Proyectos

Publicaciones

2024

How Can Generative AI Support Education?

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Iria Estevez-Ayres, Patricia Callejo, Miguel A. Hombrados Herrera, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Mario Muñoz and María-Blanca Ibáñez. 2024 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON).

Enhancing Research on Engineering Education: Empowering Research Skills Through Generative Artificial Intelligence for Systematic Literature Reviews

Pablo Castillo, Carmen Fernandez-Panadero, Carlos Alario-Hoyos and Carlos Delgado Kloos. 2024 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON).

Student and teacher impact on the use of telepresence classrooms

Adrián Carruana Martín, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos and Carlos Delgado Kloos. Education and Information Technologies 2024.

Personalized Strategies for Academic Success in Learning Anatomy: Exploring Metacognitive and Technological Adaptation in Medical Students

Mónica Stambuk-Castellano, Anna Carrera, R. Shane Tubbs, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Enric Verdú, Joe Iwanaga, Francisco Reina. Clinical Anatomy, Volume 37, Issue 4, May 2024.

Evaluation of LLM Tools for Feedback Generation in a Course on Concurrent Programming

Iria Estévez-Ayres, Patricia Callejo, Miguel Ángel Hombrados-Herrera, Carlos Alario-Hoyos and Carlos Delgado Kloos. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, May 2024.

A Web Application for a Cost-Effective Fine-Tuning of Open-Source LLMs in Education

Victor Diez-Rozas, Iria Estevez-Ayres, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Patricia Callejo and Carlos Delgado Kloos. 25th International Conference, Artificial Intelligence in Education 2024.

Content Modeling in Smart Learning Environments: A systematic literature review.

Alberto Jiménez-Macías, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Margarita Ortiz-Rojas, Mario Muñoz-Organero and Carlos Delgado Kloos. Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS), Volume 30, Issue 3, 2024.

Transforming Open Edx into the next On-Campus LMS.

Ignacio Despujol Zabala, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Turró Ribalta, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Germán Montoro Manrique, Jaime Busquets Mataix. EMOOC 2023, published in February 2024.

Analysis and Prediction of Students’ Performance in a Computer-Based Course Through Real-Time Events

Lucia Uguina-Gadella; Iria Estévez-Ayres; Jesús Arias Fisteus; Carlos Alario-Hoyos and Carlos Delgado Kloos. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, volume 17, 2024.

2023

Innovat MOOC Teacher Training on Educational Innovation in Higher Education

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Doris Kiendl, and Liliya Terzieva. EMOOCs 2023.

Construcción de Centros de Enseñanza y Aprendizaje para las Universidades de Latinoamérica en el Siglo XXI

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Miguel Morales, Héctor Amado, Rocael Hernández, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, António Teixeira, Mario Solarte, Astrid Helena González, and Karla Valdez. Inteligencia Artificial: Amenazas, desafíos y oportunidades en la Educación Superior,  Vol. 5 (2023). El Congreso CODES 2023.

Leveraging the Potential of Generative AI to Accelerate Systematic Literature Reviews: An Example in the Area of Educational Technology

Pablo Castillo-Segura, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Delgado Kloos, and Carmen Fernández Panadero. 2023 World Engineering Education Forum – Global Engineering Deans Council (WEEF-GEDC).

Transforming Education in the 21st Century: The Role of PROF-XXI Project in Developing Teaching Competencies

Miguel Morales Chan, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Hector R. Amado-Salvatierra, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, António Moreira Teixeira, Carlos Delgado Kloos, and Rocael Hernandez-Rizzardini. 2023 IEEE Learning with MOOCS (LWMOOCS).

Statoodle: A Learning Analytics Tool to Analyze Moodle Students’ Actions and Prevent Cheating

Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Jorge Barredo, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, and Carlos Delgado Kloos. Responsive and Sustainable Educational Futures 18th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2023.

A Study of Student and Teacher Challenges in Smart Synchronous Hybrid Learning Environments

A Carruana Martín, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Delgado Kloos
Sustainability 15 (15), 11694

Analysis of Orchestration Load and Teacher Agency in Smart Synchronous Hybrid Learning Environments

AC Martín, C Alario-Hoyos, A Martínez-Monés, CD Kloos
Preprints

Recreation of different educational exercise scenarios for exercise modeling

A Jiménez-Macías, PJ Muñoz-Merino, CD Kloos
2023 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 1-9

Recognizing the Value of Recognition in Education

CD Kloos, C Alario-Hoyos, MB Ibáñez, PM Moreno-Marcos, …
2023 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 1-5

ABENEARIO: A system for learning early maths with ABN

A Martín Díaz, C Alario-Hoyos, I Estévez-Ayres, C Delgado Kloos, …
Education and Information Technologies, 1-23

Experiences with Micro-Credentials at UC3M: Academic and Technological Aspects

CA Hoyos, CD Kloos
2023 IEEE World Engineering Education Conference (EDUNINE), 1-6

Analyzing feature importance for a predictive undergraduate student dropout model

A Jiménez-Macias, PM Moreno-Marcos, PJ Muñoz-Merino, M Ortiz-Rojas, …
Computer Science and Information Systems 20 (1), 175-194

Smart Groups: A system to orchestrate collaboration in hybrid learning environments. A simulation study

A Carrruana Martín, C Alario-Hoyos, C Delgado Kloos
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 38 (6), 150-168

 

2022

Adaptation of a process Mining Methodology to Analyse Learning Strategies in a Synchronous Massive Open Online Course

Jorge Maldonado-Mahauad, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Mar Perez-Sanagustin

The study of learners’ behaviour in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is a topic of great interest for the Learning Analytics (LA) research community. In the past years, there has been a special focus on the analysis of students’ learning strategies, as these have been associated with successful academic achievement. Different methods and techniques, such as temporal analysis and process mining (PM), have been applied for analysing learners’ trace data and categorising them according to their actual behaviour in a particular learning context. However, prior research in Learning Sciences and Psychology has observed that results from studies conducted in one context do not necessarily transfer or generalise to others. In this sense, there is an increasing interest in the LA community in replicating and adapting studies across contexts. This paper serves to continue this trend of reproducibility and builds upon a previous study which proposed and evaluated a PM methodology for classifying learners according to seven different behavioural patterns in three asynchronous MOOCs of Coursera. In the present study, the same methodology was applied to a synchronous MOOC on edX with N = 50,776 learners. As a result, twelve different behavioural patterns were detected. Then, we discuss what decision other researchers should made to adapt this methodology and how these decisions can have an effect on the analysis of trace data. Finally, the results obtained from applying the methodology contribute to gain insights on the study of learning strategies, providing evidence about the importance of the learning context in MOOCs.

 

The impacts of scaffolding socially shared regulation on teamwork in an online project-based course

Catalina Cortázar, Miguel Nussbaum, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Julián Goñi, Danilo Alvares

Employers now consider teamwork one of the essential skills for students to acquire during their academic life. However, COVID-19 has accelerated the transition towards online learning, affecting how we work in teams. This study looked at how scaffolding socially shared regulation of learning can influence teamwork in an online, project-based course. Intra-group peer assessment was used to analyze three variables during a first-year engineering course. By following the proposed scaffolding, students found an optimum balance in their contribution to team meetings. They also managed to establish a positive working environment earlier in the semester. This study contributes to the field by showing that scaffolding socially shared regulation in an online, project-based course allows for an interplay between collaboration during class and cooperation outside of it. This interplay ultimately leads teams to achieve better results on their final project.

H2O Learn – Hybrid and Human-Oriented Learning: Trustworthy and Human-Centered Learning Analytics (TaHCLA) for Hybrid Education

Carlos Delgado-Kloos, Yannis Dimitriadis, Davinia Hernández-Leo, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Alejandra Martínez-Monés, Patricia Santos, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Juan I. Asensio-Pérez, Lluis Vicent-Safont

This paper presents the H2O Learn (Hybrid and Human-Oriented Learning) project, a coordinated research project funded by the Spanish Research Agency, which just started in 2021 and will last for three years. The main goal of the H2O Learn project is to build Trustworthy and Human-Centered Learning Analytics (TaHCLA) solutions to support human stakeholders when designing, orchestrating and (self-,socially- or co-) regulating learning in Hybrid Learning (HL). The contributions of H2O Learn consider key requirements for trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI), as defined by the European Commission: 1) fostering human (i.e., teachers, learners…) agency; 2) enabling transparency of the Learning Analytics (LA) systems; 3) seeking socio-emotional and inclusive wellbeing; and 4) promoting accountability by enabling the assessment of algorithms and design processes.

Programming Teaching Interaction

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carmen Fernández-Panadero, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro M Moreno-Marcos, María Blanca Ibáñez, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Boni García, Iria Estévez-Ayres

There are many applications that help orchestrate face-to-face, online, or hybrid classes through the cloud. Examples are polling apps like Wooclap or Mentimeter, digital boards like Jamboard or Miro, or diagramming tools like diagrams.net, Coggle, or Kialo. However, one can go one step further and integrate some of these tools in order to use the most appropriate tool for each teaching moment and have information flow across tools preserving consistency without having to do this manually. In this paper, we present a specific experience and extrapolate it to highlight the power of programming the teaching interaction.

Transforming the learning experience in pre-service teacher training using the flipped classroom

Camila Barahona, Miguel Nussbaum, Pablo Espinosa, Alejandra Meneses, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín

The lack of information and communication technology skills among teachers is highlighted as being one of the main barriers to increasing the use of technology in teaching and learning. This study shows how technology used in a flipped classroom can improve learning among pre-service teachers, as well as boosting perceptions of their own technology skills. The students covered the instructional content before class through videos complemented by formative assessment. The data resulted in a report that the teacher then used to adapt their lecture, as well as defining the questions to be asked using an in-class response system. The responses to these questions were then discussed with the students. The results show that it is possible to change pre-service teachers’ perceptions of using technology in the classroom, both as a student and as a future teacher.

