What do star rates for MOOCs tell you? An analysis of pedagogy and review rates to identify effective pedagogical model

Abstract

Massive open Online Courses (MOOCs) are trending in online learning. Number of MOOCs and participants for MOOCs are increasing every day. With the increase number students taking MOOCs, they experience varied effectiveness in courses. We analyzed the students’ feedback reviews from an external review portal which has facility to rate courses. We examined 137 MOOCs and the pedagogical differences between 5 star rated courses and 1 star rated courses. Our results showed that 5 star rated courses has no significant difference in pedagogy for the 1 star rated courses. However, 5 star rated courses commonly had easy to understand content with the excellent instructors’ presentation of the content. Low rate courses had many issues with content, flow of the course and the tools they use. Our analysis revealed students never reviewed anything about collaboration, peer learning and interaction, networking and other major aspects which affect to an effective MOOC yet the rating were mostly based on their personal experience on the total delivery of the course. However, the star rates resemble the reputation of the courses which assist in many other students to make enrolling decisions and it has found that many universities who create courses in MOOCs do not pay much attention to their instructional design or the pedagogy and improve the following iterations based on the students’reviews.