Explore new, flexible modes of online delivery that account for the needs of non-traditional, online students Team Members : Areti Manataki, Dragan Gasevic, Anne-Marie Scott, Srecko Joksimovic, Vitomir Kovanovic Abstract The University has a strategic plan to increase the number of online students from 2,000 to 10,000 by 2020. In order to achieve this, there is the need to explore new, flexible modes of online delivery that account for the needs of non-traditional, online students. This project aims at gaining insights from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that adopted a novel auto-cohort course organization, before deploying such an innovative approach to UG/PG online teaching. Building on our learning analytics expertise, we plan to investigate student engagement in auto-cohort MOOCs and how this particular mode of course delivery relates to students’ learning outcomes. In particular, we will 1) examine differences in engagement patterns and social dynamics between session-based and auto-cohort MOOCs, 2) observe the behaviour of returning MOOC students, 3) compare the engagement patterns of MOOC returners to students taking the course for the first time, and 4) investigate reasons to return/not return to the next course iteration. The findings from this research will be mapped to UG/PG online education and disseminated within and across schools and services in the University. We will also engage with key stakeholders in online education so as inform the design of flexible, auto-cohort University courses in the future. Final project report Download the final project report (PDF Project outcomes Poster presented at 2017 eLearning@Ed conference (PDF) This article was published on 2024-02-26
