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Satisfied students: 9 in 10 pleased with MOOC


Massive open online courses (MOOCs) may be plagued by sky-high dropout rates, but students enrolled in one university’s massive courses are overwhelmingly satisfied about their MOOC experience.

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Stanford research showed that students who complete MOOCs are highly engaged.

A survey of a set of MOOCs hosted by the University of London International Programmes on the Coursera platform found that 91 percent of student respondents rated their MOOC experience good, very good, or excellent.

The university’s four MOOCs — ranging from classes on English common law to mobile apps — drew more than 210,000 students from a host of countries, including Spain, India, Canada, and Brazil.

Around 90,000 of those MOOC students, or 42 percent, were considered “active” students, contributing to video chats and Twitter sessions in which course material was discussed with professors.

An “active” student was also defined as such if they downloaded a video lecture, took an online quiz, or posted to class forums, according to the university.

Four percent of students completed the University of London MOOCs.

Mike Kerrison, director of academic development for the University of London International Programmes, said the school’s first MOOCs “have proven to be very successful. Considering that the courses are free and allow students to do as much or as little work as they like, the number of students engaging in the course materials is considerable.”

This isn’t the first MOOC-based research to show that students who complete courses are also the ones displaying deep and consistent engagement with professors and fellow MOOC students.

See page 2 for details on MOOC “SuperPosters”…

There’s a name for these engaged students. They are “SuperPoster.”

It’s these highly-involved MOOC students who post most frequently to MOOC forums, sometimes accounting for up to one-fourth of total comments submitted to those forums during the online course, according to new research released by Stanford University.

A review of 23 MOOCs that spanned from early 2012 to early 2013 showed that forum participation — meant to answer lingering questions after lectures and before exams — lagged in many classes.

There were, however, the “SuperPosters,” who not only filled the forums with questions and answers, but achieved consistently high grades in each MOOC.

Many “SuperPosters” scored close to 100 percent in their MOOCs.

A MOOC “SuperPoster” is defined as a student who posted 50 or more times in a class forum.

These active MOOC students accounted for a wide range of total forum comments — from 1.3 percent of the total to 24.2 percent, according to the university’s report, which excluded MOOC teacher assistants from the group that posted most frequently.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #eCNMOOC.

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