 

A Competency Framework for Teaching and Learning Innovation Centers for the 21st Century: Anticipating the Post-COVID-19 Age

Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Iouri Kotorov, António Teixeira, Fernanda Mansilla, Julien Broisin, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Óscar Jerez, Maria do Carmo Teixeira Pinto, Boni García, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Miguel Morales, Mario Solarte, Luis Magdiel Oliva-Córdova, Astrid Helena Gonzalez Lopez

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across the globe moved towards “emergency online education”, experiencing a metamorphosis that advanced their capacities and competencies as never before. Teaching and Learning Centers (TLCs), the internal units that promote sustainable transformations, can play a key role in making this metamorphosis last. Existing models for TLCs have defined the competencies that they could help develop, focusing on teachers’, students’, and managers’ development, but have mislead aspects such as leadership, organizational processes, and infrastructures. This paper evaluates the PROF-XXI framework, which offers a holistic perspective on the competencies that TLCs should develop for supporting deep and sustainable transformations of HEIs. The framework was evaluated with 83 participants from four Latin American institutions and used for analyzing the transformation of their teaching and learning practices during the pandemic lockdown. The result of the analysis shows that the PROF-XXI framework was useful for identifying the teaching and learning competencies addressed by the institutions, their deficiencies, and their strategic changes. Specifically, this study shows that most institutions counted with training plans for teachers before this period, mainly in the competencies of digital technologies and pedagogical quality, but that other initiatives were created to reinforce them, including students’ support actions.

 

2021

Educational Pyramids Aligned: Bloom’s Taxonomy, the DigCompEdu Framework and Instructional Designs

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos

There are currently numerous learning theories and methodologies that teachers can use in their classes, depending on their educational goal and the specific subject matter taught. In addition, there are numerous technologies and tools that can help in the implementation of these learning theories and methodologies. This article builds on the Bloom’s taxonomy for the cognitive domain for learners and the DigCompEdu framework of digital competences for educators and defines a classification that organizes instructional design methods with the aim to help educators find the right method for orchestrating their classes. This classification uses the analogy of the pyramid, climbing levels as the student has a more active role in his own learning. The pyramid proposed to organize instructional design methods contains six levels, from the base of the pyramid (lowest level) to the top of the pyramid (highest level): knowledge transfer, interactive knowledge transfer, challenged knowledge, analytic learning, experiential learning, and active learning. This pyramid is intended to put some order into the many learning theories and methodologies that exist.

 

PROF-XXI: Teaching and Learning Centers to Support the 21st Century Professor

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Miguel Morales, Rocael Hernández Rizzardini, Óscar Jerez, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Iouri Kotorov, S. Alejandra Recinos Fernández, Mario Solarte, Daniel Jaramillo, António Moreira Teixeira, Astrid Helena González López

PROF-XXI is a European-funded project whose aim is the creation of Teaching and Learning Centers (TLCs) for Latin American Higher Institutions in an effort to promote the development of competences for university professors and foster teaching innovation in onsite, but also in online and hybrid education. PROF-XXI includes a partnership of seven higher education institutions, three from European countries (Spain, France, and Portugal), and four from Latin American countries (two from Guatemala, and two from Colombia). This article presents the main results of the first part of the project, including the diagnosis of institutional practices, the state of the art of TLCs around the world, the framework on 21st century professors in Latin America, and the PROF-XXI framework.

 

Conversational agent for supporting learners on a MOOC on programming with Java

Cristina Catalan Aguirre, Nuria Gonzalez Castro, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro José Muñoz Merino

One important problem in MOOCs is the lack of personalized support from teachers. Conversational agents arise as one possible solution to assist MOOC learners and help them to study. For example, conversational agents can help review key concepts of the MOOC by asking questions to the learners and providing examples. JavaPAL, a voice-based conversational agent for supporting learners on a MOOC on programming with Java offered on edX. This paper evaluates JavaPAL from different perspectives. First, the usability of JavaPAL is analyzed, obtaining a score of 74.41 according to a System Usability Scale (SUS). Second, learners’ performance is compared when answering questions directly through JavaPAL and through the equivalent web interface on edX, getting similar results in terms of performance. Finally, interviews with JavaPAL users reveal that this conversational agent can be helpful as a complementary tool for the MOOC due to its portability and flexibility compared to accessing the MOOC contents through the web interface.

 

Can Feedback based on Predictive Data Improve Learners’ Passing Rates in MOOCs? A Preliminary Analysis

Mar Perez-Sanagustin, Ronald Pérez-Álvarez, Jorge Maldonado-Mahauad, Esteban Villalobos, Isabel Hilliger, Josefina Hernández, Diego Sapunar, Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Jon Imaz

This work in progress paper investigates if timely feedback increases learners’ passing rate in a MOOC. An experiment conducted with 2,421 learners in the Coursera platform tests if weekly messages sent to groups of learners with the same probability of dropping out the course can improve retention. These messages can contain information about:(1) the average time spent in the course, or (2) the average time per learning session, or (3) the exercises performed, or (4) the video-lectures completed. Preliminary results show that the completion rate increased 12% with the intervention compared with data from 1,445 learners that participated in the same course in a previous session without the intervention. We discuss the limitations of these preliminary results and the future research derived from them.

 

COVID-19 and teacher continuing education: how InnovaT project has supported innovative higher education teaching in Chile and Peru.

L Pasqualin, Liliya Terzieva, C Alario-Hoyos, C Delgado Kloos, R Ticona, MA Maldonado

COVID-19 and teacher continuing education: how InnovaT project has supported innovative higher education teaching in Chile and Peru. — BUas Research Portal Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content BUas Research Portal Home BUas Research Portal Logo Home Research Units Profiles Research output Activities Press / Media Projects Prizes Datasets Search by expertise, name or affiliation COVID-19 and teacher continuing education: how InnovaT project has supported innovative higher education teaching in Chile and Peru. L Pasqualin, Liliya Terzieva, C Alario, C Kloos, R Ticona, MA Maldonado Academy for Leisure & Events Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review Overview Fingerprint Projects (1) Original language English Title of host publication IRC Proceedings 2021 Editors Dortmund University Place of …

 

Adaptive learning module for a conversational agent to support MOOC learners

Nuria González-Castro, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) pose a challenge for instructors when trying to provide personalised support to learners, due to large numbers of registered participants. Conversational agents can be of help to support learners when working with MOOCs. This article presents an adaptive learning module for JavaPAL, a conversational agent that complements a MOOC on Java programming, helping learners review the key concepts of the MOOC. This adaptive learning module adapts the difficulty of the questions provided to learners considering their level of knowledge using item response theory (IRT) and also provides recommendations of video fragments extracted from the MOOC for when learners fail questions. The adaptive learning module for JavaPAL has been evaluated showing good usability and learnability through the system usability scale (SUS), reasonably suitable video fragments recommendations for learners, and useful visualisations generated as part of the IRT-based adaptation of questions for instructors to better understand what is happening in the course, to design exams, and to redesign the course content.

 

Analysing self-regulated learning strategies of MOOC learners through self-reported data

M Elena Alonso-Mencía, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) require registered learners to be autonomous in their learning. Nevertheless, prior research studies showed that many learners lack the necessary self-regulated learning (SRL) skills to succeed in MOOCs. This research study aimed to gain insights into the relationships that exist between SRL and background information from MOOC learners. To this end, a series of three MOOCs on computer programming offered through edX were used to collect self-reported data from learners using an adaptation of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Results show significant differences in general learning strategies and motivation by continent, prior computing experience and percentage of completed MOOCs. Men reported higher motivation than women, whereas pre-university learners needed further guidance to improve their learning strategies.

 

Evaluation of an Algorithm for Automatic Grading of Forum Messages in MOOC Discussion Forums

Raquel L Pérez-Nicolás, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Discussion forums are a valuable source of information in educational platforms such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), as users can exchange opinions or even help other students in an asynchronous way, contributing to the sustainability of MOOCs even with low interaction from the instructor. Therefore, the use of the forum messages to get insights about students’ performance in a course is interesting. This article presents an automatic grading approach that can be used to assess learners through their interactions in the forum. The approach is based on the combination of three dimensions: (1) the quality of the content of the interactions, (2) the impact of the interactions, and (3) the user’s activity in the forum. The evaluation of the approach compares the assessment by experts with the automatic assessment obtaining a high accuracy of 0.8068 and Normalized Root Mean Square Error (NRMSE) of 0.1799, which outperforms previous existing approaches. Future research work can try to improve the automatic grading by the training of the indicators of the approach depending on the MOOCs or the combination with text mining techniques.

