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improved e-learning experience with embedded LED system

Malchow

Bauer

Meinel

2016

2016 Annual IEEE Systems Conference (SysCon)

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During the last years, e-learning has become more and more important. There are several approaches like teleteaching or MOOCs to delivers knowledge information to the students on different topics. But, a major problem most learning platforms have is, students often get demotivated fast. This is caused e.g. by solving similar tasks again and again, and learning alone on the personal computer. To avoid this situation in coding-based courses one possible way could be the use of embedded devices. This approach increases the practical programming part and should push motivation to the students. This paper presents a possibility to the use of embedded systems with an LED panel to motivate students to use programming languages and solve the course successfully. To analyze the successfulness of this approach, it was tested within a MOOC called "Java for beginners" with 11,712 participants. The result was evaluated by personal feedback of the students and user data was analyzed to measure the acceptance and motivation of students by solving the embedded system tasks. The result shows that the approach is well accepted by the students and they are more motivated by tasks with real hardware support.

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openHPI - A case-study on the emergence of two learning communities

Cited by 20 publications

References 5 publications

A Virtual Social Learner Community—Constitutive Element of MOOCs

A Virtual Social Learner Community—Constitutive Element of MOOCs

A Far Cry from School History: Massive Online Open Courses as a Generative Source for Historical Research

Improved e-learning experience with embedded LED system

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