MOOCs and Higher Education E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B IR Single Issue Institutional Research
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 199

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Take a broad, balanced look at the present and potential MOOC landscape in higher education. This special volume highlights current trends and issues related to the emergence and development of a new instructional form in higher education: Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In these online distance education courses, enrollment is usually open to anyone who wishes to take them. This volume provides institutional researchers with information about the possibilities and challenges for current and future research on MOOCs. Topics covered include: * defining and classifying MOOCs and who takes them, * defining what persistence in them means or should mean, * describing the legal issues MOOC providers and enrollees face, and * identifying trends in the "big data" that MOOCs can provide. This is the 167th volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Timely and comprehensive, New Directions for Institutional Research provides planners and administrators in all types of academic institutions with guidelines in such areas as resource coordination, information analysis, program evaluation, and institutional management.

Leseprobe

New Directions for Institutional Research

John F. Ryan EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Gloria Crisp ASSOCIATE EDITOR

MOOCs and Higher Education: Implications for Institutional Research

Stephanie J. Blackmon

Claire H. Major

EDITORS

Number 167

Jossey-Bass

San Francisco

MOOCS AND HIGHER EDUCATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH Stephanie J. Blackmon, Claire H. Major (eds.) New Directions for Institutional Research, no. 167 John F. Ryan, Editor-in-Chief Gloria Crisp, Associate Editor

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NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH (ISSN 0271-0579, electronic ISSN 1536-075X) is part of The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series and is published quarterly by Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, at Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, California 94104-4594 (publication number USPS 098-830). POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Directions for Institutional Research, Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, California 94104-4594.

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EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE should be sent to John F. Ryan at [email protected].

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THE ASSOCIATION FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH (AIR) is the world's largest professional association for institutional researchers. The organization provides educational resources, best practices, and professional development opportunities for more than 4,000 members. Its primary purpose is to support members in the process of collecting, analyzing, and converting data into information that supports decision making in higher education.

CONTENTS

Editors’ Notes

References

1: Massive Open Online Courses: Variations on a New Instructional Form

Defining MOOCs

Locating the Origins of MOOCs that Shaped the Development of Various Forms

Existing Classifications of MOOCs

Future Directions of MOOC Literature

Conclusion

References

2: Massive Open Online Courses, Big Data, and Education Research

Introduction

MOOC Research Potential

Areas of Research from MOOCs

Barriers to MOOC Research

New Frontiers of MOOC Research

Conclusion

References

3: Who Takes MOOCs?

Student Demographics

Learner Characteristics

Key Tensions

Conclusion

References

4: Don't Forget the Fine Print: MOOCs and Student Privacy

MOOC Characteristics

MOOC Characteristics and User Privacy

FERPA, MOOCs, and Big Data

Institutional Values, Privacy, and User-Produced Content

Student Privacy Protections for the Digital Age

Conclusion

References

5: MOOCs and Persistence: Definitions and Predictors

Introduction

Definitions of Persistence

Correlates of MOOC Persistence

Conclusion

Notes

References

Appendix: Certificate Requirements for MOOCS in our Data Set

6: Through the MOOCing Glass: Professors’ Perspectives on the Future of MOOCs in Higher Education

Introduction

Research Review

Methodology

Results

Discussion

Conclusion

Note

References

Advert

Index

END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

List of Tables

Chapter 1

Table 1.1

Table 1.2

Chapter 2

Table 2.1

Chapter 5

Table 5.1

Table 5.2

Table 5.3

Chapter 6

Table 6.1

Table 6.2

List of Illustrations

Chapter 5

Figure 5.1 Rates of Persistence by Measure of Success

Figure 5.2 Rates of Persistence by Measure of Participating in the Course

Guide

Cover

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*Special thanks to Erin Wojtkun, doctoral student in the Higher Education Administration program at The College of William & Mary, for her early work with the APA formatting of the special issue.

