Title
Learning is Not a Spectator Sport: Doing is Better than Watching for Learning from a MOOC
Abstract
The printing press long ago and the computer today have made widespread access to information possible. Learning theorists have suggested, however, that mere information is a poor way to learn. Instead, more effective learning comes through doing. While the most popularized element of today's MOOCs are the video lectures, many MOOCs also include interactive activities that can afford learning by doing. This paper explores the learning benefits of the use of informational assets (e.g., videos and text) in MOOCs, versus the learning by doing opportunities that interactive activities provide. We find that students doing more activities learn more than students watching more videos or reading more pages. We estimate the learning benefit from extra doing (1 SD increase) to be more than six times that of extra watching or reading. Our data, from a psychology MOOC, is correlational in character, however we employ causal inference mechanisms to lend support for the claim that the associations we find are causal.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1145/2724660.2724681
L@S
Keywords
Field
DocType
oer,course effectiveness,learning by doing,learning prediction,computer uses in education,open education,moocs
Experiential learning,Causal inference,Printing press,Open education,Active learning,Sociology,Spectator sport,Access to information,Multimedia
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
33
2.09
5
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Kenneth R. Koedinger13551403.07
Jihee Kim2332.09
Julianna Zhuxin Jia3362.67
Elizabeth A. McLaughlin414711.51
Norman L. Bier5363.01