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"The relatively low completion rates of learners have been a central critique as MOOCs grow in popularity. This focus on completion rates, however, implies a monolithic view of disengagement that fails to acknowledge alternative forms of participation in MOOCs. Identifying subpopulations of learners based on their longitudinal engagement with the course allows MOOC designers to target interventions and develop adaptive course features. We develop a simple, scalable, and informative classification method that identifies four prototypical engagement trajectories: Completing learners, who complete the majority of the assessments offered in the class; Auditing learners, who do assessments infrequently (if at all) and engage instead by watching video lectures; Disengaging learners, who do assessments at the beginning of the course but then have a marked decrease in engagement, generally in the first third of the class; and Sampling learners, who enter and exit the course quickly, watching a minimal number of videos at some point during the course."

"In recent posts I've written about how course instructors can support online learners, how to consider the needs of the learner and guide them through phases of dependency to independence. Yet what is the responsibility of the learner? What role does the online student play in his or her learning? And how can this be communicated to him or her? In this post I discuss learning models that assign responsibility to the learner, how these principles can be applied to online learning, and finally describe how instructors and institutions can hand over responsibility to the student."

Imagine how transformative it would be if we could combine self-paced, self-directed postsecondary learning (which has been around in one form or another for millennia) with online delivery of content that has embedded in it both the sophisticated assessment of learning and the ability to diagnose learning problems, sometimes even before the learner is aware of them, and provide just-in-time interventions that keep the learner on track. Add to that the opportunity for the learner to connect to and participate in groups of other learners, and, to link directly to the faculty member and receive individualized attention and mentoring. What you would have is the 21st-century version of do-it-yourself college, grounded in but well beyond the experienced reality of the thousands of previous DIYers such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Thomas Edison.

"To hold ourselves accountable for building upon this favorable impact, we made the Learner Outcomes Survey a permanent part of our platform experience: every learner, anywhere in the world, who completes a course now receives a survey a few months later. And since a lot has changed on Coursera since 2015 - we've gone from 90 active courses on our platform to 2,000, and more than doubled the size of our learner community - we decided it was time for another deep dive into the data."

Twenty-first-century learners have expectations that are not met within the current model of higher education. With the introduction of online learning, the anytime/anywhere mantra taken up by many postsecondary institutions was a first step to meeting learner needs for flexibility; however, the choice and determination of delivery mode still resides with the institution and course instructors. Recently, the massive open online course (MOOC) movement has been introduced as an undeniable force in higher education, and the authors argue that it is distracting leadership from focusing on alternative options for supporting the needs of learners who demand both personalization and real access to learning opportunities. The key element to the MOOC movement is its openness that enables student access to education. In this article, the authors present the multi-access learning framework that envelops the MOOC phenomenon and merges course access modes enabling student choice and agency. The authors report results from a pilot study on one type of multi-access course, where students were able to choose their mode of access. In this case, remote students accessed the course via webcam and joined their on-campus classmates and instructor who were together face-to-face. Implications for multi-access learning in relation to the MOOC movement are discussed.

The course management system (CMS) reinforces the status quo and hinders substantial teaching and learning innovation in higher education. It does so by imposing artificial time limits on learner access to course content and other learners, privileging the role of the instructor at the expense of the learner, and limiting the power of the network effect in the learning process. The open learning network (OLN)-a hybrid of the CMS and the personal learning environment (PLE)-is proposed as an alternative learning technology environment with the potential to leverage the affordances of the Web to dramatically improve learning.

"The xMOOC path is pretty much in place with EdX. They have a good module-based system for presenting and assessing instructivist knowledge. Add on top of that they have connected to other systems through single sign-on and they are down with APIs… they have a system that is ready to connect with other systems as well as allow learners to move in and out as need with ease. The cMOOC system that sits alongside that? That is another beast. Technology exists to create a learner-centered system (see A Domain of One's Own)…. but how does this scale to possibly tens of thousands of learners?"

"Digital student records are evolving in ways that more fully document student achievements. One such form is the Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR), a digital asset that helps students both better understand their learning and share a verifiable record of their knowledge and accomplishments. CLR content can include portfolios, learning artifacts, course descriptions and syllabi, rubrics, performance evaluations, and other materials that help document what a learner knows and can do. The CLR shifts attention away from seat-time metrics to richer measures of an individual's abilities."

