Volume 19, Number 3, July 2018

EN:

Very little research has been conducted about what it is like to teach a MOOC. Given this, a mixed methods study, involving a survey of 186 MOOC instructors and 15 follow-up interviews, was conducted to explore the motivation, experiences, and perceptions of instructors who have taught massive open online courses. Findings indicate that instructors were motivated to teach MOOCs for three main reasons: (1) interest and passion, (2) publicity and marketing, or (3) benefits and incentives. Most instructors had little online teaching experience prior to teaching their first MOOC, but were satisfied with the experience. The majority believed their own MOOC provided a high quality learning experience but thought that MOOCs overall might not be as good as face-to-face courses. Concerns were raised about the future of MOOCs for online learning.

EN:

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 goals and completion has not been fully established. In this paper, we study the relationship between learner intention to complete a MOOC and their actual completion status. We compare that relationship to the degree to which MOOC completion is predicted by other domain-general motivational factors such as grit, goal orientation, academic efficacy, and the need for cognition. We find that grit and goal orientation are associated with course completion, with grit predicting course completion independently from intention to complete, and with comparable strength.

EN:

The capacity to foster interpersonal interactions in massive open online courses (MOOCs) has frequently been contested, particularly when learner interactions are limited to MOOC forums. The establishment of social presence—a perceived sense of somebody being present and “real”—is among the strategies to tackle the challenges of online learning and could be applied in MOOCs. Thus far, social presence in MOOCs has been under-researched. Studies that previously examined social presence in MOOCs did not account for the peculiar nature of open online learning. In contrast to the existing work, this study seeks to understand how learners perceive social presence, and the different nuances of social presence in diverse MOOC populations. In particular, we compare perceptions of social presence across the groups of learners with different patterns of forum participation in three edX MOOCs. The findings reveal substantial differences in how learners with varying forum activity perceive social presence. Perceptions of social presence also differed in courses with the varying volume of forum interaction and duration. Finally, learners with sustained forum activity generally reported higher social presence scores that included low affectivity and strong group cohesion perceptions. With this in mind, this study is significant because of the insights into brings to the current body of knowledge around social presence in MOOCs. The study’s findings also raise questions about the effectiveness of transferring existing socio-constructivist constructs into the MOOC contexts.

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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 more of 18 highly rated MOOCs. Highly rated MOOCs were sampled because they exemplify good practices or teaching strategies. We selected highly rated MOOCs from Coursetalk, an open user-driven aggregator and discovery website that allows students to search and review various MOOCs. We defined a highly rated MOOC as a free online course that received an overall five-star course quality rating, and received at least 50 reviews from different learners within a specific subject area. We described six specific themes found across the entire data corpus: (a) structure and pace, (b) video, (c) instructor, (d) content and resources, (e) interaction and support, and (f) assignment and assessment. The findings of this study provide valuable insight into factors that students find engaging in large-scale open online courses.

EN:

Information and communication technologies aid marginalized groups in seeking social support, building proximate networks, and improving employment opportunities. However, one key factor that is understudied in the literature is the impact of open education resources (OER) on the employability of marginalized groups. This study focuses on open and distance learning in the context of low-income female migrant domestic workers as a marginalized community. Specifically, we assessed the differential effects of two types of communication: informal OER resources (e.g., social media, mobile calling, texting) and formal OER resources (e.g., classroom prescribed learning tools and lectures) on specific development outcomes of functional literacy and perceived employability. A survey was conducted amongst female migrant domestic workers (n=100) enrolled in the Indonesian Open University in Singapore. Results indicate that access to OER resources via computers in the formal context of institutional learning, when combined with employability awareness, had a significant influence on livelihood outcomes, i.e., perceived employability. However, this did not lead to actual improvements in learning – functional literacy. Instead, actual learning improvement was influenced by digitals skills enabled by mobile phones and computers. The study concludes with a discussion on the policy implications for digital skills training via mobile devices for marginalized populations to bolster the positive effects of OER on livelihood outcomes.

