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Teaching and learning with MOOCs: computing academics' perspectives and engagement

Published: 21 June 2014 Publication History

Abstract

During the past two years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have created wide interest in the academic world raising both enthusiasm for new opportunities for universities and many concerns for the future of university education. The discussion has mainly appeared in non-scientific forums, such as magazine articles, columns and blogs, making it difficult to judge wider opinions within academia. To collect more rigorous data we surveyed teachers, researchers, and academic managers on their opinions and experiences of MOOCs. In this paper, we present our analysis of responses from the computer science academic community (n=137). Their feelings about MOOCs are highly mixed. Content analysis of open-ended questions revealed that the most often mentioned positive aspects included affordances of MOOCs, freedom of time and location for studying, and the possibility to experience teaching from top-level international teachers/experts. The most common negative aspects included concerns about pedagogical designs of MOOCs, assessment practices, and lack of interaction with the teacher. About half the respondents claimed they had not changed their teaching as a result of MOOCs, a small number used MOOCs as learning resources and very few were engaging with MOOCs in any significant way.

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Cited By

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  • (2022)Categorizing Research on Identity in Undergraduate Computing EducationProceedings of the 22nd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3564721.3565948(1-13)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2022
  • (2019)A Classification of How MOOCs Are Used for Blended LearningProceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information and Education Innovations10.1145/3345094.3345107(1-7)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
  • (2019)IndexThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.033(895-906)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
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cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '14: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education
June 2014
378 pages
ISBN:9781450328333
DOI:10.1145/2591708
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 21 June 2014

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Author Tags

  1. computing academics
  2. distance learning
  3. e-learning
  4. moocs massive open online courses
  5. open learning
  6. pedagogy

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ITICSE '14
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ITiCSE '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 164 submissions, 22%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Categorizing Research on Identity in Undergraduate Computing EducationProceedings of the 22nd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3564721.3565948(1-13)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2022
  • (2019)A Classification of How MOOCs Are Used for Blended LearningProceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information and Education Innovations10.1145/3345094.3345107(1-7)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
  • (2019)IndexThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.033(895-906)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2019)A Case Study of Qualitative MethodsThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.032(875-894)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2019)A Case Study of Peer InstructionThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.031(861-874)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2019)Students As Teachers and CommunicatorsThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.030(827-858)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2019)Motivation, Attitudes, and DispositionsThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.029(801-826)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2019)Student Knowledge and MisconceptionsThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.028(773-800)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2019)Learning Outside the ClassroomThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.027(749-772)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • (2019)Teacher Learning and Professional DevelopmentThe Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.026(727-748)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
  • Show More Cited By

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