Abstract:

We present the main findings of three years research on what student engagement in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can be and which specific feedback and assessment practices can advance engagement of MOOC students. The rationale behind this research is the low engagement of students and high drop rate specifically in MOOCs and whether and if so which formative assessment and feedback practices can increase it. Although there is evidence that such practices can enhance student engagement in traditional face-to-face teaching environments, there was not so far any significant research on whether and how feedback and assessment practices can advance the student engagement in MOOCs. In this study, we focus specifically on these practices for enhancing student engagement.

We have surveyed 425 students from 8 MOOC courses via an online questionnaire and we have identified the feedback and assessment practices that are applied in those MOOCs and we have applied Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for analyzing how student engagement can be specified in MOOCs and ANOVA for regression analysis.

Concerning the impact of formative assessment and feedback practices, main results obtained show that indeed student engagement can be affected by such practices. In specific, student engagement overall can be positively influenced by increasing interaction between learner and teacher and especially increasing interaction between learner and content as well as by decreasing the length of feedback provided in general. On the other hand, student engagement can be negatively influenced when the feedback focus is on comparing student’s performance with the student herself and her personal characteristics.

In relation to test completion activities such as handing in the assignments or doing the final assessment, this can be positively influenced by increasing the interaction between the teacher and content, by limiting assessment activities to discussion participation levels, individual assignments, quizzes or group assessments, by increasing the feedback by the system automatically and by increasing the number of submissions to be evaluated by other peers. But we have identified also that test completion can be significantly negatively influenced (i.e. not achieved) when feedback is provided by other peers and students.

In regards to how often the student uses study and resources material, this can be impacted positively by increasing interaction between learner to learner and learner to content as well as by increasing the number of submissions to be evaluated by other peers. Furthermore, this frequency can be increased when the feedback is provided with solutions along with comments (e.g. suggestions for improvement, common errors, etc) as well as when feedback focus is on questions the students were sure they were correct.

In relation to how often the student attempts assessment activities, this can be influenced positively by increasing interaction between learner to learner, learner to teacher and especially between learner and content and by decreasing the length of feedback provided in general. On the contrary, this can be negatively influenced when the feedback focus is on comparing student’s performance with the student herself and her personal characteristics.

This paper contributes to provide suggestions on how student engagement in MOOCs can be influenced by formative assessment and feedback practices.

Keywords:

Formative Feedback, Formative assessment, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), student engagement, PCA (Principal Component Analysis), ANOVA.