Group awareness increases student engagement in online collaborative writing
Publication date: Available online 4 April 2018 Source:The Internet and Higher Education Author(s): Ming Liu, Leping Liu, Li Liu Online Collaborative Writing (OCW) tools such as Google Docs provide an efficient way for students to perform collaborative writing tasks. However, when teachers include OCW in their teaching, they often report fewer positive student engagement. This paper proposes a novel OCW tool called Cooperpad, with a group awareness functionality, which continuously gathers group members' writing behavior, analyzes and visualize their engagement intensity for group members to compare their participatio...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - April 5, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Detecting leadership in peer-moderated online collaborative learning through text mining and social network analysis
Publication date: Available online 4 April 2018 Source:The Internet and Higher Education Author(s): Kui Xie, Gennaro Di Tosto, Lin Lu, Young Suk Cho Structured tasks and peer-moderated discussions are pedagogical models that have shown unique benefits for online collaborative learning. Students appointed with leadership roles are able to positively affect the dynamics in their groups by engaging with participants, raising questions, and advancing problem solving. To help monitoring and controlling the latent social dynamics associated with leadership behavior, we propose a methodological approach that makes use of co...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - April 5, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Student perception of helpfulness of facilitation strategies that enhance instructor presence, connectedness, engagement and learning in online courses
In this study, we examine student perception on the helpfulness of the twelve different facilitation strategies used by instructors on establishing instructor presence, instructor connection, engagement and learning. One hundred and eighty eight graduate students taking online courses in Fall 2016 semester in US higher education institutions responded to the survey. Among the 12 facilitation strategies, instructors' timely response to questions and instructors' timely feedback on assignments/projects were rated the highest in all four constructs (instructor presence, instructor connection, engagement and learning). Interac...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - March 10, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
How do medium naturalness, teaching-learning interactions and Students' personality traits affect participation in synchronous E-learning?
This study explores students' participation in synchronous e-learning interactions to understand its nature and improve its effectiveness. An innovative synchronous videoconferencing technology was used to examine the assumptions of the Medium Naturalness Theory (Kock, 2005), which compares the characteristics of different media to face-to-face communication, having the highest degree of naturalness. The data was collected in two settings: (1) a controlled lab experiment (76 participants), in which teaching-learning interactions were compared across three communication channels (face-to-face, one-way and two-way synchronou...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - February 26, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Centralized student performance prediction in large courses based on low-cost variables in an institutional context
This article presents a prediction model based on low-cost variables and a sophisticated algorithm, to predict early which students attending large classes (with more than 50 enrollments) who are at risk of failing a course. Therefore, it will enable instructors and educational managers to carry out early interventions to prevent course failure. The results overperform other approaches in terms of accuracy, cost, and generalization. Moreover, LMS usage information improved the model by up to 12.28% in terms of root-mean-square error, enabling better early identification of at-risk students. (Source: The Internet and Higher Education)
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - February 26, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Contrasting prediction methods for early warning systems at undergraduate level
We present findings from a statistics university course which has weekly continuous assessment and a large proportion of resources on the Learning Management System Blackboard. We identify weeks 5–6 (half way through the semester) as an optimal time to implement an early warning system, as it allows time for the students to make changes to their study patterns while retaining reasonable prediction accuracy. Using detailed variables, clustering and our final prediction method of BART (Bayesian Additive Regressive Trees) we can predict students' final mark by week 6 based on mean absolute error to 6.5 percentage points. We...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - February 26, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
A systematic review of research methods and topics of the empirical MOOC literature (2014 –2016)
This study explores the research paradigms and topics of MOOCs to gain a deeper understanding of the MOOC phenomenon by reviewing 146 empirical studies of MOOCs published from October 2014 to November 2016. The results show that: (a) most studies used quantitative research methods followed by mixed research methods and qualitative research methods, (b) the most frequently adopted data collection method was survey, followed by platform database, interviews, and discussion forum, (c) more than half of the collected studies used at least two data collection methods such as survey and interview, (d) the majority of researchers...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - February 26, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Fostering student engagement in online discussion through social learning analytics
