Better_Than_MOOCs

Better Than MOOCs:

Improve online learning environments and content based on cognitive science (2013)

Role: all content of the full paper, such as online lessons, website, instruction, survey design, video editing, and data analysis, resaerch on theories are conducted by the author: DoHyun Kim

(Xyang Wang, who is a NYU graduate student, helped translate from English to Chinese for the survey and conducted interview with Chinese students)

Theories applied into the design of online content and envrionments:

Situated Cognition, Cognitive Load, Dual Channel, Color-Coding, Learner Control–Pacing, and Split-Attention theories.

Online videos are made and edited by the author, DoHyun Kim

Software: Final Cut Pro 10.13

Instructor in the lessons is DoHyun Kim

The full paper

Better Than MOOCs.pdf

Instructional video

The approaches to solve the problems with Online learning

Why (Educational perspective):

Although online learning environments are different from traditional offline learning environments, a number of teachers use the same teaching methods in both online and offline classrooms. Forbes (2013) points out that there is an inherent problem with MOOCs in that although enrollment in online college courses of all kinds increased by 29 percent to more than 6.7 million between 2011 and 2012, the completion rate for some courses on MOOCs is under 3%. I was inspired to improve online learning envrionments so that we can ecnourage students to complete their courses by providing better learning experiences and equal opportunities in education.

What (Technology perspective):

There are three teaching approaches for this proejct. The first one is online tutoring which is the same teaching method as what the Khan Academy uses. The second type is a conversational lesson, and the third is using an interactive animation. Thsese three types of lessons will be delivered via a website designed based on the cognitive theories as well as students' and teachers' opinions.

How (Design perspective):

The purpose of Better than MOOCs project is to make guidelines for teachers, instructional designers, and even students to create effective online content for teaching and learning. Since having an understanding of how people learn will be the key to creating quality online educational content, the problems of current online lessons, environments, and target audience are analyzed based on cognitive theories. Also in order to create exemplar lessons, students' and teachers’ feedback, statistical data on Google, and assessment tests scores are taken into consideration.

There are three main parts for the project:

1. The first step was conducting a survey in three differnet languages (respondents,N=75)

2. Once our target students and topic became clear based on the survey results, the next step was to choose teaching methods and to create video lessons.

3. The last step is data analysis, according to the collected data: how long students watch video lessons, how many students watch the lessons, and students’ scores on Pre- and Post-Quiz before and after watching the lessons on the webpage.

1. Survey implementation:

From the beginning of this project, we encouraged our potential audience to get involved by asking for responses to our survey via Facebook, Twitter, and face-to-face interview for one week. The survey was provided in three different languages, English, Korean, and Chinese, so that people could respond in their L1 (mother language). Out of our survey respondents, 33 people (44%) were Korean, 32 people (42%) were Chinese, and 10 people (13%) were from other countries.

Please refer to full paper to learn more about all the questionaires and result of the survey.

FIgure 1: From the top: English, Chinese, and Korean versions of survey questionnaires were offered to students based on their L1 to figure out the problems with current online lessons and students' needs.

FIgure 2: This graph represents what topics our target audience want to learn the most.

FIgure 3: This graph represents what features our target audience want to enhance their learning experience in English online lessons.

2. Homepage creation

According to the analysis of our competitors and existing online content and learning environments, improvements can be conducted by applying the elements as listed below:

1. The website should not have advertisements.

2. The website should explain clearly who the target audience is and what it is for on the first page so that students can navigate and use the content effectively.

3. Screen layouts should be optimized for both the Web and mobile pages so that students can see all the content like video clips and small texts appropriately

4. Students should communicate with teachers anytime via email, Twitter, or other methods. (In this project, YouTube Channel, Twitter, and Facebook page are provided on the homepage and there is a section to send us email anytime).

FIgure 4: On the left, it is a layout for PCs and the right is one for Mobile devices. Students can find specific topics and online lessons quickly on the lesson section. All the lessons come with only related content.

FIgure 5: The homepage flow chart

3. Video lesson creation

According to all the data from survey and cognitive theories, the video lessons should have some elements like these listed below:

1. More interaction should be embedded into the lessons.

2. The instructor should avoid providing unrelated images to their topics and his face should be not exposed to students in lessons.

3. Text, visual, and audio aids properly provided to student without conflicting input types, such as video with subtitles on the same frame.

4. Use proper colors, especially orange, yellow, pink, to give positive emotion and decrease cognitive load.

5. Based on students’ responses, the video lessons should be longer than 20,but less than 30 minutes long and there should be a wide selection of teaching methods.

FIgure 6: The first type is a tutorial lesson: A tablet and microphone are used to record voice and handwriting on computer screen like Khan Academy lessons.

FIgure 7: The second type is a conversational lesson: the instructor is having a conversation about the same topic

FIgure 8: The thrid type is interactive animation lesson. Students can interact with the learning content by clikc the contorl buttms on the screen. On the left: it is the summary page of each part of the lesson. Learners can choose to see the specific summary by clicking on the buttons on the left.

4. Evaluation

A common issue in education is bridging the gap between what learners actually know and what they think they know. Since we want to know about not only whether students enjoy watching our video lessons, but also how much they learn from them.

Evaluation Methods: all the main points and content knowledge were identical in all lessons. In addition, only one instructor designed and taught in all three lessons to avoid affecting students’ improvement in learning due to the different instructors’ personal ability rather than teaching methods. All lessons were posted on the same page of the website at the same time, and then data was gathered for two weeks.

There are three main factors in evaluating our online lessons. The first factor is popularity (how many people access each lesson) and another one is duration time (how long people watch a video). The third is improvement between both scores on Pre- and Post-Quiz. These data can help to interpret and find valid reasons why certain video lessons are popular while others are not. Popularity figures of each video were provided by YouTube, and students’ progress in English was measured through SurveyMonkey with Pre- and Post-Quiz questions. This is to confirm whether they actually learned anything from watching the lessons. By analyzing and comparing both scores on Pre- and Post-Quiz, we can see how much improvement they had after watching the video lessons.

Result & findingds: according to feedbacks from students, analytic data, and quiz results, we conclude that interactive animation is the most popular among our students, but the tutorial type of lesson, second most popular, is more effective lesson than others, and conversation lesson are ranked at the last in popularity and effectiveness (Please refer to full paper for more detail information).

DoHyun KIM

Digital Media Design for Learning