NEW APPROACHES TO EFFICIENCY OF MASSIVE ONLINE COURSE

• Main Authors: Liubov S. Lysitsina, Alexander A. Pershin, Vladimir L. Uskov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Saint Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO University) 2014-09-01
• Series: Naučno-tehničeskij Vestnik Informacionnyh Tehnologij, Mehaniki i Optiki
• Subjects: massive online course; efficiency of e-learning; immediate feedback; learning interfaces; scenario of code visualization and verification; game mechanics; perfectionism; synchronous learning
• Online Access: http://ntv.ifmo.ru/file/article/10780.pdf

This paper is focused on efficiency of e-learning, in general, and massive online course in programming and information technology, in particular. Several innovative approaches and scenarios have been proposed, developed, implemented and verified by the authors, including 1) a new approach to organize and use automatic immediate feedback that significantly helps a learner to verify developed code and increases an efficiency of learning, 2) a new approach to construct learning interfaces – it is based on “develop a code – get a result – validate a code” technique, 3) three scenarios of visualization and verification of developed code, 4) a new multi-stage approach to solve complex programming assignments, 5) a new implementation of “perfectionism” game mechanics in a massive online course. Overall, due to implementation of proposed and developed approaches, the efficiency of massive online course has been considerably increased, particularly 1) the additional 27.9 % of students were able to complete successfully “Web design and development using HTML5 and CSS3” massive online course at ITMO University, and 2) based on feedback from 5588 students a “perfectionism” game mechanics noticeably improves students’ involvement into course activities and retention factor.