EN:

Education is a fundamental human right, yet one fifth of the world’s population lives with poor literacy. India is home to the largest number of illiterate people, with infrastructural, cultural, and socio-economic factors hindering equitable access to quality education. Due to the rapidly growing technology and Internet usage in the country, open educational resources (OER) are increasingly being used as a vital tool to help transcend barriers to child literacy, also aiding in educational attainment. While an array of scholarly works provides evidence of the potential in OER to influence higher education outcomes in developing nations, academic analysis of their impact on primary level education attainment has been minimal. This paper retrieve lessons from three children’s content providing organizations to understand the opportunities and challenges of OER in primary-level education in developing nations with similar cultural, infrastructural, and socio-economic issues. While the findings of this study suggest that the use of OER allows for greater distribution and scale across different cultural and linguistic settings, particularly in rural and remote regions, they also warn against the adaptation and pedagogical barriers of OER into societies where traditional modes of education are established and trusted.

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The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand whether certain theoretical benefits that open educational resources (OER) might have on teacher practice were being realized by a group of secondary teachers using open science textbooks.  In surveys and interviews, teachers were asked to describe their classroom practice before and after adopting an open textbook, including practices relating to openness.  Teachers were also asked to rate the quality of open textbooks they were using in contrast to textbooks used previously.  Most participants reported changes to practice, and the most commonly cited changes could be attributed to a combination of openness and online format.  For example, participants described linking textbook content to other online resources.  In comparisons of current to previous practice, however, teachers did not report increases in the open practices of collaboration, revising, or adapting.

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To find out what is needed to speed up the adoption of open sharing and reuse of learning materials and open online courses in publicly funded Dutch institutions of Higher Education, a qualitative research study was conducted in fall 2016. This study examined issues of willingness of educators and management, barriers and enablers of adoption, and the role of institutional and national policy in the adoption of open sharing and reuse of learning materials and online courses. Fifty-five stakeholders (educators, board members, and support staff) in 10 Dutch Higher Education Institutions were interviewed. The main findings of this study are: motivation for sharing and reuse of learning materials for educators and managers is directly related to the ambition to achieve better education for students; sharing and reuse of learning materials is common practice, very diverse and not open accessible for the whole world, and important barriers include lack of awareness of opportunities for open sharing and reuse and lack of time. Based on the findings from the interviews, the last section of this paper presents conclusions and recommendations regarding how Dutch institutions for Higher Education can formulate effective policies to raise awareness, organize adequate support and provide time to experiment.

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For fifteen years, Australian Higher Education has engaged with the openness agenda primarily through the lens of open-access research. Open educational practice (OEP), by contrast, has not been explicitly supported by federal government initiatives, funding, or policy. This has led to an environment that is disconnected, with isolated examples of good practice that have not been transferred beyond local contexts.This paper represents first-phase research in identifying the current state of OEP in Australian Higher Education. A structured desktop audit of all Australian universities was conducted, based on a range of indicators and criteria established by a review of the literature. The audit collected evidence of engagement with OEP using publicly accessible information via institutional websites. The criteria investigated were strategies and policies, open educational resources (OER), infrastructure tools/platforms, professional development and support, collaboration/partnerships, and funding.Initial findings suggest that the experience of OEP across the sector is diverse, but the underlying infrastructure to support the creation, (re)use, and dissemination of resources is present. Many Australian universities have experimented with, and continue to refine, massive open online course (MOOC) offerings, and there is increasing evidence that institutions now employ specialist positions to support OEP, and MOOCs. Professional development and staff initiatives require further work to build staff capacity sector-wide.This paper provides a contemporary view of sector-wide OEP engagement in Australia—a macro-view that is not well-represented in open research to date. It identifies core areas of capacity that could be further leveraged by a national OEP initiative or by national policy on OEP.

