Revealing the Hidden Patterns: A Comparative Study on Profiling Subpopulations of MOOC Students

Shi, Lei; Cristea, Alexandra I.; Toda, Armando; Oliveira, Wilk; Siarheyeva, A.; Barry, C.; Lang, M.; Linger, H.; Schneide, C.

Revealing the Hidden Patterns: A Comparative Study on Profiling Subpopulations of MOOC Students

Shi, Lei; Cristea, Alexandra I.; Toda, Armando; Oliveira, Wilk; Siarheyeva, A.; Barry, C.; Lang, M.; Linger, H.; Schneide, C.

Authors

Lei Shi

Alexandra I. Cristea

Armando Toda

Wilk Oliveira

A. Siarheyeva

C. Barry

M. Lang

H. Linger

C. Schneide

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) exhibit a remarkable heterogeneity of students. The advent of complex “big data” from MOOC platforms is a challenging yet rewarding opportunity to deeply understand how students are engaged in MOOCs. Past research, looking mainly into overall behavior, may have missed patterns related to student diversity. Using a large dataset from a MOOC offered by FutureLearn, we delve into a new way of investigating hidden patterns through both machine learning and statistical modelling. In this paper, we report on clustering analysis of student activities and comparative analysis on both behavioral patterns and demographical patterns between student subpopulations in the MOOC. Our approach allows for a deeper understanding of how MOOC students behave and achieve. Our findings may be used to design adaptive strategies towards an enhanced MOOC experience.

Citation

Shi, L., Cristea, A. I., Toda, A., Oliveira, W., Siarheyeva, A., Barry, C., …Schneide, C. (2019). Revealing the Hidden Patterns: A Comparative Study on Profiling Subpopulations of MOOC Students. In Information Systems Development : Information Systems Beyond 2020 (ISD2019 Proceedings)

Conference Name	28th International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD2019)
Conference Location	Toulon, France
Start Date	Aug 28, 2019
End Date	Aug 30, 2019
Acceptance Date	Jun 1, 2019
Online Publication Date	Nov 1, 2019
Publication Date	Dec 31, 2019
Deposit Date	Jul 3, 2019
Publicly Available Date	Dec 10, 2019
Publisher	Association for Information Systems
Book Title	Information Systems Development : Information Systems Beyond 2020 (ISD2019 Proceedings).
Publisher URL	https://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2019/ISDMethodologies/13/