Summary of the Project
The project has been developing a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), entitled "Improving Your Statistical Questions," as a continuation of the previous successful MOOC, entitled "Improving Your Statistical Inferences." Over the past 2.5 years, the inaugural course has been met with considerable success, with over 26,000 enrollments, a 4.9 rating, and in excess of 130 positive reviews. The new MOOC has been developed based on extensive experience gained from over 40 PhD workshops conducted worldwide. The objective is to equip researchers with the requisite skills to formulate superior research questions and to utilise the most efficacious tools to answer them. The new course has been designed as a four-week learning module, with the objective of providing busy researchers with the requisite information for their inaugural research projects or to update their knowledge on current best practices in the social sciences. The intended audience comprises lifelong learners, academics, and data scientists.
Aim of the Project
The project has aimed to create a new MOOC that spans four weeks, comprising 12 to 15 lectures of approximately 10 to 15 minutes each, and 8 short assignments requiring approximately 30 minutes to complete. The preliminary pilot of the MOOC is scheduled to be conducted on Coursera with the objective of obtaining feedback from beta testers. The project encompasses the creation of learning materials, incorporation of feedback, development of online Shiny apps for exploring statistical concepts, provision of all educational materials as Open Educational Resources, and integration of in-video and end-of-unit quizzes for comprehension assessment. Additionally, the project aimed to upload all materials and quizzes onto the Coursera platform. Key stakeholders included lecturers, programme directors, teacher support staff, the Information Expertise Centre, the multimedia studio, and teaching and teacher assistants. The project followed the six steps to blended learning, with a structured approach and planned tasks from March to December 2019.
Results and learnings
With over 9000 enrollments, and a positive evaluation of 4.9 out of 5, the MOOC has been a success. The content is considered to be of high quality, and the students enjoy the lectures. The course has proven to provide a useful resource to improve best practices. The MOOC has demonstrated that an online interactive open educational resource provides a valuable format even for somewhat more advanced users (e.g., PhD students and research staff). At the same time, the project has revealed that it is also useful to make the educational material available in a more traditional book format, as this information can more easily be found and re-used than video material. Therefore, I have also repurposed the material to create a free online book. This also enables users who have less time to sample the content. For users with more time, the combination of self-paced lectures and assignments provides learners with varying backgrounds to learn the material. By making the content freely available, learners in countries with less easy access to high quality educational materials are also possible to improve their knowledge.
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