MOOC RESEARCH:

WHAT CAN WE DO WITH BIG DATA?

GARY W. MATKIN, PH.D.

DEAN, CONTINUING EDUCATION, DISTANCE LEARNING, AND SUMMER SESSIO N

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 YouTube

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

• 1.5 million visits

• 13 million minutes watched

UCI MOOCs

1.3 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 OCW

OVER 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 CHEMISTRY

Over 630,000 views in 2014

Over 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/oec2015