 

An Algorithm and a Tool for the Automatic Grading of MOOC Learners from Their Contributions in the Discussion Forum

Sergio García-Molina, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Carlos Delgado Kloos

MOOCs (massive open online courses) have a built-in forum where learners can share experiences as well as ask questions and get answers. Nevertheless, the work of the learners in the MOOC forum is usually not taken into account when calculating their grade in the course, due to the difficulty of automating the calculation of that grade in a context with a very large number of learners. In some situations, discussion forums might even be the only available evidence to grade learners. In other situations, forum interactions could serve as a complement for calculating the grade in addition to traditional summative assessment activities. This paper proposes an algorithm to automatically calculate learners’ grades in the MOOC forum, considering both the quantitative dimension and the relevance in their contributions. In addition, the algorithm has been implemented within a web application, providing instructors with a visual and a numerical representation of the grade for each learner. An exploratory analysis is carried out to assess the algorithm and the tool with a MOOC on programming, obtaining a moderate positive correlation between the forum grades provided by the algorithm and the grades obtained through the summative assessment activities. Nevertheless, the complementary analysis conducted indicates that this correlation may not be enough to use the forum grades as predictors of the grades obtained through summative assessment activities. View Full-Text

2020

Analyzing learners’ engagement and behavior in MOOCs on programming with the Codeboard IDE

Jesús Manuel Gallego-Romero, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can be enhanced with the so-called learning-by-doing, designing the courses in a way that the learners are involved in a more active way in the learning process. Within the options for increasing learners’ interaction in MOOCs, it is possible to integrate (third-party) external tools as part of the instructional design of the courses. In MOOCs on computer sciences, there are, for example, web-based Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) which can be integrated and that allow learners to do programming tasks directly in their browsers without installing desktop software. This work focuses on analyzing the effect on learners’ engagement and behavior of integrating a third-party web-based IDE, Codeboard, in three MOOCs on Java programming with the purpose of promoting learning-by-doing (learning by coding in this case). In order to measure learners’ level of …

May 2020

Self-regulated learning in MOOCs: lessons learned from a literature review

M Elena Alonso-Mencía, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Jorge Maldonado-Mahauad, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Learners in massive open online courses (MOOCs) are required to be autonomous during their learning process, and thus they need to self-regulate their learning to achieve their goals. According to existing literature, self-regulated learning (SRL) research in MOOCs is still scarce. More studies which build on past works regarding SRL in MOOCs are required, as well as literature reviews that help to identify the main challenges and future research directions in relation to this area. In this paper, the authors present the results of a systematic literature review on SRL in MOOCs, covering all the related papers published until the end of 2017. The papers considered in this review include real experiences with at least a MOOC (other learning scenarios sometimes claimed as MOOCs, such as blended courses, or online courses with access restrictions, are out of the scope of this analysis). Most studies on SRL in MOOCs …

 

February 2020

Temporal analysis for dropout prediction using self-regulated learning strategies in self-paced MOOCs

Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Pedro J Munoz-Merino, Jorge Maldonado-Mahauad, Mar Perez-Sanagustin, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Delgado Kloos

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have usually high dropout rates. Many articles have proposed predictive models in order to early detect learners at risk to alleviate this issue. Nevertheless, existing models do not consider complex high-level variables, such as self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies, which can have an important effect on learners’ success. In addition, predictions are often carried out in instructor-paced MOOCs, where contents are released gradually, but not in self-paced MOOCs, where all materials are available from the beginning and users can enroll at any time. For self-paced MOOCs, existing predictive models are limited in the way they deal with the flexibility offered by the course start date, which is learner dependent. Therefore, they need to be adapted so as to predict with little information short after each learner starts engaging with the MOOC. To solve these issues, this paper …

2019

Taxonomy of MOOC-Based Hybrid Educational Models in Higher Education

Carlos Delgado Kloos; Carlos Alario Hoyos; Mar Pérez-Sanagustín; Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino

In the last decade MOOCs have been leading the modernization of Higher Education, going from traditional teaching and learning models to hybrid teaching and learning models. The opportunities afforded by MOOCs (and the technologies arising from MOOCs) are endless, and the new hybrid models defined so far are still in an early stage. A new taxonomy that allows organizing these hybrid models in three broad categories (sequential composition, parallel composition and interleaved composition) is proposed here with the aim to help teachers and institutions to identify models that suit their needs and apply them in their practices.

May 2019

Digital Education: At the MOOC Crossroads Where the Interests of Academia and Business Converge: 6th European MOOCs Stakeholders Summit, EMOOCs 2019, Naples, Italy, May 20–22 …

Mauro Calise, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Justin Reich, Jose A Ruiperez-Valiente, Martin Wirsing

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Massive Open Online Courses, EMOOCs 2019, held in Naples, Italy, in May 2019. The 15 full and 6 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have marked a milestone in the use of technology for education. The reach, potential, and possibilities of EMOOCs are immense. But they are not only restricted to global outreach: the same technology can be used to improve teaching on campus and training inside companies and institutions. The chapter’Goal Setting and Striving in MOOCs. A Peek inside the Black Box of Learner Behaviour’is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link. springer. com.

 

Chrome Plug-in to Support SRL in MOOCs

ME Alonso-Mencía, C Alario-Hoyos, CD Kloos
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained popularity over the last years, offering a learning environment with new opportunities and challenges. These courses attract a heterogeneous set of participants who, due to the impossibility of personal tutorship in MOOCs, are required to create their own learning path and manage one’s own learning to achieve their goals. In other words, they should be able to self-regulate their learning. Self-regulated learning (SRL) has been widely explored in settings such as face-to-face or blended learning environments. Nevertheless, research on SRL in MOOCs is still scarce, especially on supporting interventions. In this sense, this document presents MOOCnager, a Chrome plug-in to help learners improve their SRL skills. Specifically, this work focuses on 3 areas: goal setting, time management and selfevaluation. Each area is included in one of the 3 phases composing Zimmerman’s SRL Cyclical Model. In this way, the plug-in aims to support enrolees’ self-regulation throughout their complete learning process. Finally, MOOCnager was uploaded to the Chrome Web Store, in order to get a preliminary evaluation with real participants from 6 edX Java MOOCs designed by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M). Results were not conclusive as the use of the plug-in by the participants was very low. However, learners seem to prefer a seamless tool, integrated in the MOOC platform, which is able to assist them without any learner-tool interaction.

Do MOOCs Sustain the UNESCO’s Quality Education Goal?

E Tovar, B Tabuenca, A Alzaghoul, CD Kloos, J Sluss, Á López-Rey, E Ruiz, F García-Loro, E Sancristobal, M rodriguez Artacho, S Martín, M Castro, R Meier, N Piedra.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of UNESCO establishes goals and targets in areas of critical importance for humanity. Recently, members of the eMadrid network have organized the Conference Learning with MOOCs (LWMOOCS 2018), the leading worldwide global conference, inspired by this year’s theme “MOOCs for All – A Social and International Approach”. This paper analyzes the main outcomes of this conference organized around the “Quality Education”, the Sustainable Development Goal 4.

Redesigning a freshman engineering course to promoteactive learning by flipping the classroom through thereuse of MOOcs

Carlos Alario Hoyos, Iria Manuela Estévez Ayres, Carlos Delgado Kloos Árbol académico, Julio Villena Román, Pedro J. Muñoz Merino, Enrique Llorente Pérez

MOOCs have made it possiblenot only to provide quality open education for any learnerworldwide, but also to rethink theway on-campusteachingis delivered. Thematerials produced for a MOOC canbeconsumed byon-campusstudents beforearriving to the classroom, using class time to do activities that promote active learning, following this way a flippedclassroom strategy. This paper presents the experience of redesigning a first-year engineering course with a large number of students (over 400 each year), in which MOOCs are reused, and a flipped classroom strategy is implemented, dedicatingmost of traditional lecture time to do hands-on, interactive activities. The results show an increase in students’ motivation,both in the use of MOOC content outside the classroom, and in the realization of hands-on, interactive activities inside theclassroom. In relation to the teacher, having information on students’ previous work outside the classroom, and onstudents’ work in the hands-on, interactive activities carried out inside the classroom, allows understanding better thedifferences between groups, tailoring the explanations during class time, and providing proper reinforcement activities tobe done after class.
Leer más

Self-regulated learning in MOOCs: lessons learned from a literature review

M. Elena Alonso-Mencía, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Jorge Maldonado-Mahauad, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín & Carlos Delgado Kloos

Learners in massive open online courses (MOOCs) are required to be autonomous during their learning process, and thus they need to self-regulate their learning to achieve their goals. According to existing literature, self-regulated learning (SRL) research in MOOCs is still scarce. More studies which build on past works regarding SRL in MOOCs are required, as well as literature reviews that help to identify the main challenges and future research directions in relation to this area. In this paper, the authors present the results of a systematic literature review on SRL in MOOCs, covering all the related papers published until the end of 2017. The papers considered in this review include real experiences with at least a MOOC (other learning scenarios sometimes claimed as MOOCs, such as blended courses, or online courses with access restrictions, are out of the scope of this analysis). Most studies on SRL in MOOCs share some common features: they are generally exploratory, based on one single MOOC and tend not to specify in which SRL model they are grounded. The results reveal that high self-regulators engage in non-linear navigation and approach MOOCs as an informal learning opportunity. In general, they prefer setting specific goals based on knowledge development and control their learning through assignments.
Leer más
2018

A learning analytics methodology for understanding social interactions in MOOCs

Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro J Munoz-Merino, Iria Estevez-Ayres, Carlos Delgado Kloos

One of the characteristics of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) is that the overall number of social interactions tend to be higher than in traditional courses, hindering the analysis of social learning. Learners typically ask or answer questions using the forum. This makes messages a rich source of information, which can be used to infer learners behaviour and outcomes. It is not feasible for teachers to process all forum messages and automated tools and analysis are required. Although there are some tools for analysing learners interactions, there is a need for methodologies and integrated tools that help to interpret the learning process based on social interactions in the forum. This work presents the 3S (Social, Sentiments, Skills) learning analytics methodology for analysing forum interactions in MOOCs. This methodology considers a temporal analysis combining the social, sentiments and skill dimensions …
Leer más
Septiembre 2018

Addressing Societal Issues Through MOOCs in Southeast Asia

Armin Weinberger, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Poline Bala, Dennis Batangan, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer, John Carlo Navera, Josenh Palis, Alwin Melkie Sambul, Peter Sy, Tat-Chee Wan