"the key reasons include: 1. branding and affiliation with elite institutions and professors, 2. well established courses with rich support on resources and assessment (grading/peer assessment), 3. granting of certificates of achievement or statements of attainment (in recognition), 4. degrees of difficulties - xMOOCs are much easier compared to cMOOCs, 5. perceptions of learners - xMOOCs are based on 1,2,3 above, and 4 - learners - cMOOCs would have to curate resources and create blog posts/join forums, 6. pedagogy, 7. assessment."

" Educators also have personal learning networks (PLNs) enabling them to connect with other learners around the globe. If you're new to this world, personal learning networks are created by an individual learner, specific to the learner's needs extending relevant learning connections to like-interested people around the globe. PLNs provide individuals with learning and access to leaders and experts around the world bringing together communities, resources and information impossible to access solely from within school walls."

"PD, like any type of learning, works best for educators when it is connected, both to what the educators personally find intriguing and what they are professionally immersed in. That means that sticky PD can't be "new day, new topic." Learners have to truly dig in (and want to dig in) in order for the learning to be meaningful. That is why PD has to be cyclical; if we want to help educators become lifelong learners, we have to provide learning opportunities that aren't meant to end."

"I think there may be a certain type of learner that this works for - someone who is highly motivated and purposeful, who is seeking out specific knowledge. And someone who does not require much human interaction - because in spite of the rhetoric about personalization, lectures are inherently impersonal, and videos of lectures are doubly so.   So if the MOOC is ushering in a golden age, democratizing access to knowledge, it seems to have hit a bit of a bump. I think the bump in the road is the learner."

"I am trying to answer this question that Learning Program Designers ask me, when I propose that we can include blogging as an activity for learners in their program design: 'Why should we invest time in convincing a learner to blog?'."

"For me, risk literacy is central to digital literacy. It is our ability to assess the drawbacks, dangers and limits of control in digital and digitally augmented environments. It is an acknowledgement that by using digital tools, no matter how open, if a learner is unable or not required to modify the code to create a learning experience, as much as we'd like them to stay learners, they occupy the role of an "end user.""

"To help education improve itself for all teachers and learners we have to try to connect with those teachers who aren't comfortable with radical shifts in pedagogy or technology. We believe that the best way to encourage positive change in educational practices across the broad landscape of content areas, learning objectives, and teaching philosophies is by providing tools that are easy-to-use, flexible, and comfortable to the majority of teachers and learners. The door to change must be open and the doorkeeper must be deposed"

"Ambi is reinventing how learning takes place in higher education by putting students at the center of the experience: a Learner Engagement Platform designed for the student first, creating a more engaged, involved, and immersive learning experience for everyone. Ambi is the product of three years of research and more than eighteen months of development to build a Learner Engagement Platform where learning takes place without limits. The interface is as familiar as the social networks students use on a day-to-day basis, but with a tight integration to the course materials and features from Learning Management Systems like Canvas from Instructure, and Blackboard."

"In essence, inclusive and open pedagogies are rooted in empathy and require that we take a humanistic approach in creating learning experiences. Empathy creates room to value multiple viewpoints. And when learners are not treated as "others," trust can be established. As empathy, trust, and respect become more prevalent, learners find the confidence to increasingly participate, engage, and take more ownership of their development and their learning. In this way, inclusive pedagogy is open, and open pedagogy is inclusive."

"Marketers are proficient in using a content engagement cycle, a practice for deciding when to engage whom with what kind of content during the customer journey. They plan months, quarters and even years in advance to create a content strategy that aligns with business goals and engages their audience pre- and post-sale. L&D professionals on the other hand, often think about each training session or learning program singularly instead of looking at the overall learner experience. Mapping out the learner lifecycle and assigning content that engages them along the way not only helps create unforgettable learning experiences but also aids in the transfer of knowledge after a training session ends. "

"Every time a student interacts with their university - be that going to the library, logging into their virtual learning environment or submitting assessments online - they leave behind a digital footprint. Learning analytics is the process of using this data to improve learning and teaching. Learning analytics refers to the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about the progress of learners and the contexts in which learning takes place. Using the increased availability of big datasets around learner activity and digital footprints left by student activity in learning environments, learning analytics take us further than data currently available can."

"Cognii VLA is a type of an intelligent tutoring system that engages learners in a real time, one to one coaching conversation, helping them revise their answers. Unlike other tutoring systems, Cognii VLA uses learners' own natural language, not their selections in multiple choice items, as the basis for assessment. Because open response questions are more accurate than multiple choice questions in assessing deep understanding and critical thinking, Cognii VLA can provide better coaching than earlier systems. "