What with the semester winding down, I’ve been pretty bad about keeping up with the blogging that I promised to do, to keep my colleagues in SILS informed about what I’m up to here in Seattle. So here’s a quick update on my current major projects. One: We’re relaunching the Metadata MOOC, Probably in mid-July. I’m very pleased and excited about this, because I’ve been contacted by email and Twitter,.. Read More
Part of my agreement with my Dean, that allows me to be remote for this academic year, is that I will document the effects of being remote on doing the job. So, now that the deadline has passed for our Masters students to submit their Masters papers (basically a thesis, only without a committee, just a single advisor), I wanted to write a bit about how it went to advise.. Read More
I continue to futz around with the data from the Metadata MOOC. About 2 weeks ago, I was interviewed for this story in the UNC University Gazette. (It’s a good story, you should read it. And not because I’m quoted… honestly, Don Hornstein said much more intelligent things than I did.) Anyway, one of the questions the reporter asked me was: What was the breakdown of countries the students were.. Read More
In my last post, I posed the question: Why do students engage in a course, when they began intending to lurk? So I thought I’d do some more fishing, to see if I could identify students who, at the end of the course, were motivated to do it again for a Statement. Because if we could identify these students before the course, maybe we could get them to engage more.. Read More
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted any data analysis of my Metadata MOOC… so to the 5 of you who were looking forward to hearing more about it, I apologize. But I’ve started thinking about this again. For one thing, I’m collaborating with colleagues on 2 projects making use of data from the MOOC. I’ll report on those projects, when there’s something to report. For another thing, I’m.. Read More
Ithaka S+R recently produced a report titled MOOCs in the Classroom? Which is well worth a read, and I recommend it. I’ve dedicated the past several posts to analyzing data from my Metadata MOOC. But what I haven’t mentioned is that this semester I’m also teaching the Metadata course (INLS 720) for my School, the School of Information and Library Science, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill… Read More
I’ll be honest, I’m getting a little tired of just delivering descriptive statistics about my Metadata MOOC. I’d like to delve a little deeper, do some hypothesis testing (for example, students in the developing world are more likely to complete the course than students in the first world), or do some comparison across courses. But for the moment, descriptive stats are what I have for you. My old stats professor.. Read More
Welcome back, dear reader, for more gripping data from my Metadata MOOC. This time let’s look at activity on the discussion forums. I’m moving the raw data and the definitions of the stats down, into what would be an appendix, if blog posts had appendices. Posts + Comments, in the figures above, is my own addition. Yes, Posts and Comments are different: if I understand correctly how Coursera’s discussion forum.. Read More
Welcome to part 2 of my reporting on data from my Metadata MOOC. Today, let’s look at video viewership. And, the raw stuff: Definitions of these stats from the Coursera help documentation: Total Streaming Views: The sum of the total number of times each video lecture has been streamed. Total Downloads: The sum of the total number of times each video lecture was downloaded to a student’s computer. Unique Videos.. Read More
My Metadata MOOC is over! I clicked the button to issue Statements of Accomplishment and Verified Certificates earlier today. (If you were a student in the MOOC and you’re reading this, it will take about a week for these to actually be issued, during which Coursera will complete their review and work their magic on their side.) I’m very pleased with how it went, but I’ll make that the topic.. Read More