Refocusing the lens on engagement in MOOCs

Exploring Behavioral Patterns for Data-Driven Modeling of Learners' Individual Differences

“…In modern e-learning, engagement is frequently approximated by the amount of student voluntary work (i.e., work not directly required and graded). For example, in MOOCs, engagement is frequently assessed by the fraction of watched videos, the number of attempted quizzes, or the number of posts to a discussion forum (Anderson et al, 2014 ; Davis et al, 2017 ; Crues et al, 2018 ). Similarly, online practice systems generally measure learner engagement through the amount of voluntary practice with worked examples and problems (Denny et al, 2018 ; Hosseini et al, 2020 ).…”

Gamification of MOOCs Adopting Social Presence and Sense of Community to Increase User’s Engagement: An Experimental Study

“…Social presence was measured using a shorter version of [35]'s scale. The scale assesses social presence across the two dimensions of 'awareness of the others' and 'proximity to the others', with 4 and 12 items respectively, all rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) 3 SoC was measured using the instrument of [32] consisting out of 10 items using 5-point Likert scales (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) 4 . Engagement was assessed based on the log-data collected throughout the course, and included the amount of content page views, info page views, test page views, test submittals, and chat activities, assessed at week and total course level.…”

“…Authors have described the construct via literature review [19], through theoretical frameworks, such as selfdetermination theory [20], learning analytics [21], and machine learning algorithms [22]. The studies conducted have identified, among other results, the type of users that engage in MOOCs [4]. Furthermore, it has been shown that teacher/instructor styles play an important role in engaging students [23], as well as videos [24], formative assessment, feedback practices [25], and time management solutions that support learners [26].…”

“…However, as this theory postulates, to develop a SoC it is important that users perceive others as 'real persons' in the shared online learning environment (i.e., the MOOC). Perceiving the presence of others online is not an inherent characteristic of MOOC platforms, where usually the only 'social' feature, the only 'social affordance 1 ', available is the discussion forum [4]. Several studies have investigated how forums should be designed to foster user engagement [4,5], but only few have considered to include and design solutions, for generating a SoC among MOOC users in order to raise engagement levels [6].…”

Modeling micro-interactions in self-regulated learning: A data-driven methodology

“…Established works use coarse-grained features that combine assessment data and user activity [50,31] suggesting the validity of behavioural data to measure features of learning. Crues et al (2018) [19] provide a comprehensive overview on these features, which mostly include interactions at the same abstraction level, typically coarse grained events such as the number of posts in the forum. Additionally, it has been suggested that both low-level and high-level interactions should be amalgamated as context may be spread across multiple levels and the composition of these events needs to be taken into consideration to give appropriate interpretations [44].…”