关于慕课，人们在研究什么？

大规模开放在线课程是在在线课程的基础上发展起来的一个新生事物，也是一个实践先行的研究领域。随着慕课的发展和人们对慕课的认同感越来越高，有关慕课的研究也逐渐引起人们的关注。

慕课研究计划（MOOC Research Initiative，MRI) 是由比尔盖茨与梅琳达基金会（the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation）所资助的旨在探索大规模开放在线课程潜力，通过更加个性化、更加支付得起的路径来帮助人们接受高中后教育。该计划由加拿大阿萨巴斯卡大学（Athabasca University）领导和管理。

MRI的网址为：http://www.moocresearch.com/

 

从今年7月初开始，MRI一直在对各种研究申请进行评审。从MRI网站上发布的消息，MRI最初征集到266份研究计划，经过同行盲审，有80个申请得到机会，通过了第一轮的评审。之后，其中79份申请按要求在截止日期之前提交了完成的申请材料。经过进一步评审，其中28个研究计划获得资助。

从获得资助的这28个研究中，大体上可以看出，关于慕课，人们目前在研究什么？

以下为获得 MRI 资助的慕课研究课题：

1. The discursive construction of MOOCs as educational opportunity and educational threat: Neil Selwyn and Scott Bulfin

2. The Life Cycle of a Million MOOC Users: Laura Perna, Alan Ruby and Robert Boruch

3. Professional Learning through Massive Open Online Courses: Allison Littlejohn and Colin Milligan

4. Characteristics and completion rates of distributed and centralised MOOCs: Martin Weller and Katy Jordan

5. Conceptualising interaction and learning in MOOCs: Rebecca Eynon, Chris Davies, Nabeel Gillani and Taha Yasseri.

6.Peer Assessment and Academic Achievement in a Gateway MOOC: Mark Warschauer, Suhang Jiang, Adrienne Williams, Diane O’Dowd, Thurston Domina and Padhraic Smyth.

7. Investigating the benefits of embedding motivational messages in online exercises: Joseph Jay Williams, John Mitchell and Neil Heffernan

8. Social Network Formation and its Impact on Learning in MOOC-Eds: Shaun Kellogg, Kevin Oliver and Sherry Booth.

9. Enabling Resilient Massive Scale Open Online Learning Communities through Models of Social Emergence: Carolyn Rose

10. MOOCs Personalization for Various Learning Goals: Sergiy Nesterko and Svetlana Dotsenko

11. Secondary School Students and MOOC’s: A Comparison between Independent MOOC Participation and Blended Learning: Rosemary Evans, Dilip Soman, Laurie Harrison and Christopher Federico

12. The Relations Between MOOC Participants’ Motivational Profiles, Engagement Profile and Persistence: Bruno Poellhuber, Terry Anderson, Jacques Raynauld, Jean Talbot and Normand Roy

13. Understanding the Relationship MOOC Students Have with Traditional Institutions of Higher Education: Christopher Brooks, Stephanie Teasley and Steven Lonn.

14. Understanding Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a Pathway to Employment for Low-Income Populations: Tawanna Dillahunt and Stephanie Teasley.

15. MOOC Learner Motivation and Course Completion Rates: Yuan Wang and Ryan Baker.

16. Learning Analytics for Smarter Psychological Interventions: Daniel Greene, Carol Dweck and John Mitchell

17. Beyond and Between “Traditional” MOOCs: Agile and Just-in-Time Learning: Jennifer Campbell, Alison Gibbs, Laurie Harrison and Stian Håklev

18. Writing to Learn and Learning to Write across the Disciplines: Peer-to-Peer Writing in Introductory-level MOOCs: Denise Comer and Dorian Canelas

19. Hatch, match, and dispatch: Examining the relationship between student intent, expectations, behaviours and outcomes in six Coursera MOOCs at the University of Toronto: Laurie Harrison, Carol Rolheiser, Stian Håklev and Chris Teplovs

20. UW System College Readiness Math MOOC Study: Robert Hoar

21. Mapping the Dynamics of Peer-to-Peer Interaction in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Don Huesman

22. Promoting a Higher-Level Learning Experience: Investigating the Capabilities, Pedagogical Role, and Validity of Automated Essay Scoring in MOOCs: Erin Reilly, Stephanie Corliss, Cynthia Louden, Kyle Williams, Emily Cicchini, Donna Kidwell and Dawn Zimmaro

23. Developing data standards and technology enablers for MOOC Data Science: Kalyan Veeramachaneni and Una-May O’Reilly

24. Patterns of Persistence: What Engages Students in a Remedial English Writing MOOC?: John Whitmer, Eva Schiorring and Pat James

25. Detecting and Analyzing Subpopulations within Connectivist MOOCs: Martin Hawksey and Maren Deepwell

26. Finding and Developing Talent: The Role of Employers in the Future of MOOCs: Keith Whitfield, Alexandria Walton Radford and Vera Luck

27. MOOC instructional design principles: Ensuring quality across scale and diversity: Martha Cleveland-Innes, Derek Briton, Mike Gismondi and Cindy Ives

28. A crowdsourced MOOC: David Cormier and Piotr Mitros

另据 MRI网站透露，2013年12月5-6日，在美国阿灵顿的得克萨斯大学将举行大规模开放在线课程研究会议，也许算做是获得资助的28个项目的中期汇报会吧！不仅如此，此次会议将成为MOOC历史上最大规模的学术会议。

期待这个会议的召开！