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Automatic Group Formation in a MOOC Based on Students’ Activity Criteria

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Book cover Data Driven Approaches in Digital Education (EC-TEL 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10474))

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Abstract

Although there is significant evidence regarding benefits of small group collaboration in small-scale contexts, several challenges have been detected about the use of collaborative learning in MOOCs. Group formation, which is a crucial activity in order to achieve effective collaboration, is scarcely covered in MOOC platforms, which do not allow the formation of teams using criteria defined by the instructors. This paper presents an exploratory study conducted in a seven-week MOOC, comparing our group formation proposal, based on students’ activity criteria, to a baseline grouping function provided by the platform. We analyse the impact of each grouping approach over group performance, group activity, and student satisfaction. The results show initial evidence about the advantages of using the criteria-based group formation approach regarding student satisfaction and group interactions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://elki-project.github.io/tutorial/same-size_k_means.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been partially supported by the Junta de Castilla y León, Spain (VA082U16) and Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spain (TIN2014-53199-C3-2-R). The authors thank the rest of the GSIC/EMIC research team, as well as Roberto Castellanos and the Canvas team for their valuable ideas and support. The authors also thank the Spanish network of excellence SNOLA (TIN2015-71669-REDT).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GSIC-EMIC Research Group, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain

    Luisa Sanz-Martínez, Alejandra Martínez-Monés, Miguel L. Bote-Lorenzo, Juan A. Muñoz-Cristóbal & Yannis Dimitriadis

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  1. Luisa Sanz-Martínez
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  2. Alejandra Martínez-Monés
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  3. Miguel L. Bote-Lorenzo
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  4. Juan A. Muñoz-Cristóbal
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  5. Yannis Dimitriadis
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Correspondence to Luisa Sanz-Martínez .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University, Lyon, France

    Élise Lavoué

  2. German Institute for International Educational Research, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

    Hendrik Drachsler

  3. KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Katrien Verbert

  4. University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France

    Julien Broisin

  5. Pontificia Universidad, Santiago de Chile, Chile

    Mar Pérez-Sanagustín

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Sanz-Martínez, L., Martínez-Monés, A., Bote-Lorenzo, M.L., Muñoz-Cristóbal, J.A., Dimitriadis, Y. (2017). Automatic Group Formation in a MOOC Based on Students’ Activity Criteria. In: Lavoué, É., Drachsler, H., Verbert, K., Broisin, J., Pérez-Sanagustín, M. (eds) Data Driven Approaches in Digital Education. EC-TEL 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10474. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66610-5_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66610-5_14

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