This Paper explores the current use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a means of educational outreach among identified remote populations in Southeast Asia. Often excluded from traditional educational outreach, these groups are targeted through the COMPETEN-SEA Project, a Capacity Building in Higher Education project funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission and implemented in partnership with European and Southeast Asian universities. It is hoped that the Project will aid participating Southeast Asian countries address societal needs and attain national development goals.
Leer más
Septiembre 2018

Supporting a MOOC through a Conversational Agent. Design of a First Prototype

Cristina Catalán Aguirre, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino

This paper presents an initial design of a conversational agent for educational purposes built for Google Assistant and its first prototype. Recent studies suggest that people will get more and more attached to voice assistant because they can easily use technology without being forced to learn it. Speech recognition might facilitate a more efficient work environment without being overly rigid and overly domineering. Modern frameworks allow harnessing natural language understanding as well a machine learning tools, thereby making it easy to build conversational agents. In this paper, we present first design decisions and a prototype for building an agent for learning Java that complements a MOOC for programming with Java.
Leer más
Septiembre 2018

Predicting Learners’ Success in a Self-paced MOOC Through Sequence Patterns of Self-regulated Learning

Jorge Maldonado-Mahauad, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Delgado-Kloos

In the past years, predictive models in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have focused on forecasting learners’ success through their grades. The prediction of these grades is useful to identify problems that might lead to dropouts. However, most models in prior work predict categorical and continuous variables using low-level data. This paper contributes to extend current predictive models in the literature by considering coarse-grained variables related to Self-Regulated Learning (SRL). That is, using learners’ self-reported SRL strategies and MOOC activity sequence patterns as predictors. Lineal and logistic regression modelling were used as a first approach of prediction with data collected from N = 2,035 learners who took a self-paced MOOC in Coursera. We identified two groups of learners: (1) Comprehensive, who follow the course path designed by the teacher; and (2) Targeting, who seek …
Leer más
Julio 2018

Prediction in MOOCs: A review and future research directions

Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Delgado Kloos

This paper surveys the state of the art on prediction in MOOCs through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The main objectives are: (1) to identify the characteristics of the MOOCs used for prediction, (2) to describe the prediction outcomes, (3) to classify the prediction features, (4) to determine the techniques used to predict the variables, and (5) to identify the metrics used to evaluate the predictive models. Results show there is strong interest in predicting dropouts in MOOCs. A variety of predictive models are used, though regression and Support Vector Machines stand out. There is also wide variety in the choice of prediction features, but clickstream data about platform use stands out. Future research should focus on developing and applying predictive models that can be used in more heterogeneous contexts (in terms of platforms, thematic areas, and course durations), on predicting new outcomes and making …
Leer más
Abril 2018

How to make MOOCs better for specific target groups and developing countries?

Christian M Stracke, Rocael Hernández, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Mar Pérez Sanagustín, António Moreira Teixeira

Presentation at OE Global 2018, Delft, The Netherlands, by Stracke, C. M., et al. (2018, 24 April) on: «How to make MOOCs better for specific target groups and developing countries?»
Leer más
Abril 2018

Sentiment analysis in MOOCs: A case study

Pedro Manuel Moreno-Marcos, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Forum messages in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the most important source of information about the social interactions happening in these courses. Forum messages can be analyzed to detect patterns and learners’ behaviors. Particularly, sentiment analysis (e.g., classification in positive and negative messages) can be used as a first step for identifying complex emotions, such as excitement, frustration or boredom. The aim of this work is to compare different machine learning algorithms for sentiment analysis, using a real case study to check how the results can provide information about learners’ emotions or patterns in the MOOC. Both supervised and unsupervised (lexicon-based) algorithms were used for the sentiment analysis. The best approaches found were Random Forest and one lexicon based method, which used dictionaries of words. The analysis of the case study also showed an …
Leer más
Enero 2018

A Study of Learning-by-Doing in MOOCs through the Integration of Third-Party External Tools: Comparison of Synchronous and Asynchronous Running Modes

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Jesús M Gallego-Romero, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carmen Fernández-Panadero, Raquel M Crespo-García, Florina Almenares, María Blanca Ibáñez, Julio Villena-Román, Jorge Ruiz-Magaña, Jorge Blasco

Many MOOCs are being designed replicating traditional passive teaching approaches but using video lectures as the means of transmitting information. However, it is well known that learning-by-doing increases retention rates and, thus, allows achieving a more effective learning. To this end, it is worth exploring which tools fit best in the context of each MOOC to enrich learners’ experience, including built-in tools already available in the MOOC platform, and third-party external tools which can be integrated in the MOOC platform. This paper presents an example of the integration of a software development tool, called Codeboard, in three MOOCs which serve as an introduction to programming with Java. We analyze the effect this tool has on learners’ interaction and engagement when running the MOOCs in synchronous (instructor-paced) or asynchronous (self-paced) modes. Results show that the overall use of the …
Leer más

2017

Scaling to Massiveness With ANALYSE: A Learning Analytics Tool for Open edX

José A Ruipérez-Valiente, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, José A Gascón-Pinedo, C Delgado Kloos

The emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has caused a major impact on online education. However, learning analytics support for MOOCs still needs to improve to fulfill requirements of instructors and students. In addition, MOOCs pose challenges for learning analytics tools due to the number of learners, such as scalability in terms of computing time and visualizations. In this work, we present different visualizations of our “Add-on of the learNing AnaLYtics Support for open Edx” (ANALYSE), which is a learning analytics tool that we have designed and implemented for Open edX, based on MOOC features, teacher feedback, and pedagogical foundations. In addition, we provide a technical solution that addresses scalability at two levels: first, in terms of performance scalability, where we propose an architecture for handling massive amounts of data within educational settings; and, second, regarding.
Leer más
Septiembre 2017

From MOOCs to SPOCs… and from SPOCs to Flipped Classroom

Alario-Hoyos, C., Estévez-Ayres, I., Delgado Kloos, C., Villena-Román, J.

The concept of SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses) emerged as a way of describing the reuse of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) for complementing traditional on-campus teaching. But SPOCs can also drive an entire methodological change to make a better use of face-to-face time between students and teachers in the classroom. This paper presents the redesign and evaluation of a first-year programming course in several engineering degrees, with over 400 students overall, through the reuse of MOOCs as SPOCs on campus, combined with a flipped classroom strategy aimed at promoting active learning. Results from a students’ self-reported questionnaire show a very positive acceptance of the SPOC, which includes both videos and complementary formative activities, and an increase of motivation through the combination of the SPOC and activities implemented in lectures to flip the classroom.

Leer más
Mayo 2017

Actas de la Jornada de MOOCs en Español en EMOOCs 2017 (EMOOCs-ES 2017)

Delgado Kloos, C., Alario-Hoyos, C., Hernández Rizzardini, R.

Book.

Leer más
Mayo 2017

MyMOOCSpace: A cloud-based mobile system to support effective collaboration in higher education online courses

Ramírez-Donoso, L., Rojas-Riethmuller, J.S., Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Neyem, A., Alario-Hoyos, C.

In recent years, institutions of higher education have been using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as an alternative to enhance and innovate traditional classroom practices. One of the approaches to this type of innovation consists of using the platforms where MOOCs are hosted for the development of courses that are aligned to their on-campus curricular contents. They are known as Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs), which allow online access to knowledge for groups of students with a well-defined profile. The platforms where MOOCs (and SPOCs) are hosted have been designed to support large volumes of data and visits. However, these platforms present important limitations regarding the implementation of collaborative learning activities. To address this problem, this article presents MyMOOCSpace, a cloud-based mobile system aimed at supporting effective collaboration in MOOCs, by combining key aspects of collaboration from the research area of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) with game-based dynamics. MyMOOCSpace has been tested in three quasi-experiments that were run in four Latin-American universities with a total of 68 participants. The objective was to assess its usability and its effect in enhancing collaboration among students in a SPOC. The results obtained on usability show that MyMOOCSpace is easy to use, and that participants felt pleased with while using it. Finally, it was observed that MyMOOCSpace managed to enhance interaction and collaboration among students.
Leer más
Mayo 2017

Understanding Learners’ Motivation and Learning Strategies in MOOCs

Alario-Hoyos, C., Estévez-Ayres, I., Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Delgado Kloos, C., Fernández-Panadero, C.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have changed the way in which OER (Open Educational Resources) are bundled by teachers and consumed by learners. MOOCs represent an evolution towards the production and offering of structured quality OER. Many institutions that were initially reluctant to providing OER have, however, joined the MOOC wave. Nevertheless, MOOCs detractors strongly criticize their high dropout rates. The dropout rate is a commonly accepted metric of success for traditional education, but it may not be as suitable when dealing with OER, in general, and with MOOCs, in particular, since learners’ motivations to take a course are very diverse, and certain self-regulated learning strategies are required to tackle the lack of personalized tutoring and keep pace in the course. This paper presents an empirical study on the motivation and learning strategies of MOOC learners. Six thousand three hundred and thirty-five learners from 160 countries answered a self-report 7-point Likert-type questionnaire based on the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) as part of a MOOC titled Introduction to Programming with Java . Results indicate that learners were highly motivated and confident to do well in the course. Learning strategies, however, can be improved, especially regarding time management.
Leer más
Mayo 2017

Early Prediction and Variable Importance of Certificate Accomplishment in a MOOC

Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A., Cobos, R., Muñoz-Merino, P. J., Andujar, Á., & Kloos, C. D.

