Large lecture courses are an efficient way to convey material to many students but have potential limitations, most notably the tendency for them to promote passive learning opportunities rather than active pedagogies. The curriculum at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, like many veterinary schools, contains many large…

Lecture capture is a technology where live lectures are recorded in a digital format and made available to students to view at their convenience. The use of this technology in higher education has steadily increased despite mixed results as to whether it is beneficial to student achievement. The current study utilized a two-group…

Past MOOC research has tended to focus on learning outcomes valued in traditional higher education settings, such as achievement and retention. This study recognises that student ratings are an important alternative outcome measure in MOOCs. This paper adopted a semiautomatic text mining approach to collect and analyse 8475 ratings and reviews…

Many educational organizations are employing instructional videos in their pedagogy, but there is a limited understanding of the possible video formats. In practice, the presentation format of instructional videos ranges from direct recording of classroom teaching with a stationary camera, or screencasts with voiceover, to highly elaborate video…

We propose a new model for learning that relates video watching behavior and engagement to quiz performance. In our model, a learner's knowledge gain from watching a lecture video is treated as proportional to their latent engagement level, and the learner's engagement is in turn dictated by a set of behavioral features we propose that quantify…

Although millions of students have access to varieties of learning resources on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), they are usually limited to receiving rapid feedback. Providing guidance for students, which enhances the interaction with students, is a promising way to improve learning experience. In this paper, we consider to show students the…

We investigate the use of consumer-grade eye tracking to automatically detect Mind Wandering (MW) during learning from a recorded lecture, a key component of many Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). We considered two feature sets: stimulus-independent global gaze features (e.g., number of fixations, fixation duration), and stimulus-dependent…

The use of videotaped microlectures as a new medium of teaching has been receiving increased attention in China's educational reform agenda. Since 2012, microlecture competitions targeting various levels of education have been held nationwide. However, a top-down contest-based approach, while efficiently popularizing the concept of microlectures,…

Incorporation of active learning into large lecture classes is gaining popularity as a pedagogical method due to its known benefits in helping learning outcomes. A more recent active learning technique that has emerged is the flipped classroom. In this study, we investigated the effects of incorporating a "partial-flip" into an…

The rapid advancement of emergent learning technologies has led to the introduction of massive open online courses (MOOCs) which offer open-based online learning courses to a large number of students. In line with the advancement, the Malaysia Ministry of Education has recently initiated Malaysia MOOCs via collaboration with four public…

Using a unique dataset of 44 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), this article examines critical patterns of enrollment, engagement, persistence, and completion among students in online higher education. By leveraging fixed-effects specifications based on over 2.1 million student observations across more than 2,900 lectures, we analyzed…

The six articles in this edition are fascinating, both in terms of their content, but even more so in their diversity. In most of the literature and discussion about MOOCs, there is a tendency to talk about instructionist MOOCs (i.e., xMOOCs) or connectivist MOOCs (i.e., cMOOCs; see Daniel, 2012). Although this is still a useful distinction,…

The "field trip" is a key pedagogical tool within geographical education to encourage deep learning, though they are increasingly difficult to implement due to reduced budgets, safety concerns and increasing class sizes. We incorporated three field-learning activities into a large introductory module. A traditional staff-led trip was the…

Over the course of two years, 2012-2014, we have implemented a "flipping" the classroom approach in three of our large enrolment first year calculus courses: differential and integral calculus for scientists and engineers. In this article we describe the details of our particular approach and share with the reader some experiences of…

This research asks "What is it like for a K-12 school-age child to learn in a massive open online course (MOOC)?" Evidence suggested that a significant number of children are participating in MOOCs either independently or alongside their parents, both inside and outside the K-12 school system. Researchers have expressed concerns…