The OER Knowledge Cloud makes use of cookies. By continuing, you consent to this use. More information.
Measuring the success of scaleable open online courses
Klobas, Jane E.

PublishedNovember 2014
JournalPerformance Measurement and Metrics
Volume 15, Issue 3, Pages 145 - 162
PublisherEmerald Group Publishing Limited

ABSTRACT
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to propose measures of online open course success for non-commercial institutional providers of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other scaleable open online courses (SOOCs).

Design/methodology/approach
– The measures are derived from the characteristics of open online courses, existing knowledge about open online course providers and users and their motivations, and current practice in MOOC evaluation and data analytics.

Findings
– Current practices for evaluation of open online courses are dominated by MOOC analytics which provide insights into user demographics and behaviour with some implications for evaluation of reach and course design but leaving many unknowns. Measures for evaluation of success at the institutional level can be derived from institutional goals for open online courses. Success from the point of view of teachers and technical teams involved in design, development and delivery of open online courses can be derived from team members’ expectations, resources and satisfaction as well as measures of cost and effort compared to budget and benchmarks. Users are classified as registrants (information seekers, window shoppers, samplers), downloaders and participants (starters, partial participants and full participants who are further divided into auditing, active and certificate takers); different measures are appropriate for each group.

Practical implications
– Practitioners and researchers must consider a variety of levels and indicators of success to adequately evaluate open online courses. Tables in the text propose measures, methods, timing and roles.

Originality/value
– This is the first published paper to take a holistic view of open online course evaluation and propose detailed measures.

Keywords e-learning · evaluation · MOOC · open online courses · SOOCs · success measures

ISSN1467-8047
RefereedYes
DOI10.1108/PMM-10-2014-0036
Other informationPerformance Measurement Metric
Export optionsBibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar



AVAILABLE FILES
PMM-10-2014-0036.pdf · 262.6KB168 downloads



Viewed by 167 distinct readers




CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.

Click a star to be the first to rate this document


POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS

Measuring the degree of innovation in education through the implementation of an indicator based on analyzing MOOC-related activities
Alvarez-Rodríguez, Jose María; de Amescua, Antonio; García-Guzman, Javier; Sánchez-Segura, Maribel; et al.
Nowadays, the digital transformation is affecting any task, activity, process that is done in any organization or even in our daily life activities. The education sector, considered as one of the leading sectors in ...
Match: measuring; mooc

The Open Learning Initiative: Measuring the effectiveness of the OLI statistics course in accelerating student learning
Lovett, Marsha; Meyer, Oded; Thille, Candace
The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is an open educational resources project at Carnegie Mellon University that began in 2002 with a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. OLI creates web-based courses that ...
Match: measuring; evaluation

MOOCs: A learning journey
Smith, Becky; Eng, Min; Cheung, Simon K. S.; Fong, Joseph; et al.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been radically changing the direction of online education in the last few years. Although sharing many common features, there has been an emergence of two distinct varieties of ...
Match: e-learning; mooc

MOOCs and academic libraries: a chance or a problem? An overview
Testoni, Laura
Massive open online courses(MOOCs) are online courses free and open to anyone: the MOOCs enrollement is essentially unlimited. Purpose of this essay is to offer an overview on the debate about the development of the ...
Match: e-learning; mooc

Effectiveness of integrating MOOCs in traditional classrooms for undergraduate students
Israel, Maria Joseph; Conrad, Dianne; McGreal, Rory
The idea of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has attracted a lot of media attention in the last couple of years. MOOCs have been used mostly as stand-alone online courses without credits. However, some researchers, ...
Match: e-learning; mooc

Students’ and instructors’ use of massive open online courses (MOOCs): Motivations and challenges
Hew, Khe Foon; Cheung, Wing Sum
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are among the latest e-learning initiative to attain widespread popularity among many universities. In this paper, a review of the current published literature focusing on the use of ...
Match: e-learning; mooc

Massive open online courses for Africa by Africa
Oyo, Benedict; Kalema, Billy Mathias; Conrad, Dianne; McGreal, Rory
Africa is known for inadequate access to all sorts of human needs including health, education, food, shelter, transport, security, and energy. Before the emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs), open access to ...
Match: e-learning; mooc

MOOCs in Europe: Overview of papers representing a collective European response on MOOCs as presented during the HOME conference in Rome November 2015
Bang, Joergen; Dalsgaard, Christian; Kjaer, Arne; O’Donovan, Maria; et al.
Table of contents Foreword Part 1: Regional MOOC initiatives Building OOC layers on top of existing courses (M)OOCs in Iceland: Language and learning communities EduOpen network in Italy Part 2: Role media ...
Match: e-learning; mooc

E-learning, B-learning, M-learning and the technical and pedagogical aspects on the new platform trends as massive open online courses
da Silva, Viviane; de Souza, Ranniery
This article is based on the doctoral research conducted at the University of Minho in Education with specialization in Educational Technology, the research presents the technical and pedagogical aspects of e-learning, ...
Match: e-learning; mooc

Motivating MOOC participants
Mokwa-Tarnowska, Iwona; Gdańska, Politechnika
Over the last four years, massive online open courses (MOOCs) have attracted millions of learners from around the world. Many factors seem to play an important role in them gaining in popularity. One of them is ...
Match: e-learning; mooc