The emergence of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) makes available big amounts of data about students’ interaction with online educational platforms. This allows for the possibility of making predictions about future learning outcomes of students based on these interactions. The prediction of certificate accomplishment can enable the early detection of students at risk, in order to perform interventions before it is too late. This study applies different machine learning techniques to predict which students are going to get a certificate during different timeframes. The purpose is to be able to analyze how the quality metrics change when the models have more data available. From the four machine learning techniques applied finally we choose a boosted trees model which provides stability in the prediction over the weeks with good quality metrics. We determine the variables that are most important for the prediction and how they change during the weeks of the course.

Leer más
Mayo 2017

Copying@Scale: Using Harvesting Accounts for Collecting Correct Answers in a MOOC

Alexandron, G., Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A., Chen, Z., Muñoz-Merino, P. J., & Pritchard, D. E.

This paper presents a detailed study of a form of academic dishonesty that involves the use of multiple accounts for harvesting solutions in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). It is termed CAMEO – Copying Answers using Multiple Existence Online. A person using CAMEO sets up one or more harvesting accounts for collecting correct answers; these are then submitted in the user’s master account for credit.
The study has three main goals: Determining the prevalence of CAMEO, studying its detailed characteristics, and inferring the motivation(s) for using it. For the physics course that we studied, about 10% of the certificate earners used this method to obtain more than 1% of their correct answers, and more than 3% of the certificate earners used it to obtain the majority (>50%) of their correct answers. We discuss two of the likely consequences of CAMEO: jeopardizing the value of MOOC certificates as academic credentials, and generating misleading conclusions in educational research. Based on our study, we suggest methods for reducing CAMEO. Although this study was conducted on a MOOC, CAMEO can be used in any learning environment that enables students to have multiple accounts.

Leer más
Abril 2017

Boosting interaction with educational technology

Delgado Kloos, C., Alario-Hoyos, C., Estévez-Ayres, I., Muñoz-Merino, P.J., Ibáñez-Espiga, M.B., Crespo-García, R.M.

The MOOC movement has helped faculty in focusing on how to lecture. However, once this is done, it would not make sense not to use this content for on-campus classes. In this paper, we will explain how to harness top content created for MOOCs to improve on-campus classes, where the personal interaction is a key added feature. Interactive practices and on-site interaction, especially in-class interaction, are of particular relevance in the evolution of Higher Education towards a more effective learning.

Leer más
Abril 2017

H-MOOC framework: reusing MOOCs for hybrid education

Pérez Sanagustín, M., Hilliger, I., Alario-Hoyos, C., Delgado Kloos, C., Rayyan, S.

Since Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) started to become part of the scene of Higher Education (HE), many institutions have joined the race of MOOC creation. However, producing MOOCs has shown to be a cumbersome and expensive activity for HE institutions. For this reason, many universities have started to explore and experiment with hybrid initiatives in which locally produced and third-party MOOCs are reused and integrated into traditional courses. Most of the hybrid initiatives described in the literature so far focus on flipped classroom experiences, although there are some other possibilities for integrating MOOCs in the curriculum. Moreover, few studies have reported on the institutional support required for implementing hybrid initiatives, and their benefits from a curriculum perspective. In order to shed some light on the opportunities that arise from the reuse of MOOCs, this paper presents H-MOOC, a framework that describes hybrid MOOC-based initiatives as a continuum of two factors: (1) institutional support to reuse an existing MOOC, and (2) curricular content alignment between the MOOC and the program, or the course hybridized. In addition, H-MOOC proposes indicators to measure the impact of these initiatives at both educational and institutional levels. Examples of actual hybrid initiatives and a set of guiding questions are presented to show how to apply the H-MOOC framework in different contexts. 

Leer más
Febrero 2017

Design, Implementation and Evaluation of SPOCs at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Muñoz-Merino, P. J., Rodríguez, E. M., Kloos, C. D., & Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A.

The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid has been offering several face-to-face remedial courses for new students to review or learn concepts and practical skills that they should know before starting their degree program. During 2012 and 2013, our University adopted MOOC-like technologies to support some of these courses so that a blended learning methodology could be applied in a particular educational context, i.e. by using SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses). This paper gathers a list of issues, challenges and solutions when implementing these SPOCs. Based on these challenges and issues, a design process is proposed for the implementation of SPOCs. In addition, an evaluation is presented of the different use of the offered courses based on indicators such as the number of videos accessed, number of exercises accessed, number of videos completed, number of exercises correctly solved or time spent on the platform.

Leer más
2016

MOOC-Maker: Construcción de Capacidades de Gestión de MOOCs en Educación Superior de Latinoamérica

Velo-Beascoechea, J., Alario-Hoyos, C., Estévez-Ayres, I., Delgado Kloos, C.

Los MOOCs suponen una revolución en el acceso a la educación superior y tienen un gran potencial para mejorar la empleabilidad de profesionales de distintos sectores. Sin embargo, mientras que el movimiento MOOC ha tenido un gran impacto en Estados Unidos y Europa, en Latinoamérica hay pocas universidades que hayan desarrollado sus propios MOOCs, a pesar del gran impacto potencial de éstos, debido a la extensa comunidad hispanohablante en la región. El proyecto MOOC-Maker busca transferir la experiencia ganada en Europa en los últimos años en el ámbito de los MOOCs a Latinoamérica a través de la construcción de capacidades de gestión de MOOCs (incluyendo formación de personal y creación de infraestructuras y unidades en las universidades locales) en Guatemala, Colombia y Chile, y mediante la creación de una red intercontinental de colaboración en el ámbito de los MOOCs que se extienda a lo largo de Latinoamérica.
Leer más
Diciembre 2016

Analizando el Papel de las Redes Sociales en un MOOC de Introducción a la Programación en Java

Velo-Beascoechea, J., Alario-Hoyos, C., Estévez-Ayres, I., Delgado Kloos, C.

Las Redes Sociales juegan un papel fundamental en los MOOCs, dado que permiten construir una comunidad de estudiantes con intereses comunes que intercambian comentarios, plantean cuestiones o realizan aportaciones al curso. Para el profesor de un MOOC es importante entender cómo gestionar correctamente las Redes Sociales, dada la incapacidad de procesar los miles de mensajes que se generan en el curso. En este artículo se analizan las Redes Sociales de un MOOC concreto sobre Introducción a la Programación con Java en el que hubo más de ochenta mil alumnos matriculados y en el que se recibieron más de trece mil comentarios, relacionando además el número de comentarios recibidos con las calificaciones finales obtenidas por los estudiantes. Los resultados del análisis establecen que existe una relación entre el número de comentarios y los alumnos aprobados, siendo mayor el porcentaje de aprobados entre los alumnos que más comentarios realizan en el MOOC.

Leer más
Diciembre 2016

Scaling to Massiveness With ANALYSE: A Learning Analytics Tool for Open edX

Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A., Muñoz-Merino, P. J., Gascón-Pinedo, J. A., & Kloos, C. D.

The emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has caused a major impact on online education. However, learning analytics support for MOOCs still needs to improve to fulfill requirements of instructors and students. In addition, MOOCs pose challenges for learning analytics tools due to the number of learners, such as scalability in terms of computing time and visualizations. In this work, we present different visualizations of our “Add-on of the learNing AnaLYtics Support for open Edx” (ANALYSE), which is a learning analytics tool that we have designed and implemented for Open edX, based on MOOC features, teacher feedback, and pedagogical foundations. In addition, we provide a technical solution that addresses scalability at two levels: first, in terms of performance scalability, where we propose an architecture for handling massive amounts of data within educational settings; and, second, regarding the representation of visualizations under massiveness conditions, as well as advice on color usage and plot types. Finally, we provide some examples on how to use these visualizations to evaluate student performance and detect problems in resources.

Leer más
Noviembre 2016

Flipping the Classroom to Improve Learning with MOOCs Technology

Muñoz‐Merino, P. J., Ruipérez‐Valiente, J. A., Delgado Kloos, C., Auger, M. A., Briz, S., de Castro, V., & Santalla, S. N.

The use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is increasing worldwide and brings a revolution in education. The application of MOOCs has technological but also pedagogical implications. MOOCs are usually driven by short video lessons, automatic correction exercises, and the technological platforms can implement gamification or learning analytics techniques. However, much more analysis is required about the success or failure of these initiatives in order to know if this new MOOCs paradigm is appropriate for different learning situations. This work aims at analyzing and reporting whether the introduction of MOOCs technology was good or not in a case study with the Khan Academy platform at our university with students in a remedial Physics course in engineering education. Results show that students improved their grades significantly when using MOOCs technology, student satisfaction was high regarding the experience and for most of the different provided features, and there were good levels of interaction with the platform (e.g., number of completed videos or proficient exercises), and also the activity distribution for the different topics and types of activities was appropriate.

Leer más
Noviembre 2016

Evaluation of a learning analytics application for open edX platform

Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A., Muñoz-Merino, P. J., Pijeira Díaz, H. J., Santofimia Ruiz, J., & Delgado Kloos, C

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have recently emerged as a revolution in education. Due to the huge amount of users, it is difficult for teachers to provide personalized instruction. Learning analytics computer applications have emerged as a solution. At present, MOOC platforms provide low support for learning analytics visualizations, and a challenge is to provide useful and effective visualization applications about the learning process. At this paper we review the learning analytics functionality of Open edX and make an overview of our learning analytics application ANALYSE. We present a usability and effectiveness evaluation of ANALYSE tool with 40 students taking a Design of Telematics Applications course. The survey obtained very positive results in a system usability scale (SUS) questionnaire (78.44/100) in terms of the usefulness of visualizations (3.68/5) and the effectiveness ratio (92/100) of the actions required for the respondents. Therefore, we can conclude that the implemented learning analytics application is usable and effective.

