Quantifying the mismatch between course content and students' dialogue in online learning environments

Sunghoon Lim, Conrad S. Tucker, Kathryn Jablokow, Bart Pursel

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Due to the internet's increasing global availability, online learning has become a new paradigm for distance learning in higher education. While student interactions and reactions are readily observable in a physical classroom environment, monitoring student interactions and quantifying divergence between lecture topics and the topics that interest students are challenging in online learning platforms. Understanding the effects of this divergence is important for monitoring student engagement and aiding instructors, who are focused on improving the quality of their online courses. The authors of this paper propose a topic modeling method, based on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), that quantifies the effects of divergence between course topics (mined from textual transcriptions) and studentdiscussed topics (mined from discussion forums). Correlations between the measured dissimilarities and (a) the number of posts and comments in discussion forums, (b) the number of submitted assignments, and (c) students' average performance scores are presented. A case study involving video lecture transcripts and discussion forum posts/comments in a massive open online course (MOOC) platform demonstrates the proposed method's potential success and informs course providers about the challenges of measuring the topics that interest students.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication19th International Conference on Advanced Vehicle Technologies; 14th International Conference on Design Education; 10th Frontiers in Biomedical Devices
PublisherAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
ISBN (Electronic)9780791858158
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017
EventASME 2017 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2017 - Cleveland, United States
Duration: Aug 6 2017Aug 9 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference
Volume3

Other

OtherASME 2017 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityCleveland
Period8/6/178/9/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Modeling and Simulation

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