Principal’s Teaching Award
Dr Areti Manataki and colleagues from Moray House and Information Services have won an award for their project, Exploring flexible modes of online education.
As well as Dr Manataki, the collaborative team includes Professor Dragan Gašević, Anne-Marie Scott, Vitomir Kovanović and Srećko Joksimović. Together they will investigate flexible modes of online education in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) and explore their application to undergraduate and postgraduate online learning in the University of Edinburgh.
Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme
The Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme (PTAS) provides funding to support learning and teaching enhancement. Funded by the University of Edinburgh Development Trust and run by the Institute for Academic Development, the scheme aims to encourage and support activities that will make a significant contribution to the enhancement of learning and teaching.
About the project
Building on the team’s combined learning analytics expertise, the researchers plan to investigate student engagement in auto-cohort MOOCs and how this particular mode of course delivery relates to students’ learning outcomes.
Between January and June 2017 the project will:
- examine differences in engagement patterns and social dynamics between session-based and auto-cohort MOOCs
- observe the behaviour of returning MOOC students
- compare the engagement patterns of MOOC returners to students taking the course for the first time
- investigate reasons to return/not return to the next course iteration.
Findings will be mapped to undergraduate and postgraduate online education and disseminated within and across Schools and services in the University. The researchers will also engage with key stakeholders in online education so as inform the design of flexible, auto-cohort University courses in the future.