Leer más
Septiembre 2016

eMadrid project: MOOCs and learning analytics

Delgado Kloos, C., Alario-Hoyos, C., Fernández-Panadero, M.C., Estévez-Ayres, I., Muñoz-Merino, P.J., Tovar, E., Cabedo, R., Cobos, R., Moreno, J., Piedra, N., Chicaiza, J., López, J.

Both, MOOCs and learning analytics, are two emergent topics in the field of educational technology. This paper shows the main contributions of the eMadrid network in these two topics during the last years (2014-2016), as well as the planned future works in the network. The contributions in the field of the MOOCs include the design and authoring of materials, the improvement of the peer review process or experiences about teaching these courses and institutional adoption. The contributions in the field of learning analytics include the inference of higher level information, the development of dashboards, the evaluation of the learning process, or the prediction and clustering.

Leer más
Junio 2016

Who are the top contributors in a MOOC? Relating participants’ performance and contributions

Alario-Hoyos, C., Muñoz-Merino, P.J., Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Delgado Kloos, C., Parada G., H.A.

The role of social tools in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) is essential as they connect the participants. Of all the participants in a MOOC, top contributors are the ones who more actively contribute via social tools, sometimes with posts to the emergent discussions, sometimes answering their peers’ questions and concerns and sometimes even adding complementary sources of information to the course. This paper collects, analyzes, and reports empirical data from five different social tools pertaining to an actual MOOC to characterize top contributors and provide some insights aimed at facilitating their early detection. The results of this analysis show that top contributors have better final scores than the rest. In addition, there is a moderate positive correlation between participants’ overall performance (measured in terms of final scores) and the number of posts submitted to the five social tools. This paper also studies the effect of participants’ gender and scores as factors that can be used for the early detection of top contributors. The analysis shows that gender is not a good predictor, and that taking the scores of the first assessment activities of each type (test and peer assessment in the case study) results in a prediction that is not substantially improved by adding subsequent activities. Finally, better predictions based on scores are obtained for aggregate contributions in the five social tools than for individual contributions in each social tool.
Leer más
Mayo 2016

From the Classroom to a Massive Audience: A Successful Experience Introducing Programming with Java

Alario-Hoyos, C., Delgado Kloos, C., Estévez-Ayres, I., Fernández-Panadero, C., Villena-Román, J.

MOOCs represent a great opportunity to spread knowledge that has been traditionally restricted to small groups of students to potentially any learner from anywhere in the world. Thus, the expertise gained over years of practice by teachers on certain topics is now made available to a wider audience. This expertise, captured in the form of good practices and common misconceptions, is very valuable to create quality MOOCs that are rich in contents and exercises. This paper describes the design and development of the MOOC » Introduction to Programming with Java Part 1: Starting to Code with Java » , which is focused on teaching programming using Java as the driving language. This MOOC is offered on the edX platform, and has turned out to be a successful experience with more than 130,000 enrollees so far in its two runs (the second still ongoing). It was designed and developed to be highly interactive, making extensive use of exercises created with edX built-in tools, but also with other external tools, such as Blockly, Codeboard, and Greenfoot; numerous ad hoc animations and simulations are also included as part of the courseware. This MOOC has received good critiques from learners, achieving a score of 4.5 stars out of 5 (70 reviews) in the course reviewer CourseTalk, which puts this course in the top 10% of the courses published in edX, and in the top 10 of the courses published by European universities in edX, according to this review tool (as of March 2016).

Leer más
Mayo 2016

Trends in Digital Education: Selected papers from EC-TEL 2015 Workshops CHANGEE, WAPLA, and HybridEd

Delgado Kloos, C., Muñoz-Merino, P.J., Crespo-Garcí­a, R.M., Alario-Hoyos, C.

Along the last years, we are witnessing disruptive changes in the learning and teaching field. Three workshops were organized in conjunction with the EC-TEL 2015 conference with the common objective of addressing the challenges of the emerging educational environments, but focusing on complementary aspects of the problem. They were all held on 18 September 2015 in Toledo, Spain. This book contains some selected papers from these three workshops:

HybridEd Workshop: MOOC-based Models for Hybrid Pedagogies (https://educate.uc3m.es/hybrided-2019/)

CHANGEE 2015 Workshop: Facing the Challenges of Assessing 21st Century Skills in the Newly Emerging Educational Ecosystems (https://educate.uc3m.es/hybrided-2015/)

WAPLA@EC-TEL: Workshop on Applied and Practical Learning Analytics (https://educate.uc3m.es/wapla/)

Leer más
Abril 2016

From software engineering to courseware engineering

Delgado Kloos, C., Ibáñez-Espiga, M.B., Alario-Hoyos, C., Muñoz-Merino, P.J., Estévez-Ayres, I., Fernández-Panadero, C., Villena-Román, J.

The appearance of MOOCs has contributed to the use of educational technology in new contexts. As a consequence, many teachers face the challenge of creating educational content (courseware) to be offered in MOOCs. Although some best practices exist, it is true that most of the content is being developed without much thought about adequacy, reusability, maintainability, composability, etc. The main thesis at this paper is that we are facing a «courseware crisis» in the same way as there was a «software crisis» 50 years ago, and that the way out is to identify good engineering discipline to aid in the development of courseware. We need Courseware Engineering in the same way as at those times we needed Software Engineering. Therefore, the challenge is now to define and develop fundamentals, tools, and methods of Courseware Engineering, as an analogy to the fundamentals, tools, and methods that were developed in Software Engineering.
Leer más
Febrero 2016

Interactive activities: the key to learning programming with MOOCs

Alario-Hoyos, C., Delgado Kloos, C., Estévez-Ayres, I., Fernández-Panadero, C., Blasco, J., Pastrana, S., Suárez-Tangil, G., Villena-Román, J.

This paper presents the experience of the MOOC “Introduction to Programming
with Java – Part 1: Starting to Programming in Java”. This five-week MOOC was deployed in edX and ran from April to June 2015. More than 70,000 learners registered for this course, which had no prerequisites on programming skills. This MOOC was carefully designed to enhance learners interactivity with the learning contents through numerous formative activities supported by both edX built-in tools and other external tools aimed at helping to learn programming gradually, such as Blockly, Codeboard and Greenfoot. The results show the usefulness of including a large number of formative activities for checking the learning process and a very positive feedback of the selection of tools included in this course.

Leer más
Febrero 2016

Describing MOOC-based Hybrid initiatives: The H-MOOC Framework

Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Hilliger, I., Alario-Hoyos, C., Delgado Kloos, C., Rayyan, S.

Several studies have described different hybrid initiatives to integrate MOOCs into traditional higher education. Most of these studies have partially documented students’ perception on hybrid initiatives, measuring course satisfaction among other metrics. Few researchers have reported institutional efforts implied in implementing hybrid initiatives and their benefits from a curriculum perspective. This paper presents H-MOOC, a framework that describes hybrid MOOC-based initiatives as a continuum of two factors: (1) institutional effort, and (2) curriculum alignment. H-MOOC facilitates the comparison of different hybrid MOOC-based initiatives by suggesting Key Performance Indicators to measure their impact at an institutional level. Different hybrid initiatives in the literature are analyzed to illustrate how H-MOOC works. An actual case study on a course on Calculus is presented as empirical evidence of its use.

Leer más
Enero 2016

Analyzing the Impact of Using Optional Activities in Self-Regulated Learning

Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A., Muñoz-Merino, P. J., Kloos, C. D., Niemann, K., Scheffel, M., & Wolpers, M

Presentación del Profesor Carlos Delgado Kloos en la Jornada de Educación Abierta celebrada el 11 de marzo de 2013 en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid en el marco de la Open Education Week promovida por el Consorcio OpenCourseWare.

Leer más
2015

2015

Noviembre 2015

Using Video Visualizations in Open edX to Understand Learning Interactions of Students

Héctor J. Pijeira Díaz, Javier Santofimia Ruiz, José A. Ruipérez-Valiente , Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Delgado Kloos

The emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has caused a high disrupting effect on online education. One of the most extended MOOC platforms is Open edX. There is a demanding necessity by the instructors and students of these courses to provide timely analytics tools that can help understand the learning process at any moment. In this direction we have developed the Add-on of learNing AnaLYtics Support for open Edx (ANALYSE), which is our learning analytics contribution for Open edX. In this demonstration paper we will provide guidelines on how to use some of the ANALYSE video visualizations in order to detect problems in video resources, so that the learning process can be improved.

Leer más
Octubre 2015

Diseñando un MOOC en edX: Introducción a la programación con Java – Parte 1

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Carmen Fernández-Panadero, Jorge Blasco, Sergio Pastrana, Guillermo Suárez-Tangil, Julio Villena-Román

Los MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses – Cursos Online Masivos Abiertos) han supuesto una revolución en la educación. Diseñar y poner en marcha un MOOC es una tarea compleja y además dependiente fuertemente del tipo de curso y de la plataforma donde éste se vaya a desplegar. Este artículo presenta el diseño del MOOC “Introducción a la Programación con Java – Parte 1: Empezando a Programar en Java” desplegado en la plataforma edX y puesto en marcha a finales de abril de 2015. Este curso de cinco semanas introduce los principios básicos de la programación utilizando como herramienta el lenguaje Java. El MOOC ha surgido de la colaboración entre los departamentos de Ingeniería Telemática e Informática de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Leer más
Julio 2015

Tips and Techniques for MOOC Production

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos

MOOCs represent a new medium for education. In this paper, we describe some of the best practices identified after having produc- ed and run a MOOC in 2013 for the first run of MiríadaX, having set up a service unit at Univ. Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) for the production of MOOCs (mainly for edX) and SPOCs for internal use, and continuing to be active in MOOCs and MOOC-related production at both sides of the Atlantic (in Spain and Chile).

