The Effectiveness of Student Engagement in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) (2014)

Undergraduate: Mary Morgan Bitler

Faculty Advisor: Viji Sathy
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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This research was inspired by the development and rapid growth of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The project sought to answer the question of whether MOOCs can and are effectively engaging their students in a way that is worth the investment from the Universities and professors who organize the courses. A survey based on the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE) was created and distributed to the participants of 8 different MOOCs via discussion forum, including courses in the social sciences, mathematics, computer science, and humanities. Overall, the data indicated courses are challenging the students to a similar level as University courses, but the students do not engage with each other or the professors/teaching assistants to the same extent as traditional University class (even with the efforts taken in MOOCs to provide ¿meet-ups¿, discussion forums, and virtual office hours) . The findings demonstrate that MOOCs are not yet to the point of replacing higher education, but are more likely to serve as a supplement to the more engaging, traditional University courses. With regards to future directions, findings indicate that efforts can be focused on encouraging honorable student collaboration and more interaction with professors/teaching assistants. Additionally, collecting and comparing data from a survey of traditional online courses with the data from MOOCs would shed light on whether MOOCs.