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Indeed, and I think if you optimize for engagement, you are really failing to consider that once you target a metric, that metric is no longer useful. For the

by wespiser_2018 6y ago

Indeed, and I think if you optimize for engagement, you are really failing to consider that once you target a metric, that metric is no longer useful. For the MOOC example, what I meant by engagement was, "Week over week, does the student return?" or Weekly Active Users as a percentage of total students at the start of the course. For a MOOCs, the number of students disengaging is so high, that there is obviously a problem, and this is what I meant to communicate. Thanks for the article!

tsumnia 6y ago
MOOCs are an interesting area as well, as they share similar drop off to free mobile games - high initial recruitment and engagement, but immediate drop off. I love a lot of the components that MOOCs use and utilize them in my course design, but the high drop off is why I support traditional class-based environments. The cost of tuition and fear of failure ensure they stick with it. In another world, I think it's one of the reasons why many physical sports like martial arts have high drop offs as well, no risk from failure. This is one of the reasons I don't particularly care for motivation studies, as I believe it's only a temporary method to generate traction. Once learning becomes difficult, it requires a higher order of motivation I call "discipline" to maintain. But back to MOOCs, there is work on MOOC forum analysis[1]. In short, forum activity and the people you associate with in an educational forum can have a significant impact on your grade. Note this study was post-hoc analysis, but students that primarily discussed non-course relevant topics were more likely to fail the course. There is also the fact that MOOC students come from a variety of life experiences. Students of different countries have different cultures and as a result, will behave differently [2]. France, for example, only wanted to view the course in [2], not engage. I think the beauty of a MOOC is the accessibility and automated feedback feature that from their design. Beyond that they suffer from a lot of human conditions that can't really be controlled without removing or reducing those features. Plus, as I mention, there isn't a lot of cog psych research on "discipline" yet to identify the qualities that encourage its development besides Duckworth's "grit" (if I'm wrong I'd love to be pointed towards them). [1] http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1446/GEDM_2015_Submission_2.pdf http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1446/GEDM_2015_Submission_2.pdf [2] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED592695.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED592695.pdf
- tsumnia 6y ago
  As an aside, you might be interested in my colleague's work on MOOC Forum analysis as she goes into some discussions about what type of students come back to MOOCs - https://nikign.github.io/ https://nikign.github.io/

tsumnia 6y ago

MOOCs are an interesting area as well, as they share similar drop off to free mobile games - high initial recruitment and engagement, but immediate drop off. I love a lot of the components that MOOCs use and utilize them in my course design, but the high drop off is why I support traditional class-based environments. The cost of tuition and fear of failure ensure they stick with it. In another world, I think it's one of the reasons why many physical sports like martial arts have high drop offs as well, no risk from failure. This is one of the reasons I don't particularly care for motivation studies, as I believe it's only a temporary method to generate traction. Once learning becomes difficult, it requires a higher order of motivation I call "discipline" to maintain. But back to MOOCs, there is work on MOOC forum analysis[1]. In short, forum activity and the people you associate with in an educational forum can have a significant impact on your grade. Note this study was post-hoc analysis, but students that primarily discussed non-course relevant topics were more likely to fail the course. There is also the fact that MOOC students come from a variety of life experiences. Students of different countries have different cultures and as a result, will behave differently [2]. France, for example, only wanted to view the course in [2], not engage. I think the beauty of a MOOC is the accessibility and automated feedback feature that from their design. Beyond that they suffer from a lot of human conditions that can't really be controlled without removing or reducing those features. Plus, as I mention, there isn't a lot of cog psych research on "discipline" yet to identify the qualities that encourage its development besides Duckworth's "grit" (if I'm wrong I'd love to be pointed towards them). [1] http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1446/GEDM_2015_Submission_2.pdf http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1446/GEDM_2015_Submission_2.pdf [2] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED592695.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED592695.pdf

tsumnia 6y ago
As an aside, you might be interested in my colleague's work on MOOC Forum analysis as she goes into some discussions about what type of students come back to MOOCs - https://nikign.github.io/ https://nikign.github.io/