Leer más
Junio 2015

A Predictive Model of Learning Gains for a Video and Exercise Intensive Learning Environment

José A. Ruipérez-Valiente, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Delgado Kloos

This work approaches the prediction of learning gains in an environment with intensive use of exercises and videos, specifically using the Khan Academy platform. We propose a linear regression model which can explain 57.4% of the learning gains variability, with the use of four variables obtained from the low level data generated by the students. We found that two of these variables are related to exercises (the proficient exercises and the average number of attempts in exercises), and one is related to both videos and exercises (the total time spent in both) related to exercises, whereas only one is related to videos.

Leer más
Mayo 2015

MyLearningMentor: A Mobile App to Support Learners Participating in MOOCs

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Iria Estévez-Ayres Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Derick Leony, Carlos Delgado Kloos

MOOCs have brought a revolution to educa tion. However, their impact is mainly benefiting people with Higher Education degrees. The lack of support and personalized advice in MOOCs is causing that many of the learners that have not developed work habits and self-learning skills give them up at the first obstacle, and do not see MOOCs as an alternative for their education and training. MyLearningMentor (MLM) is a mobile application that addresses the lack of support and personalized advice for learners in MOOCs. This paper presents the architecture of MLM and practical examples of use.

Leer más
Mayo 2015

Massive Open Online Courses: Combining Methodologies and Architecture for a Success Learning

Rafael Hernández RIzzardini, Francisco J. García-Peñalvo, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Internet worldwide adoption has influenced several trends in human behavior, and social phenomena represented through the ever-increasing popularity of social networks have created new conversational arenas. New media-sharing technologies have allowed users to consume information from countless sources, including media that have been remixed and co-created by a crowd. Teachers’ roles are evolving toward amplifying, curating, aggregating, filtering, modeling, knowledge sensemaking, and so on in a course. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as an educational disruptive innovation.

Leer más
Mayo 2015

Detection and Evaluation of Emotions in Massive Open Online Courses

Derick Leony, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, José A. Ruipérez Valiente, Abelardo Pardo, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have grown up to the point of becoming a new learning scenario for the support of large amounts of students. Among current research efforts related to MOOCs, some are studying the application of well-known characteristics and technologies. An example of these characteristics is adaptation, in order to personalize the MOOC experience to the learner’s skills, objectives and profile. Several educational adaptive systems have emphasized the advantages of including affective information in the learner profile.

Leer más
Abril 2015

Mobile and Accessible Learning for MOOCs

Mike Sharples, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Yannis Dimitriadis, Serge Garlatti, Marcus Specht

Many modern web-based systems provide a ‘responsive’ design that allows material and services to be accessed on mobile and desktop devices, with the aim of providing ubiquitous access. Besides offering access to learning materials such as podcasts and videos across multiple locations, mobile, wearable and ubiquitous technologies have some additional affordances that may enable new forms of learning on MOOCs.

Leer más
Marzo 2015

Mixing and blending MOOC Technologies with face-to-face pedagogies

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Iria Estévez Ayres, Carmen Fernández-Panadero

The emergence of MOOCs has boosted the use of educational technology in all possible contexts. How can MOOC affordances, such as rich multimedia content, interactive exercises, and social networks, be harnessed in face-to-face education? In this paper, we present some experiences carried out at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid that combine MOOC-like content in on-campus courses. We believe that this is the most promising and useful way to use the affordances of technology in education.

Leer más
Febrero 2015

Extending Google Course Builder With Real-World Projects in a Master’s Course

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Mario Muñoz-Organero

The contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, we present an experience of a Masters’ level course based on real-world projects with interaction with real developers from industry. This reality check created a special motivation for students as well as provided a useful experience for their future work. On the other hand, we describe the technical details of the three projects carried out by the students. These were extensions to Google’s massive open online course platform Course Builder. They were about an improvement in the management of quizzes, an extension with learning analytics tools, and an integration with Mozilla open badges.

Leer más
Enero 2015

Assessment Activities in MOOCs

Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, José A. Ruipérez-Valiente, Juan Luis Sanz Moreno, Carlos Delgado Kloos

This chapter analyzes the different implications of the new MOOC paradigm in assessment activities, emphasizing the differences with respect to other non MOOC educational technology environments and giving an insight about the redesign of assessment activities for MOOCs. The chapter also compares the different assessment activities that are available in some of the most used MOOC platforms at present. In addition, the process of design of MOOC assessment activities is analyzed. Specific examples are given about how to design and create different types of assessment activities. The Genghis authoring tool as a solution for the creation of some types of exercises in the Khan Academy platform is presented. Finally, there is an analysis of the learning analytics features related to assessment activities that are present in MOOCs. Moreover, some guidelines are provided about how to interpret and take advantage of this information.

Leer más
Enero 2015

Extending Google Course Builder With Real-World Projects in a Master’s Course

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Pedro J. Munoz-Merino, Mario Munoz-Organero

The contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, we present an experience of a Masters’ level course based on real-world projects with interaction with real developers from industry. This reality check created a special motivation for students as well as provided a useful experience for their future work. On the other hand, we describe the technical details of the three projects carried out by the students. These were extensions to Google’s massive open online course platform Course Builder. They were about an improvement in the management of quizzes, an extension with learning analytics tools, and an integration with Mozilla open badges.

Leer más
2014

2014

Noviembre 2014

Precise Effectiveness Strategy for analyzing the effectiveness of students with educational resources and activities in MOOCs

Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, José A. Ruipérez-Valiente, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Present MOOC and SPOC platforms do not provide teachers with precise metrics that represent the effectiveness of students with educational resources and activities. This work proposes and illustrates the application of the Precise Effectiveness Strategy (PES). PES is a generic methodology for defining precise metrics that enable calculation of the effectiveness of students when interacting with educational resources and activities in MOOCs and SPOCs, taking into account the particular aspects of the learning context. PES has been applied in a case study, calculating the effectiveness of students when watching video lectures and solving parametric exercises in four SPOCs deployed in the Khan Academy platform.

Leer más
Octubre 2014

A multidimensional analysis of trends in educational technology

Carlos Delgado Kloos, M. Blanca Ibáñez-Espiga, Carmen Fenández-Panadero, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Raquel M. Crespo-García, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín

This paper summarizes some of the work that has been carried out within the eMadrid research network in the last four years in the area of educational technology at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. In order to organize the findings and identify future trends and possibilities, a framework space is used with three dimensions: physical-digital, local-global, and formal-informal. Research results are presented along the three dimensions and possible future developments are suggested in this framework.

Leer más
Octubre 2014

Towards the development of a learning analytics extension in open edX

Javier Santofimia Ruiz, Héctor J Pijeira Díaz, José A Ruipérez-Valiente, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Delgado Kloos

The emergence of platforms to support MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) strengthens the need of a powerful learning analytics support since teachers cannot be aware of so many students. However, the learning analytics support in MOOC platforms is in an early stage nowadays. The edX platform, one of the most important MOOC platforms, has few learning analytics functionalities at present. In this paper, we analyze the learning analytics support given by the edX platform, and the main initiatives to implement learning analytics in edX. We also present our initial steps to implement a learning analytics extension in edX. We review technical aspects, difficulties, solutions, the architecture and the different elements involved. Finally, we present some new visualizations in the edX platform for teachers and students to help them understand the learning process.

Leer más
Octubre 2014

Recommendations for the design and deployment of MOOCs: insights about the MOOC digital education of the future deployed in MiríadaX

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado-Kloos, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino

This paper reports the insights of the experience of designing and deploying the MOOC Digital Education of the Future, which was deployed in the platform MiríadaX in early 2013. This MOOC was delivered by several professors from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and was supported by several external social tools that promoted the creation of a community of learners as part of it. The contribution of this study is a list of insights and recommendations about both the design and deployment of MOOCs.

Leer más
Septiembre 2014

Are We All on the Same Boat? Coordinating Stakeholders for the Design of MOOCs

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado-Kloos

One of the gaps that arises from the recent emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is the lack of methodologies, tools and models for supporting the instructional design of these complex courses, which typically involve several stakeholders (e.g., teachers, audio visual technicians, institutional staff…). One of the few approaches addressing this gap so far is the MOOC Canvas, a framework for supporting the description and design of MOOCs. This paper presents a first approach towards a methodology that applies the MOOC Canvas as an instrument for coordinating the needs and interests of the different stakeholders involved in the preparation and enactment of MOOCs.

Leer más
Septiembre 2014

Do Optional Activities Matter in Virtual Learning Environments?

José A Ruipérez-Valiente, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Katja Niemann, Maren Scheffel

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) provide studentts with activities to improve their learning (e.g., reading texts, watching videos or solving exercises). But VLEs usually also provide optional activities (e.g., changing an avatar profile or setting goals). Some of these have a connection with the learning process, but are not directly devoted to learning concepts (e.g., setting goals). Few works have dealt with the use of optional activities and the relationships between these activities and other metrics in VLEs. This paper analyzes the use of optional activities at different levels in a specific case study with 291 students from three courses (physics, chemistry and mathematics) using the Khan Academy platform. The level of use of the different types of optional activities is analyzed and compared to that of learning activities. In addition, the relationship between the usage of optional activities and different student behaviors and learning metrics is presented.

Leer más
Julio 2014

ALAS-KA: Learning Analytics Extension for Better Understanding the Learning Process in the Khan Academy Platform

José A Ruipérez-Valiente, Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Derick Leony, Carlos Delgado Kloos

The Khan Academy platform enables powerful on-line courses in which students can watch videos, solve exercises, or earn badges. This platform provides an advanced learning analytics module with useful visualizations. Nevertheless, it can be improved. In this paper, we describe ALAS-KA, which provides an extension of the learning analytics support for the Khan Academy platform. We herein present an overview of the architecture of ALAS-KA. In addition, we report the different types of visualizations and information provided by ALAS-KA, which have not been available previously in the Khan Academy platform.

