Literature review

Age and Location

According to Guo and Reinecke (2011), there are both age and demographic differences between how students navigate through MOOCS:

 “Older students and those from countries with lower student-teacher ratios (e.g., the US and European countries) visit and repeat more lecture sequences, which indicates more non-linear navigation and learning strategies. Younger students and those from countries with higher student-teacher ratios (e.g., India, Kenya) visit and repeat fewer sequences, which indicates more linear navigation.”

 Those participants desirous of and subsequently successful in obtaining a completion certificate tend to use non-linear navigation, jumping between activities and skipping course content:

 “Certificate earners view only 78% of learning sequences, on average; they completely skip 22% of course content.”

 This study however, while presenting findings on participants’ navigational preferences, starts from the assumption that a MOOC is organised in a linear way (such as weekly videos and assessments) and that participants can move freely backwards and forwards. It does not make references to possible choice of content display, such as selective release or full visibility from the start, and as such, it is uncertain whether this would affect participants’ navigation. Its relevance to the Learn Moodle MOOC research proposal is therefore somewhat restricted.

 However, the authors themselves are aware of the limitations of their own research and suggest further studies may be welcome:

 “Finally, while we were only able to speculate about the reasons for students’ navigation strategies, it would be especially interesting to conduct qualitative follow-ups with various demographic groups.”

 A challenge with the above survey, and with other research in this literature review, is both the diversity of MOOC types and subject matter and the varying ranges of students studied.  Guo and Reinecke (2011) based their research on four edX MOOCs with 140,456 participants. Other studies, which will be considered shortly, draw conclusions from other figures.