MOOCs Lack Interactivity and Collaborativeness: Evaluating MOOC Platforms

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v10i2.11886

Keywords:

MOOC, Interactivity, collaborativeness, evaluation

Abstract


Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have considered to be a potential to disseminate engineering education at scale. However, the pedagogical requirement demanded engineering student to equip with specific skillsets such as communication, interactivity, and collaboration. Yet, MOOCs are skeptical of facilitating those skills. Generally, MOOCs evaluated against accessibility and usability. These evaluations may not perceive whether the platform designs in MOOCs support to much-needed interactions and collaboration required in engineering education. We evaluated 6 MOOC platform designs under the lens of collaboration and types of interactions which occur as learner to learner, learner to instructor, learner to platform and learner to content. Evaluation criteria were derived us-ing previous frameworks and evaluations were conducted using 10 participants. Based on each criterion a matrix was formed with a weight to compare results. We found overall collaboration opportunities in platforms are significantly less than the opportunities to interact. Based on the findings we provide 5 design recommendations and provide a future direction for MOOC platform designs which en-ables facilitation to engineering education through MOOCs.

Author Biographies

Dilrukshi Gamage, University of Moratuwa

Dilrukshi Gamage is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) association and serves in the executive council since 2017. She is a final year Ph.D. student at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Her research area is pedagogical development using technology and Human-Computer Interactions. She has been reviewer for top tier journals (Computers and Educations) and published and reviewed in many conferences (TALE, ECUCON, ICALT, CHI, CSCW).

Indika Perera, University of Moratuwa

Indika Perera is a senior lecturer at the Indika Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. He holds a PhD (St Andrews, UK) MBS (Colombo), MSc (Moratuwa), PGDBM (Colom-bo) and B.Sc. Eng. (Hons) (Moratuwa). His research interests include research topics of software architecture, software engineering; technology enhanced learning, UX and immersive environments. He is a Fellow of HEA(UK), MIET, SMIEEE and a Chartered Engineer registered at EC (UK) and IE(SL).

Shantha Fernando, University of Moratuwa

Shantha Fernando is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. He served as the Director, Centre for IT Services, University of Moratuwa. and the Director, Engineering Research Unit, University of Moratuwa. He is one of the founders and the Chief Advisor of TechCERT, affiliated to LK-Domain Registry. His PhD was obtained from the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands in 2010. His expertise are in Computer and Information Security, Information Systems, and e-Learning.

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Published

2020-03-11

How to Cite

Gamage, D., Perera, I., & Fernando, S. (2020). MOOCs Lack Interactivity and Collaborativeness: Evaluating MOOC Platforms. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 10(2), pp. 94–111. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v10i2.11886

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2020)

Section

Papers

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