Methods
YZU is one of the few universities in Taiwan offers MOOCs. Five MOOCs were
launched at YZU in 2014. They were “C# Programming” (400 enrolled students),
“Internationalization Strategy” (340 students), “Computer-aided Design and Manufacture”
(749 students), “Electronics: Amplifier Principles and Analysis” (193 students),
and “English for Engineering & Technology” (381 students). Since only the first three
courses provided final grades to the MOOC system, students’ behavioral data from logging
in system, watching lecture videos, submitting assignments, and posting on discussion
forums were collected from these three courses to examine engagement patterns
of MOOC students. Totally, we collected data from 1489 students, with a gender distribution
of 54 % male students and 46 % female students. Among these students, about
63 % of students fell into the 16 to 25 years old category, 18 % into the 26–35 age
group, 12 % into the 36–45 age group, and 7 % of students were over 45 years of age.
There were only 6 % of non-Taiwanese registered students in these MOOCs.
Cluster analysis can be used to help researchers develop profiles that are grounded in
learner activities (Antonenko et al. 2012). This study used the Ward’s hierarchical and
k-means non-hierarchical clustering methods to determine the number of clusters and
to classify different clusters of learners in MOOCs. The Ward’s minimum variance
clustering is useful for exploratory work when researchers do not have a preconceived
number of clusters in the dataset. It uses an analysis of variance approach to evaluate
the distances between clusters. Ward’s algorithm compares the proximity indices and
identifies pairs of participants with the smallest distance value. Once we identified the
number of clusters, k-means clustering method was used to analyze learning behaviors
in different clusters of MOOC students. The k-means clustering method calculates
centroids for a set of trial clusters and then places each object in the cluster with the
nearest centroid; this process continues until there are no more changes in the cluster
membership (Antonenko et al. 2012).
Descriptive analyses, including chi-square and mean-difference tests were conducted
to compare students’ learning outcomes in different clusters. There were two indicators
for learning outcome: whether students passed the courses and their final grades of
MOOC course. In addition, different levels of participating in course discussion forum
were examined to explore its impacts on learning by descriptive analyses.
Results
Learning engagement in MOOCs
Trends of students’ learning behaviors in MOOCs, including login rec