Hi Joost, I came across this link which is interesting. There is a closed call for papers for a conference in December. [ http://www.moocresearch.com ]. I think the implication is that the MOOC as an object of serious study is still in its infancy. Being currently in the middle of two MOOCs at the moment, I would say that the criteria that support any form of distance education/eLearning education apply.

Areas that might be unique to MOOCs are: 1) the size of the MOOC, limiting interaction with the teaching team which will effect quality and the student experience; 2) the motivation of participants to engage with the content, participate in the course discussion and to complete the course for the benefit of all participants [no one wants to be in a MOOC of 1!] and 3) culturally defined attitudes to learning which might limit engagement, and understanding of educational norms of the host institution, mostly adhering to a Western educational model. BW Matt

Thanks, Matt. It is a worthwhile observation that specific criteria apply to MOOCs in the framework of distance education/e-learning. Nice to hear that evidence-based knowledge on MOOC is till lacking. This seems to be a trigger to invest energy in research on MOOCs. Joost

I believe that MOOC is still so recent to have an stablished criteria for evaluation. It is my feeling that MOOC is still in its definition stage, there are valid criteria that we can use from the e-learning experience, but as Matt mentions, there are some unique characteristics that need to be considered in addition. We will be learning about this as we advance in the use of this new way of e-learning.

Here goes another interesting proposal on quality for MOOC, an initiative from the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning :http://mooc.efquel.org/.

Hope it helps!

Dear Luz, Very helpful infiormation. Thank you for it.

I think that you could look at the question in several ways. Are you wanting to evaluate the quality of the MOOC in terms of an approach to teaching i.e. in the same way that you would evaluate a lecture? Or, are you looking to evaluate the quality of the interaction that happens among participants? Or, are you looking to evaluate the quality of the learning that happens within participants? There are other options as well, but you get my point. The evaluation that you end up doing will depend on what exactly it is that you want to evaluate.

Michael, Thanks for your contribution. My question (problem) indeed is to identify te most relevant parameters of evaluating MOOCS. Your answer points to the broad character of my quetions but covers at the same time some important aspects to 'measure' MOOCs quality

here is a link to an article about Georgia Tech offering a Masters through a MOOC delivery http://www.gizmag.com/georgia-tech--graduate-computer-science-degree-mooc/28763/

Interesting!

A MOOC is an e-learning course, so, there are a lot of things published about how to evaluate the quality of e-learning, probably, the "massive" provides a MOOC with a specific characteristic, but at the end is elearning, from my point of view.

Thanks, Maria. Indeed, the 'massive' aspect is not really implied in e-learning courses' quality (see for example the European E-xcellence project). Moreover, learner support or adaptive feedback is highly complex. Possibly 'learning analytics' could contribute to a solution. The question,however, remains what the intrinsic quality of that automatized support and feedback could be.

Indeed, George, terrific question. Any suggestion how to measure MOOC effectiveness and efficiency compared to 'conventional' delivery whatever this means?

Looks as though MOOCs have gone mainstream. This article was in this weeks Wall Street Journal. "An Early Report Card on Massive Open Online Courses" [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303759604579093400834738972.html ]

Hallo,

Herewith another link that might be useful.

http://www.emoocs2014.eu

I particularly think this is such a new field of research that it is highly unlikely that we can find evidence-based studies and valid criteria. What we could do in this thread is to write a list of criteria that could be used in research on MOOCs. I think Brain-storming could be useful and inspiring for us all.

Best,

Rubén

Thank you very much, Ruben.

I learned that EADTU is organising a conference in Paris with MOOCs as an important topic.

Thank you so much, Vaikunthan. Though it is, indeed, too early to research its effectiveness, I wonder if an analysis of MOOCs' attributes (compared to media attributes or media characteristics in earlier times) could deliver criteria with at least some face-validity.

Hi, The best way to understand MOOC's is to do one. This is a link to an article on one I have just finished [ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/17/massive-open-online-courses-report-card ] by the course leader. Not sure if it can be seen but Professor Youngman is also doing some research on the "fly" with course participants [ https://class.coursera.org/googlemedia-001/class ]. If you can see it there is a survey halfway down this page. BW Matt

Matt, Nice idea to work on MOOCs effectineness criteria in an inductive way! Thank you for the interesting link. If MOOCs are designed following specified quality criteria, it would be nice to have insight in the underlying design model and/or design parameters

Is the MOOC will accredited by all the countries ? If say yes, the accreditation tool is nothing but the evaluation of MOOCs.

Dear Nachi,

Does acceptance warrants intrinsic, evidence-based quality? Or is it more organisationaly defi ed?

Students of MOOCS, while their higher studies, If acceptance of particular jurisdiction of Universities will accredited the MOOCs. Then the same procedure can follow- up of all the universities in that country. Hence the evaluation was done as per their satisfactory norms.

What Drives a Successful MOOC? An Empirical Examination of Criteria to Assure Design Quality of MOOCs

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6901394/

I agree with Nachimuthu Dr

We have recently evaluated online learning platforms (MOOCs) for the year 2020 and 2021.

https://courseonline.info/best-online-learning-platforms/

The analysis is based on solid metrics like google trends and from learner feed-backs in the top review platforms like trustpilot.com, mouthshut.com, indeed.com, bitdegree.org, g2.com, and pcmag.com were taken into consideration. With the analysis, we were able to list the top 12 best online learning platforms for 2020 and 2021