Here is my first entry for my reflective critical inquiry research log.
Up until this point I have found plenty of information on quality assurance on MOOCs as a whole, but only a few articles that specifically relate to edX. I suspect that information on quality assurance from one MOOC can be transferred to another MOOC (as long as they are similar i.e. xMOOC compared to an xMOOC), but I need to find research to back this up in order to apply any research on MOOC quality assurance to edX.
RESEARCH LOG
| Date | Task | Comments |
| 20-Apr-2018 | Published Unit 1 Activity 3 to Blog | |
| 24-Apr-2018 | Review blog comments and respond | Incorporated comments from Irwin and Krista into my plan for completing Assignment 1 Critical Inquiry part 4 |
| 26-Apr-2018 | Team Awesome Sauce Virtual Meeting | Had issues with Appear.in, then Google Hangouts. We ended up in our RRU Collaborate room. Meeting went well and we re-focused our plan of attack for the group presentation. |
| 28-Apr-2018 | Conducted 3 hours of research into topic | Focused on RRU Library search and Google Scholar to find articles. Fairly successful as I was able to find 6 more articles related to quality assurance in MOOCs. I was not very successful in finding research that related specifically to quality assurance at edX however. |
| 1-May-2018 | Started back at work | My year sabbatical is over. Expect that much of my work will now have to be done after hours so I will have to readjust my working schedule |
| 2-May-2018 | Started writing Assign 1 Part 4 outline | Started to write the outline for Assignment 1 Part 4…I am a little unclear of the expectations. Asked Dr. DeVries for clarification via moodle discussion board |
| 3-May-2018 | Conducted 2 hours of web research | Conducted 2 more hours of web research for articles. Focused more on perspectives of MOOC quality form the viewpoint of the learner and facilitator. Found 3 articles that will be helpful in writing my final paper. |
| 4-May-2018 | Published first research log to my blog |
Hi Steve,
Thanks for sharing your progress so far and in such a nice, succinct manner I might add 😉
As you mentioned you are looking for more related to edX, I was wondering if you had a chance to check the related research that edX puts out on itself: https://www.edx.org/about/research-pedagogy
I noticed it’s not very easy to search this research as a whole on the edX website but perhaps there would be some good tidbits that relate to quality control within larger topic research papers (ie. that may not be explicitly devoted to your topic but are related to it).
I hope this link leads you to find some more helpful academic research for your topic! I also want to acknowledge that I’m not sure if you may have already looked through this section already. If so, I sometimes find when I look at things a second time after I’ve done more ‘discovering’, new things can pop out at you.
Sounds like you are on a great start and good luck readjusting your schedule to accommodate for work!
I agree, the edX link is not a very well curated or indexed research site. However, already I see the International Review of Research in Online and Distributed Learning (IRRODL) mentioned on the first page, a topnotch open access journal in the field of open online learning. So that’s a good sign that there may be some good pieces in there, but it’s hard to tell their relevance without a proper search tool.
Hi Nicolette,
Thanks for the link, I had not seen this yet.
Thats good advice to “rediscover” and have a second look. I think I will look into that tonight.
Cheers
Hi Steve,
You said in your log that you had challenges with appear.in and hangouts. Collaborate is a good place for groups to meet, but I also wanted to suggest Samepage. When I first used Samepage back in LRNT 521, it had file sharing, a chat function with email notifications of new messages, a calendar with reminders, and shared working pages. Now (brilliantly) they have even added built-in video chatting too. The team members’ faces are in little video boxes stacked in a column along the right of the screen while you work in your shared environment which fills the rest of the screen. I use the Samepage app and it works like a dream.
You said you’re having trouble finding information on quality assurance specifically related to edX, and Team MOOCtastic understands your woes, as specific Coursera info is hard to come by as well. Here is a link to a quora discussion that is not scholarly, but gives a little peek behind the curtain to what an edX insider said about their quality assurance two years ago: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-quality-assurance-methods-of-Coursera-and-edX-to-assure-the-course-quality-on-their-platforms
Hi Angie,
I enjoyed using SamePage as well, I didn’t realize that they had added a video chat feature, that is great!
Thanks for the link to the Quora discussion, that gave me an idea for a new way to approach some of my research.
Cheers!