research-article

Teaching Recommender Systems at Large Scale: Evaluation and Lessons Learned from a Hybrid MOOC

Authors:

Joseph A. Konstan,

J. D. Walker,

D. Christopher Brooks,

Keith Brown,

Michael D. EkstrandAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 22, Issue 2

Article No.: 10, Pages 1 - 23

https://doi.org/10.1145/2728171

Published: 15 April 2015 Publication History

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Abstract

In the fall of 2013, we offered an open online Introduction to Recommender Systems through Coursera, while simultaneously offering a for-credit version of the course on-campus using the Coursera platform and a flipped classroom instruction model. As the goal of offering this course was to experiment with this type of instruction, we performed extensive evaluation including surveys of demographics, self-assessed skills, and learning intent; we also designed a knowledge-assessment tool specifically for the subject matter in this course, administering it before and after the course to measure learning, and again 5 months later to measure retention. We also tracked students through the course, including separating out students enrolled for credit from those enrolled only for the free, open course.

Students had significant knowledge gains across all levels of prior knowledge and across all demographic categories. The main predictor of knowledge gain was effort expended in the course. Students also had significant knowledge retention after the course. Both of these results are limited to the sample of students who chose to complete our knowledge tests. Student completion of the course was hard to predict, with few factors contributing predictive power; the main predictor of completion was intent to complete. Students who chose a concepts-only track with hand exercises achieved the same level of knowledge of recommender systems concepts as those who chose a programming track and its added assignments, though the programming students gained additional programming knowledge. Based on the limited data we were able to gather, face-to-face students performed as well as the online-only students or better; they preferred this format to traditional lecture for reasons ranging from pure convenience to the desire to watch videos at a different pace (slower for English language learners; faster for some native English speakers). This article also includes our qualitative observations, lessons learned, and future directions.

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Index Terms

Teaching Recommender Systems at Large Scale: Evaluation and Lessons Learned from a Hybrid MOOC
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
    1. Distance learning
    2. E-learning
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Volume 22, Issue 2

Special Issue on Online Learning at Scale

April 2015

133 pages

ISSN:1073-0516

EISSN:1557-7325

DOI:10.1145/2744768

Editor:
Shumin Zhai
Google, Inc.

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 April 2015

Accepted: 01 January 2015

Revised: 01 January 2015

Received: 01 June 2014

Published in TOCHI Volume 22, Issue 2

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Rulinawaty Purwanto ASamboteng LKasmad MBasit M(2023)Global Trends and Policy Strategies and Their Implications for the Sustainable Development of MOOCs in IndonesiaProceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Administrative Science (ICAS 2022)10.2991/978-2-38476-104-3_47(491-508)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2023
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Murad DToha MMayatopani HDewi MLeandros RMurad SHeryadi YWijanarko B(2023)The Impact of Recommendation System Provided Based on Online Learning Readiness in the MOOC Environment2023 24th International Arab Conference on Information Technology (ACIT)10.1109/ACIT58888.2023.10453910(1-6)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2023
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