Search

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) require students' motivation either intrinsically or extrinsically to complete any of its courses. Even though MOOCs enjoy great popularity and bring many benefits to the educational community, some concerns arise with MOOC advancement. In fact, MOOCs are affected by low completion rate and face issues with respect to interactivity and student engagement along MOOC duration, which may convert student excitement to boredom and then drop out at any stage. A key result of research in the past couple of years has proved that students' engagement in MOOCs is strongly related to their activities online. These activities are related to the interaction between student and logging in the MOOC, reading and writing in the MOOC discussion forum, watching videos and doing quizzes. In this research paper, we present our research in deploying a gamification mechanic in MOOCs to increase student engagement. The gamification approach relies on weekly feedback to drive student intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Following learning analytics on students' data from a MOOC offered in 2014, 2015, and 2016, the outcome of this approach showed an obvious increase in students' activity and engagement in discussion forums, login frequency and quiz trials. The active students' cohort allotment has increased in comparison with previous versions of the same MOOC as well as the completion rate has incremented up to 26% of the total number of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open online distance learning in higher education has quickly gained popularity, expanded, and evolved, with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as the most recent development. New web technologies allow for scalable ways to deliver video lecture content, implement social forums and track student progress in MOOCs. However, we remain limited in our ability to assess complex and open-ended student assignments. In this paper, we present a study on the quality of self- and peer assessments in MOOCs. In general, the quality of self-assessments and peer assessments was low to moderate, suggesting that both self-assessment and peer assessment should be used as assessment for learning instead of assessment of learning. Based on low correlations with final exam grades as well as with other assessment forms, we conclude that self-assessments might not be a valid way to assess students' performance in MOOCs. Yet the weekly quizzes and peer assessment significantly explained differences in students' final exam scores, with one of the weekly quizzes as the strongest predictor. Future research on MOOCs implies a reconceptualization of education variables, including the role of assessment of students' achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With handhelds, it is possible to mix virtual with real-world data (i.e., locations and contexts) connecting virtual worlds to real life. Handheld games can be used to engage students with learning in their (school) environment. In a project called 'Games Atelier' innovative pedagogy was developed that stimulated students to create content with the use of mobile technology. The premise underlying Games Atelier is that the process of creating games improves students' learning experiences. In this paper experiences of 80 students from both pre-vocational and lower secondary education working with 7scenes (a platform to create games) were described. The aim of this investigation was to indicate how 7scenes was used in secondary education, how many lessons were needed to create a meaningful game, how students experienced working with seven scenes and what students and teachers perceived as possible learning outcomes of creating and playing games. Preliminary results showed that in 12-14 lessons a meaningful game can be created. For the students it was hard to place themselves in the position of the player of the game when creating the assignments and they needed more guidance from their teacher especially in formulating the questions in a way that they would be clear to the player. Students mostly learned technically how to design a game. In addition to these technical skills, students learned very few other things such as measuring the temperature of water and the meaning of traffic signs. Several improvements were suggested such as working in two consecutive lessons, use of planning and pre-defined assessment and making the platform more user-friendly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile games in education are excellent ways to combine situated, active and constructive learning with fun. In the mobile city game Frequency 1550 teams -of four students each- step into the game's world. With help of the Internet, smart phones and GPS technology, Amsterdam changes into a medieval playground, the year 1550. Results of an analysis of the game as a narrative environment show that the game evokes a mixture of receiving (spectator), constructing (director) and participating in (actor) the story of medieval Amsterdam. Moreover, evaluation of the learning effects reveals that students who played Frequency 1550 acquired significantly more historical knowledge than the students who attended a regular lesson series. A newly designed mobile gaming and learning platform (Games Atelier) is presented, which is based on the technology and the evaluation of Frequency 1550. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]