University of North Texas 
Discovery Series Presents:
Thursday, February 1, 2018 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Join us at the Willis Library room 250H on Thursday February 1st, 2018 at 1:00p for
a College of Information (COI) Discovery Series lecture by Ryan Baker, a leading expert
in learning analytics and educational data mining. Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs)
will be his topic. Light refreshments will be served at 2:00p, followed by a panel
discussion, which will include Dr. George Siemens of UT Arlington and will be moderated
by Dr. Kinshuk from COI.
Abstract: Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have been viewed as a potentially powerful source
for research on learning and student success, but research on MOOCs has largely been
fragmentary, with most research conducted on single MOOCs, and limited work towards
formally studying which findings replicate across courses, replicating the "Replication
Crisis" seen in other areas of psychology. In this talk, I will discuss my lab's efforts
to facilitate replication of research on learning and behavior within MOOCs, through
developing a framework that can ingest data from edX and Coursera MOOCs and test whether
a range of findings apply. In the work I'll discuss in this talk, we identify 15 findings
from previously published studies on completion in MOOCs, render them into production
rules within our architecture, and test them across 29 MOOC instances, using a post-hoc
method to control for multiple comparisons. I will discuss which findings replicate
and which findings replicate in reverse. We are currently working to extend this replication
to over 70 MOOCs. This work represents a step towards automated replication of correlational
research findings at large scale.
Location: Willis Library 250H
Event open to: Open to the public
Ticket Price: $0.00
For more information call: (940) 369-8164
Department or Sponsor: College of Information Dean's Office
Contact Name: Caley Barnhart
Contact Email: Ci-Dean@unt.edu
Contact Phone: 940-369-8164