Editors’ Notes

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are online distance education courses in which enrollment is open to anyone and that are usually unlimited in the number who can enroll. They are a new instructional form in higher education, and they have been hailed for the potential they have to bring access to higher education to greater numbers of students and criticized for the commodification of higher education (Young, 2013). Love them or hate them, MOOCs appear to have gained ground, as more than 400 institutions and 23 of the top 25 institutions, as rated by US News and World Report, currently are offering MOOCs (Shah, 2015). What role they will ultimately play in higher education is not yet clear. Although some have feared them as a potential disrupting force in higher education, Siemens, Gasevic, and Dawson (2015) believe that MOOCs are now simply viewed as “an additional learning opportunity.”

Whatever direction they take, MOOCs ultimately will bring new opportunities and new challenges to institutional research. This new instructional model presents additional ways in which courses may be categorized and counted. MOOCs also bring new patterns of student enrollment, engagement, persistence, and retention. Moreover, they create new patterns in faculty workloads as well, along with attending concerns of faculty about this workload. All of these changes can influence the ways in which institutional researchers carry out research in institutions of higher education, and it is imperative to be prepared for the work to come.

Our goal in creating this special MOOC-centered issue of New Directions for Institutional Research was to provide institutional researchers as well as a general higher education audience with a broad introduction to MOOCs as a new and different instructional form that offers us new challenges and new opportunities in higher education. We began our work for this issue by identifying the MOOC-related topic areas that we believed would potentially be most useful to institutional researchers. The topic areas we identified are interrelated, and thus they were impossible to separate completely. We developed a framework for the chapters by identifying key questions that would allow the major ideas to unfold in a logical sequence, as follows:

We included work from leading scholars in this growing area of work, and we asked the authoring teams to tackle their topics on MOOCs in the way that they felt would be most relevant to institutional researchers first and to a broader higher education audience second.

We are pleased to present this special issue of New Directions for Institutional Research that includes six chapters intended to present institutional researchers with a range of topics that are integral to understanding the current and future caveats, complexities, and opportunities related to MOOCs. In Chapter 1, “Massive Open Online Courses: Variations on a New Instructional Form,” we editors (Claire Major and Stephanie Blackmon) consider the definition of MOOCs in detail, we describe the various types of MOOCs, and we provide insight into the current and future directions of research related to this instructional form. In Chapter 2, “Massive Open Online Courses, Big Data, and Education Research,” Sarah Eichhorn and Gary Matkin address what MOOCs will mean for education research, in particular arguing that the possibilities for “big data” that they provide have the potential to inform our understanding of students’ learning. Chapter 3's contribution from Chris Glass, Mitsue Shiokawa-Baklan, and Andrew Saltarelli is titled “Who Takes MOOCs?” The authors describe the average MOOC student, focusing on the demographics and characteristics of MOOC learners. They also consider the possible implications of the various enrollment patterns. In Chapter 4, “Don't Forget the Fine Print: MOOCs and Student Privacy,” Neal Hutchens and Azalea Hulbert describe various legal implications for this new instructional form. In “MOOCs and Persistence: Definitions and Predictors,” Chapter 5, Brent Evans and Rachel Baker address various ways of defining and understanding persistence in MOOCs. Finally, Stephanie Blackmon concludes the issue by presenting data from a study on the future of MOOCs in higher education in Chapter 6, “Through the MOOCing Glass: Professors’ Perspectives on the Future of MOOCs in Higher Education.”

Our intent with this issue was to offer readers a broad, balanced representation of the present and potential MOOC landscape in higher education. We also hope that the text will serve as a resource for institutional researchers or anyone who is interested and invested in understanding what MOOCs mean for higher education research and practice. We hope not only that this special issue will answer questions, but more importantly that it will raise new ones about the implications of MOOCs for the future of research in higher education.

Stephanie J. BlackmonClaire H. MajorEditors

References

Shah, D. (2015). MOOC Watch. Retrieved from

https://www.class-central.com/report/moocwatch-jan-2015-online-courses-raise-game/

Siemens, G., Gasevic, D., & Dawson, S. (Eds.). (2015).

Preparing for the digital university: A review of the history and current state of distance, blended, and online learning

. MOOC Research Initiative.

Young, J. (2013).

Beyond the MOOC hype: A guide to higher education's high tech disruption

. Washington, DC: The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Stephanie J. Blackmon

,

Ph.D., assistant professor at the College of William & Mary

.

Claire H. Major

,

Ph.D., professor at the University of Alabamas

.