Since Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are accessible by anyone in the world at no cost, they have large enrollments that are conducive to educational research. This study examines students in the Coursera MOOC, Introductory Human Physiology. Of the 33,378 students who accessed the course, around 15,000 students responded to items on the…

Connectivism has been offered as a new learning theory for a digital age, with four key principles for learning: autonomy, connectedness, diversity, and openness. The testing ground for this theory has been massive open online courses (MOOCs). As the number of MOOC offerings increases, interest in how people interact and develop as individual…

Synchronous collaboration with large groups in a classroom requires coordination and communication mechanisms that allow students to contribute towards achieving a common goal. This paper presents an application based on an Interpersonal Computer with a shared display that promotes synchronous, non-verbal (silent) collaboration with large groups…

Professional learning, combining formal and on the job learning, is important for the development and maintenance of expertise in the modern workplace. To integrate formal and informal learning, professionals have to have good self-regulatory ability. Formal learning opportunities are opening up through massive open online courses (MOOCs),…

The authors have developed "sequence response applications" for classroom response systems (CRSs) that allow instructors to engage and actively involve students in the learning process, probe for common misconceptions regarding lecture material, and increase interaction between instructors and students. "Guided inquiry" and…

Government funding cuts have provided a new impetus to Australian universities to re-examine their value proposition and corporate focus. While the sector has gone through waves of change in recent times, institutions are now scrambling for their place in a highly competitive market. Institutions explore new revenue opportunities and digital…

The problem which this paper addresses is the difficulty of knowing students in large diverse classes in pedagogically useful ways. The paper discusses how the phenomenographic methodology can be employed to address this problem. It describes how phenomenographic studies and their results can enable teachers to "know their students" at a…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have generated enthusiasm, excitement, and hype worldwide and recently increasing skepticism. They are being broadly discussed in the major news media (and to a smaller extent in academic circles). Rapidly increasing numbers of MOOC providers, MOOC courses and articles, discussion groups, and blogs discussing…

This review of research explores characteristics associated with massive open online courses (MOOCs). Three key characteristics are revealed: varied definitions of openness, barriers to persistence, and a distinct structure that takes the form as one of two pedagogical approaches. The concept of openness shifts among different MOOCs, models,…

The continuous growth of online learning and its movement towards cross-border and cross-culture education has recently taken a new turn with the epic hype that currently surrounds the development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Beattie-Moss, 2013). This development brings to focus the experiences of international students who take online…

Debates have been used to develop critical thinking within teaching environments. Many learning activities are configured as working groups, which use debates to make decisions. Nevertheless, in a classroom debate, only a few students can participate; large work groups are similarly limited. Whilst the use of web tools would appear to offer a…

This article reports on reusable mobile digital learning resources designed to assist human geography undergraduate students in exploring the geographies of life in Dublin. Developing active learning that goes beyond data collection to encourage observation and thinking in the field is important. Achieving this in the context of large class sizes…

This paper uses the introduction of critical pedagogy to an English as a Foreign Language class in the Republic of Korea as a case study for a "modest critical pedagogy" (Tinning 2002). Focusing on the stress and resistances experienced during the introduction, we suggest a modest critical pedagogy that 1) makes the paradigm itself an…

"Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education" in the United States is the tenth annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education. The survey is designed, administered and analyzed by the Babson Survey Research Group. Data collection is conducted in partnership with the College Board. This year's study, like those…

Student response systems, or "clickers," have been presented as a way of solving student engagement problems, particularly in large-enrollment classes. These devices provide real-time feedback to instructors, allowing them to understand what students are thinking and how well they comprehend material. As clickers become more common, it…