The Impact of Integrating MOOCs into Campus Courses on Student Engagement

Abstract

This thesis examines the impact of integrating elements of Massive Open OnlineCourses (MOOCs) into the on-campus learning of Saudi women’s highereducational institutions. It also explores and identifies patterns of studentengagement in a blended MOOC design.
MOOCs are courses which are delivered, usually by leading universities, withthe promise of providing free, high-quality education to a limitless number oflearners. In a ‘blended’ course design, instructors can integrate MOOC contentwith face-to-face educational activities and components. Thus enabling them touse lecture time to conduct meaningful discussions, to identify and clarifymisconceptions, or to mentor students in group projects. The current studyseeks to improve the general understanding of the impact of blending MOOCsystems into Saudi women’s higher education, with emphasis on student engagement.
A preliminary study was conducted to develop a model that could help measure student engagement in the context of a blended-MOOC. Three well-established existing frameworks — the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), the UK Engagement Survey (UKES), and the Student Engagement Questionnaire(SEQ)— were combined into a single model. The model has nine indicators which provide information about distinct aspects of student engagement. This model was confirmed by a panel of thirty-five expert practitioners. A trial evaluation using the model was carried out on thirteen students who had participated in a course that had adopted a blended-MOOC format.
Subsequently, a counterbalanced, within-subjects experimental design was used to identify any statistically significant differences in the impact on student engagement between the face-to- face learning and blended-MOOC approaches.A fourteen-week experiment took place at three different Saudi women’s universities’ “Intro to Artificial Intelligence” courses. A total of one hundred and eight participants were divided into two groups; both groups being administered the same treatments, albeit in a different order.
The confirmed model, interviews with lecturers, as well as the researcher’s reflections and notes were all used in order to assess the change in student engagement. The results of the study reveal that students who were exposed to the blended-MOOC design became more engaged with relation to some of the NSSE’s indicators, including: reflective & integrative learning, higher-order learning, collaborative learning, and learning strategies. No statistically significant evidence of a positive effect was found in student engagement in terms of student-faculty interactions. The study also shows that there is a positive correlation between time spent using the MOOC system and the model’s engagement indicators. In other words, the more the students used the MOOC system for educational activities, the more they engaged in their learning process.
This research contributes to the literature by developing a model for measuring student engagement within a blended-MOOC context and conducting an experimental study for the purpose of examining the impact of integrating elements of MOOCs into campus-based study.

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ORCID for Susan White: orcid.org/0000-0001-9588-5275

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