Massive open online courses (MOOCs) collect essentially complete records of all student interactions in a self-contained learning environment, with the benefit of large sample sizes. Building on our data mining of the first course in MITx (now edX) we demonstrate ways to analyze data to illustrate important issues in the course: how to distinguish browsers from certificate-earners, which resources were accessed the most and how much time was allocated by certificate-earners. Each topic is addressed via appropriate displays that, in future courses, can be updated in real time. Furthermore, we stress that analytics can provide useful information to teachers, to resource creators (authors), and to members of organizations trying to improve their MOOCs.
The number of accesses of various course components in 6.002x by those active each day, which we call activity, is shown in Fig. 2. Homework and laboratory activity has consistent periodicity with the number of unique users per day, while lecture questions do not share this periodicity and also suffer a downward trend in overall activity for the term. For learning based components, Discussion activity is the only component sharing periodicity with the unique users per day, suggesting a correlation with for-credit activity. These observations may imply that students working on graded activities do not utilize many learning-based resources.
Time represents the principal cost function for MOOC students, and it is therefore important to study how students allocate time among available course resources. Of the course components offered in 6.002x, Lecture Videos and Homework generally took the most time each week. Discussion Boards (which were voluntary) represent the next highest level of time allocation by students. It is also interesting that the Discussion time trends upward relative to homework time for later weeks in the course, suggesting increased use by students doing homework. A downward trend is observed for Lecture Questions. Other course components have consistent time across the course, but appear to have minimal activity. 4 References.