Research on online education has benefitted greatly from MOOCs. Because MOOCs are very large classes, often with global reach, research teams are able to take advantage of the data they produce to carry out innovative and valuable analyses. One such analysis was recently published by a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburg. Led by Carolyn Rose, the team looks at ways to build engaging interactions in MOOCs. The study authors find that providing ways for learners to collaborate in small groups to solve problems is more engaging, and increases learner success, compared to traditional threaded discussion. You can read the full article here: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/ciee/vol2/iss1/5/
This article is part of a special issue of the journal Current Issues in Emerging eLearning. If you want to browse any of the other articles in the journal, you can find there here: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/ciee/. I found University of Pittsburg librarian Paul Bond’s article on information literacy and lifelong learning to be interesting because it gave several examples of MOOCs that connect learning activities with information literacy.