Publication date: Available online 5 January 2018 Source:The Internet and Higher Education Author(s): Bodong Chen, Yu-Hui Chang, Fan Ouyang, Wanying Zhou This paper reports on the initial stage of a design-based research program that aims to devise student-facing social learning analytics in a postsecondary setting. In order to foster student discussion in online classes, we devised an analytics toolkit that turns discussion forum data into information for students to reflect upon. The first pilot study conducted in an online course showed both early promises and challenges with this effort. In particular, students r...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - January 6, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Motivating factors of MOOC completers: Comparing between university-affiliated students and general participants
Publication date: Available online 12 December 2017 Source:The Internet and Higher Education Author(s): Abeer Watted, Miri Barak Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a growing element in strategic decision-making in higher education. However, since only a small percentage of enrollees complete MOOCs, it is important to understand participants' preliminary expectations and motivations. This is particularly important for science and engineering MOOCs because they require professional knowledge, analytical skills, and the ability to handle abstract models of physical phenomena. Hence, the goal of this study was to exam...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - December 13, 2017 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Transition 2.0: Digital technologies, higher education, and vision impairment
This article introduces Transition 2.0, a paradigm shift designed to study and support students with disabilities' transition to higher education. Transition 2.0 is the result of a qualitative study about how a group of young people with vision impairments used digital technologies for their transition to university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The article discusses a conventional view of transition, referred to here as Transition 1.0, which has dominated disability-related research and service provision in higher education. It co...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - November 11, 2017 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Exploring development of social capital in a CMOOC through language and discourse
Publication date: Available online 29 September 2017 Source:The Internet and Higher Education Author(s): Srećko Joksimović, Nia Dowel, Oleksandra Poquet, Vitomir Kovanović, Dragan Gašević, Shane Dawson, Arthur C. Graesser Connectivist pedagogies are geared towards building a network of learners that actively employ technologies to establish interpersonal connections in open online settings. In this context, as course participants increasingly establish interpersonal relationships among peers they have greater opportunity to draw on and leverage the latent social capital that resides in such a distributed lear...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - September 30, 2017 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
The role of self-regulated learning in students' success in flipped undergraduate math courses
Publication date: Available online 27 September 2017 Source:The Internet and Higher Education Author(s): Zhiru Sun, Kui Xie, Lynley H. Anderman Based upon the self-regulated learning theory, this study examined the relationships between academic achievement and three key self-regulatory constructs - prior domain knowledge, self-efficacy, and the use of learning strategies - in two flipped undergraduate math courses. Structural equation modeling was employed as the primary method to analyze the relationships in both the pre-class and in-class learning environments of the flipped courses. The results of the study showed...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - September 28, 2017 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Students' motivation and subjective task value of participating in online and blended learning environments
Publication date: Available online 20 September 2017 Source:The Internet and Higher Education Author(s): Silke Vanslambrouck, Chang Zhu, Koen Lombaerts, Brent Philipsen, Jo Tondeur Online and blended learning (OBL) is intended for individualising education. However, while OBL attracts a diverse range of students, teachers lack insight into this diversity, which hinders them in anticipating students' individual needs. The present mixed methods' study examines the reasons and values that students in a teacher training programme in higher education attribute to their participation in OBL. Firstly, three motivational pr...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - September 20, 2017 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
The nagging question when designing blended courses: Does the proportion of time devoted to online activities matter?
Publication date: Available online 18 September 2017 Source:The Internet and Higher Education Author(s): Ron Owston, Dennis N. York We investigated the relationship between the proportion of time spent online in a blended course and student perceptions and performance. Students in 20 undergraduate courses offered in four different online blend proportions were surveyed on their perceptions, and their final course grades and cumulative grade point averages were obtained. A small but significant relationship was found between blend proportion and perceptions. Students in the Medium (36% to 40% online) and High (50% onlin...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - September 19, 2017 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
Behavioral patterns of knowledge construction in online cooperative translation activities
This study investigated the behavioral patterns of students' knowledge construction in online cooperative translation activities. Forty-eight college students participated in the study. Methods of lag sequential analysis and frequency analysis were adopted. Results showed that 1) all behavior stayed within the medium level of knowledge construction, and from which four significant behavioral sequences were identified; 2) distinctions existed between higher- and lower-engagement students with respect to behavioral patterns; and 3) the behaviors of negotiation and knowledge co-construction occurred more frequently and contin...
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - August 25, 2017 Category: Information Technology Source Type: research
