This paper reports on the progress of users through 16 Coursera courses taught by University of Pennsylvania faculty for the first time between June 2012 and July 2013. Using descriptive analyses, this study advances knowledge by considering two definitions of massive open online course (MOOC) users (registrants and starters), comparing two…

The development of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) is in the scope of research groups and educators aiming to propose suitable mechanisms for the organization of self-controlled and self-directed learning, providing students with tools and services for access to content and human intelligence inside and outside the educational institutions.…

"Present text accompanying pictures aurally to promote learning" is a well established principle of instructional design. But recently, it was shown that under certain conditions visual texts can be preferable. Instructional pacing seems to be one of these conditions that mediate effects. Especially, enabling learners to pace an…

Research findings in recent years provide compelling evidence of the importance of encouraging student control over the learning process as a whole. The socially based tools and technologies of the Web 2.0 movement are capable of supporting informal conversation, reflexive dialogue and collaborative content generation, enabling access to a wide…

Investigates the effects of learner-control and the aptitude-treatment interaction effects between instructional control and learner characteristics in procedural learning. Participants were 128 undergraduates. Results indicate empirical evidence illustrating the power of learner-control and relevant ability on learning procedural tasks in…

Some research indicates that individuals learn more when given control over their instruction, while other data suggests that individuals learn less effectively when given control over their instruction. This document describes a study which investigated the effects of matching university-level learners with the amount of instruction they prefer.…

This study investigated the constraints students in an alternative education program encountered when attempting to implement their individualized curricula in the Independent Study Program (ISP) at the University of Illinois. The study used in-depth interviews with an informant sample of 10 ISP students to gather data about curriculum…

Differences in learners' control decisions in computer-assisted learning were studied during part task versus whole task practice. The criterion task was chosen for its relevance to air crew training problems. Forty-one male and female undergraduates participated in a computer simulation task estimating the location and orientation of target…

A working model of self-regulated learning based on the literature was developed together with an inventory of 71 items designed to test the five dimensions of the model: metacognition, learning strategies, motivation, contextual sensitivity, and environmental utilization/control. A five-point Likert scale was used to rank the items. Subjects were…

Acadia University is the first "laptop" university in Canada. The Acadia Advantage program has each incoming student and each faculty member equipped with a laptop computer. In addition, classrooms, library, residence rooms, and common areas are wired so that the network is accessible both in and out of classrooms. This initiative has…

In this paper, we present a web-based educational setting, referred to as SCALE (Supporting Collaboration and Adaptation in a Learning Environment), which aims to serve learning and assessment. SCALE enables learners to (i) work on individual and collaborative activities proposed by the environment with respect to learners' knowledge level, (ii)…