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The aim of this study is twofold. First, it aims to investigate the impact of the Flipped Classroom (FC) Model on students’ academic achievement. Second, it reveals the students’ opinions about the model itself. For four weeks, the students in the experimental group were taught in a blended learning context where the FC Model was applied, while the lessons in the control group were carried out through traditional blended learning. Both groups were administered a test before and after the Flipped Classroom sessions. To analyze the data, a two-way ANOVA for Mixed Measures was conducted to compare the means of test scores of each group. The results showed that there were no statistically significant differences between the scores of the two groups. Coming to classes prepared and completing the assignments in class, so that students did not need to do assignments at home, were among the positive aspects of the FC Model. The problems encountered in this model, however, are categorized under three main titles: Motivation, Content, and Learning. At the end of the study, the advantages and disadvantages of the FC Model are identified in accordance with the participants’ opinions, and necessary suggestions made.

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Transactional distance (TD), the perception of psychological distance between the student and his peers, his instructor/teacher, and the learning content, has long been a prominent construct in research on distance education. Today, distance education primarily takes place over the internet, with technology mediating engagement and communication. Because transactional distance in online distance learning will always rely on technologically-mediated communication or interaction, we argue that in order to get the full picture, this aspect of technological mediation needs to be considered. For this purpose, we introduce a new scale for measuring transactional distance between students and the learning technology (TDSTECH), comprised of two interrelated dimensions. Reliability, convergent, and discriminant validity suggest a suitable scale. Preliminary inferential analyses are conducted with multiple linear regression and mediation analysis. Regression models show that TDSTECH is the single most important predictor of satisfaction in this population. This may have important implications for practitioners trying design and facilitate satisfying online distance learning experiences. Also, mediator analysis reveals that TDSTECH mediates the relationship between TD student-teacher and satisfaction, but not for TD student-content. Surprisingly, TD student-student shows no significant relationship with satisfaction. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.

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The paper investigates the impact of virtual environmental characteristics such as collaboration, communication, and resource sharing on social media adoption by the academic community at the university level. Building on the social constructivist paradigm and technology acceptance model, we propose a conceptual model to assess social media adoption in academia by incorporating collaboration, communication, and resource sharing as predictors of social media adoption, whereas perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness act as mediators in this relationship. Structural equation modeling serves to estimate the proposed conceptual model on a sample of 661 respondents from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The findings suggest that an individual’s propensity toward social media features (i.e., collaboration, communication, and resource sharing) acts as a stimulus to their social media adoption. Moreover, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness mediate the relationship between these stimuli and their outcomes (i.e., social media adoption). The paper concludes with the discussion on the findings and recommendations for the academicians and the practitioners of social media in the higher education institutions.

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The competence of distance educators has a significant impact on learners’ success. The paradigm shift for universities to become distance and electronic learning environments justifies the urgency to address competency gaps in distance educators’ competencies efficiently. From a strategic human resource development perspective, the systems theory is used to explain the idea of maximising outputs with the minimum inputs (Biddle, 1986). In this study, distance educators at Unisa reflected on their experienced competency gaps. Where previous studies mainly focus on the size of the gaps, the aim of this article is to highlight the competency gaps likely to have the biggest impact. For this study, we used stratified non-probability sampling, and selected 407 academics who were, at the time of the study, permanently employed at a mega ODL university in South Africa. These academics represented a wide range of colleges, campuses, ages, and genders. The results of this study have implications for capacity building of academic staff in developing world contexts and other contexts where resources are scarce.