Leer más
Junio 2014

Learning analytics for the precise evaluation of student effectiveness with educational resources and activities

Pedro J Muñoz-Merino, Jose A Ruiperez-Valiente, Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado-Kloos

In current online courses, most learning analytics techniques collect, analyze and display low-level data about the interactions of students with educational activities and resources. These data are used to detect students with difficulties in the course, as well as educational activities and resources which might be problematic. This paper presents the Precise Effectiveness Strategy (PES) which enables to calculate the effectiveness of students with educational activities and resources in online courses from low-level events in a quantitative way, taking into account different aspects of the learning context.

Leer más
Mayo 2014

Adaptive planner for facilitating the management of tasks in MOOCs, Proceedings of the V Congreso Internacional sobre Calidad y Accesibilidad de la Formación Virtual

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Derick Leony, Iria Estévez-Ayres, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Israel Gutiérrez-Rojas, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide open access to a wide variety of learning contents in many different knowledge areas, so that eventually anyone in the world can join these courses and learn, no matter the level of education. However, the majority of participants that currently take advantage of MOOCs already have Higher Education qualifications. Therefore, there is an open challenge in promoting the embracement of MOOCs by those who have not achieved a college degree, in a society that demands more and more up-todate competences.

Leer más
Abril 2014

Delving into participants’ profiles and use of social tools in MOOCs

Carlos Alario Hoyos, Mar Pérez Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Hugo A. Parada Gálvez, Mario Muñoz Organero.

This paper presents an in-depth empirical analysis of a nine-week MOOC. This analysis provides novel results regarding participants’ profiles and use of built-in and external social tools. The results served to detect seven participants’ patterns and conclude that the forum was the social tool preferred to contribute to the MOOC.

Leer más
Marzo 2014

Adapting an Awareness Tool for Massive Courses: the Case of ClassON

Israel Gutiírrez Rojas, Raquel M. Crespo García, Carlos Delgado Kloos

In this paper we analyse the challenges posed to teachers and students in massive face-to-face classes and explore how existing solutions can be applied to these contexts. In particular, we focus on classON1, a tool that provides teachers and students with the appropriate information to make the most out of face-to-face sessions in the computer lab. classON has been well tested in small-medium face-to-face lab sessions and we discuss some of its characteristics (current ones and foreseen) to adapt it to massive courses. As a result, we provide a set of recommendations for adapting tools to support massive face-to-face learning activities.

Leer más
Marzo 2014

Adapting an Awareness Tool for Massive Courses: the Case of ClassON

Israel Gutiírrez Rojas, Raquel M. Crespo García, Carlos Delgado Kloos

In this paper we analyse the challenges posed to teachers and students in massive face-to-face classes and explore how existing solutions can be applied to these contexts. In particular, we focus on classON1, a tool that provides teachers and students with the appropriate information to make the most out of face-to-face sessions in the computer lab. classON has been well tested in small-medium face-to-face lab sessions and we discuss some of its characteristics (current ones and foreseen) to adapt it to massive courses. As a result, we provide a set of recommendations for adapting tools to support massive face-to-face learning activities.

Leer más
Marzo 2014

Proposal for a Conceptual Framework for Educators to Describe and Design MOOCs

Carlos Alario Hoyos, Mar Pérez Sanagustín, Dave Cormier, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a disruptive trend in education. Several initiatives have emerged during the last months to give support to MOOCs, and many educators have started offering courses as MOOCs in different areas and disciplines. However, designing a MOOC is not an easy task. Educators need to face not only pedagogical issues, but also other issues of logistical, technological and financial nature, as well as how these issues relate and constrain each other. Currently, little guidance is available for educators to address the design of MOOCs from scratch keeping a balance between all these issues. This paper proposes…

Leer más
Febrero 2014

Designing your first MOOC from scratch: recommendations after teaching «Digital Education of the Future»

Carlos Alario Hoyos, Mar Pérez Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Israel Gutiérrez Rojas, Derick Leony, Hugo A. Parada Gálvez

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a very promising innovation in higher education for the last few months. Many institutions are currently asking their staff to run high quality MOOCs in a race to gain visibility in an education market that is beginning to be full of choices. Nevertheless, designing and running a MOOC from scratch is not an easy task and requires a high workload. This workload should be shared among those generating contents, those fostering discussion in the community around the MOOC, those supporting the recording and subtitling of audiovisual materials, and those advertising the MOOC, …

Leer más
Febrero 2014

Scaffolding self-learning in MOOCs

Israel Gutiérrez Rojas, Carlos Alario Hoyos, Mar Pérez Sanagustín, Derick Leony, Carlos Delgado Kloos

MOOCs are considered an affordable alternative to higher education and vocational training, as students can complement their studies on particular topics related to their professional development and hobbies, generally free of charge. Nevertheless, not everyone can benefit equally from MOOCs. Due to the scarce personalized guidance that can be provided by MOOC teachers, it is much more likely that people lacking study skills and work habits drop out of MOOCs, contributing to increase the educational gap between those more and less educated. This paper presents the first steps towards a tool called MyLearningMentor, …

Leer más
Febrero 2014

Towards an Outcome-based Discovery and Filtering of MOOCs using moocrank

Israel Gutiérrez Rojas, Derick Leony, Carlos Alario Hoyos, Mar Pérez Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos

The recent outbreak of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is empowering people around the world to satisfy their learning needs. More and more universities are offering MOOCs in online platforms such as Coursera, edX or Udacity, and thus, the catalog of courses to choose from is largely increasing. With the growth of available MOOCs, there is a need for approaches to facilitate the discovery of courses and filter those that best meet the learning objectives of each learner. This article presents moocrank, a web application…

Leer más
2013

2013

Noviembre 2013

An architecture for extending the learning analytics support in the Khan Academy framework

José A. Ruipérez Valiente , Pedro J. Muñoz Merino, Carlos Delgado Kloos

The Khan Academy platform enables powerful on-line courses in which students can watch videos, solve exercises or earn badges. This platform provides an advanced learning analytics module with useful visualizations for teachers and students. Nevertheless, this learning analytics support can be improved with recommendations and new useful higher level visualizations in order to try to improve the learning process. In this paper, we describe our architecture for processing data from the Khan Academy platform…

Leer más
Septiembre 2013

Analysing the Impact of Built-In and External Social Tools in a MOOC on Educational Technologies

Carlos Alario Hoyos, Mar Pérez Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Hugo A. Parada Gálvez, Mario Muñoz Organero, Antonio Rodríguez de las Heras

MOOCs have been a disruptive educational trend in the last months. Some MOOCs just replicate traditional teaching pedagogies, adding multimedia elements like video lectures. Others go beyond, trying to engage the massive number of participants by promoting discussions and relying on their contributions to the course. MOOC platforms usually provide some built-in social tools for this purpose, although instructors or participants may suggest others to foster discussions and crowdsourcing. This paper analyses the impact of two built-in (Q&A and forum) and three external social tools (Facebook, Twitter and MentorMob) in a MOOC on educational technologies. 

Leer más
Septiembre 2013

An Algorithm for Peer Review Matching in Massive Courses for Minimising Students’ Frustration

Iria Estévez Ayres, Raquel M. Crespo García, Jesús A. Fisteus, Carlos Delgado Kloos

Traditional pedagogical approaches are no longer sufficient to cope with the increasing challenges of Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCs). Consequently, it is necessary to explore new paradigms. This paper describes an exploration of the adaptation of the peer review methodology for its application to MOOCs. Its main goal is to minimise the students’ frustration through the reduction of the number of committed students that receive no feedback from their peers. In order to achieve this objective, we propose two algorithms for the peer review matching in MOOCs. Both reward committed students by prioritising the review of their submissions. The first algorithm uses sliding deadlines…

Leer más
Septiembre 2013

Supporting crowdsourcing in MOOC informal face-to-face meetings

Carlos Alario Hoyos, Mar Pérez Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos

MOOCs are currently one of the main buzzwords in education. These particular online courses are characterized by the openness of their contents, which are typically packaged in video format, and by the large number of participants. This large number of potential learners facilitates creating distributed communities with similar interests around the world that can physically meet periodically to share their thoughts, discuss about the MOOC topics and help students with problems to overcome the difficulties. These meetings are informal since they are outside the course schedule and MOOC teachers do not normally participate on them. Nevertheless, it could be of interest for MOOC teachers to offer a tentative structure that leads the face-toface discussions in these informal meetings, as well as to collect the main conclusions at the end,…

Leer más
Abril 2013

Inferring higher level learning information from low level data for the Khan Academy platform

Pedro J. Muñoz Merino, José A. Ruipérez Valiente, Carlos Delgado Kloos

To process low level educational data in the form of user events and interactions and convert them into information about the learning process that is both meaningful and interesting presents a challenge. In this paper, we propose a set of high level learning parameters relating to total use, efficient use, activity time distribution, gamification habits, or exercise-making habits, and provide the measures to calculate them as a result of processing low level data. We apply these parameters and measures in a real physics course with more than 100 students using the Khan Academy platform at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. We show how these parameters can be meaningful and useful for the learning process based on the results from this experience.

Leer más
Marzo 2013

¡Ábrete Sésamo! Abriendo la Universidad

Carlos Delgado Kloos

Presentación del Profesor Carlos Delgado Kloos en la Jornada de Educación Abierta celebrada el 11 de marzo de 2013 en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid en el marco de la Open Education Week promovida por el Consorcio OpenCourseWare.

Leer más