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Self-Regulated Learning in MOOCs: Do Open Badges and
Certificates of Attendance Motivate Learners to Invest More
Simone Haug, Katrin Wodzicki, Ulrike Cress and Johannes Moskaliuk
organizer awards the open badge or certificate of attendance.
So the question is: do self-set external motivators
like open badges support or inhibit active participation
To answer this question, we analyzed whether the decision
to achieve an open badge or certificate of attendance
influenced both self-centered and interactive forms of investment.
A Case-Study of Open Course 2012
The Open Course 2012 (OPCO12) was organized by
three German institutions of higher education that are
engaged in e-learning support and training. The Open
Course took place from April 16 to July 21, 2012. The
OPCO12 covered six topics that were derived from the
Horizon Report 2012 (Johnson, Adams, Cummins, 2012),
a highly regarded trend study conducted by New Media
Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. The
topics were Mobile Apps, Tablet Computing, Game-Based
Learning, Learning Analytics, Gesture-Based Computing
and Internet of Things. Every two weeks a new topic was
covered. Each unit lasted two weeks and addressed one
of the six topics. On Monday at the beginning of each unit
an introduction was given on the OPCO-Weblog. Every
Friday the organizers circulated discussion points to be
covered over the coming week to the OPCO mailing list,
summarizing participants’ contributions. On Wednesday
of the second week an online event took place where
the topic was introduced. These online events consisted
of presentations by experts. All participants were asked
to join the discussion via chat. In addition the blog, news
and comments (of organizers and participants) were published
in a twitter stream with the hashtag #opco12. On
Friday at the end of the second week a second summary
was circulated.
The technical infrastructure of the course consisted
of one central course blog. Here the participants could
access information about organizational issues and the
learning material for all six units. The participants were
motivated to use their own weblog or twitter channel for
activities relating to course topics. Posts in participants’
blogs as well as tweets containing the hash tag ‘opco12’
were aggregated automatically into the course blog.
Regular newsletters and weekly summaries were sent to
participants by email. Adobe Connect was used to facilitate
online sessions as it allows live streaming as well as
recording of online events. During this live event a chat
channel was available for all participants.
Participants and measures of activity
1451 participants registered for the course. For each
unit of two weeks we analyzed the logfiles (visitors per
day on the course website) over the four days when newsletters
were sent out or events took place (see Figure 1).
For each unit we calculated the total number of distinct
users that visited the course blog on these four days.
In addition we used two questionnaires to measure participants’
subjective estimation of their activity. After the
first half of the course the first questionnaire was sent to
all registered participants. 85 participants answered this
first questionnaire, which dealt with the investment of
learners during the first three units. A second very similar,
but slightly extended questionnaire was sent to all registered
participants at the end of the course. It dealt with
the investment of learners during the second three units.
147 participants answered this second questionnaire. In
both questionnaires we asked the participants in which
activities they had participated during each of the six units
of the course (e.g., Did you use twitter).
Their activities were categorized as self-centered forms
or interactive forms of investment. Examples for self-centered
forms of investment were: listening to two weeks’
online events; reading offered materials, the newsletter,
and blog entries about the topics of the course; and researching
additional information. Interactive forms of investment
were: blogging, commenting on blogs, tweeting
and chatting. We also asked the participants if they were
aiming to receive a certificate (open badge or a certificate
of attendance) or not. The certificates and open badges
were not bound to specific exams or inquiries but issued
by request. The participants had to document their own
activities during the course to obtain a certificate or open
badge of attendance from one of the institutions hosting
the course.
Design
For Research Question 1 we used the 6 units (2 weeks
per unit, each unit immediately following the other) of the
course as an independent variable and measured participants’
activity as a dependent variable.
The course blog logfile data was used to measure participants’
activity. As the course blog was the central information
hub, to which all contents of the course were
linked, the number of visitors per unit is an objective
measurement for learners’ activity regarding provided
course material. This measurement was complemented
by subjective measurements of participants’ activity using
the two questionnaires described above. We measured
the amount of active and self-centered investment that
the participants reported in the questionnaires. These
two measurements (objective logfile-data and subjective
reports by the participants) validate each other, providing
a complete picture of participants’ activity during the
course and the development of activity-over-time.
For Research Question 2 we used the course units
(within subjects) and our question regarding participants’
to acquire an open badge or certificate (between subjects)
as independent variables. We again used the amount of
Research Track | 69