EN:

The central role of motivation to learn in distance education has been noted, and gamification has been proposed as one approach to promote student motivation. This study explores promoting motivation in a distance education, third-year computer programming course via a gamified approach to improve coursework participation and student experience. Motivation was examined from a Self-Determination Theory (SDT) perspective, as gamified approaches often rely on external motivation and the explicit use of competition to engender internal motivation leading to desired behaviours. The results of using gamification in education are mixed, and its use is controversial. Two cycles of action research on the introduction of eight playful elements are reported on, and data relating to student engagement with the course and a student questionnaire was gathered. There was little evidence that the intervention led to behaviour change or improved scores; however, students responded very positively to the intervention, although some negative themes emerged. The extent to which the playful approach supported the basic psychological needs of SDT is discussed and the intervention’s results critically considered, including whether the effort involved in such an approach was worth it. It was concluded that such playful approaches might have positive motivational effects.

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In Tanzania, agriculture sector is known for employing more than 70% of the total population. Agriculture sector faces many challenges including climate change. Climate change causes low productivity in agriculture; low productivity is caused due to poor implementation of agricultural policies and strategies. This poor implementation of policies has also caused many farmers to be not competent in climate change adaptation. Over the years, provisions of agricultural advice and extension were provided by various approaches, including training and visit extension, participatory approaches, and farmers’ field schools. However, provision of agricultural advisory and extension service is inefficient. Also, in most cases the usage of most agricultural innovations and technologies developed is limited. A literature review indicates that the main reasons given by Tanzanian farmers for not using improved technology are not lack of knowledge or skill, but rather that the technologies do not contribute towards improvements (e.g., the technologies are not profitable or they imply to high risk). Thus, agricultural extension service needs to be geared towards teaching farmers how to develop innovative and cost effective technologies that are contextualized. Limited numbers of agricultural extension staff and less interactivity of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as radio and television, have been mentioned to be among the factors limiting the provision of agricultural advisory and extension services to the majority of farmers in Tanzania. The advancements in ICTs have brought new opportunities for enhancing access to agricultural advisory and extension service for climate change adaptation. In Tanzania, farmers and other actors access agricultural information from various sources such as agricultural extension workers and use of various databases from Internet Services Providers. Also there are different web – and mobile – based farmers’ advisory information systems to support conventional agricultural extension service. These systems are producing bulk amounts of data which makes it difficult for different stakeholders to make an informed decision after data analysis. This calls for the need to develop a tool for data visualization in order to understand hidden patterns from massive data. In this study, a semi-automated text classification was developed to determine the frequently asked keywords from a web and mobile based farmers’ advisory system called UshauriKilimo after being in use for more than 2 years by more than 700 farmers.

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Since the launch of the BC Open Textbook Project in 2012, the adoption of open textbooks has steadily grown within public post-secondary institutions in British Columbia, Canada. An analysis of adoption records over a five-year period reveals that open textbooks have been adopted across all types of institutions, including research universities, teaching universities, colleges, and institutes, and across a diverse set of disciplines, with the largest numbers in the sciences and social sciences. In this report we identify, describe, and illustrate eight distinct patterns of open textbook adoption. These are: stealth adoption, adoption by infection, committee adoption, sanctioned exceptional adoption, course developer adoption, infection by inter-institutional carrier, creation and adoption, and lone adoption. While these patterns are not intended to be exhaustive, we hope that identifying these patterns provides a useful framework for campus leaders to (a) understand how adoptions occur in their own contexts, (b) identify ways to support further adoptions, (c) recognize that there are multiple ways, and no single path, to supporting the adoption of educational innovations at their institutions, and (d) foster the embrace of wider open educational practices.

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This article is a literature review on open distance learnings (ODL) in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa (FSSA). The state of research on this question highlights many topics, such as the supporting reasons for the creation of ODL systems and their potentials. Success, difficulties, and issues linked to their implementation also hold a crucial place in this research. Besides, this literature review shows that studies on ODLs in FSSA emphasize the representations, motivations, and identities of students and university managers, including the historical and cooperative aspects of these third-generation learnings. While most of the research in this field are descriptive or exploratory, others are critical. Beyond these results, research must further explore many perspectives, mainly those related to teaching and learning practices, evaluation, social and university transformations, and the hybrid forms of learning.