GR1 - Project Proposal and Analysis

1. Group Members

• Aakriti Shroff
• Kyle Fisher
• Brad Cordova

2. Problem Statement 

Over the past year there has been a rapid increase in college level Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). With a large selection of courses to choose from, millions of users struggle to make an informed decision about which class to take from which provider (EDX, Coursera, Udacity, etc.). With this struggle, there arises a need for an interface that allows users to share their thoughts about courses so prospective online learners can make more informed decisions when subscribing to a course.

For a user, large component of MOOC experience is the ability to network with a large number of learners in class. Given the serious time commitment involved in taking an online course, users want to know what others think about the class. This is currently limited to unorganized conversations, if any, on blog posts, discussion forums, and social networking sites. Users indicate a need for a more organized review system. Additionally, they would like to be recommended classes that are suitable for them. Our interviews revealed that users vary greatly in factors that motivate them to sign up for a class. We use these variables to segment our user groups.  

3. Interviews

*The names have been altered to preserve anonymity.

We conducted 4 interviews with the users. 

• Marky is a professional web designer who is looking to expand his technical skill set. He wants to take an online programming course, but doesn’t know where to take it from. Coursera seemed like an option, but so did EDX. He is afraid that he won’t have enough time to take the course on EDX because he thinks it will be too demanding. Additionally, he doesn’t want to find himself in a trap where he signs up for both courses and finds he prefers one to the other because he thinks it would be a huge waste of his time. His time is his most important asset.

• Ricky is a soccer mom with her associates degree in nursing. She has been a registered nurse for 10 years and now has a daughter who is taking biology. She wants to help, but knows she won’t remember the course she took in college. At the time, she’s searching for something to refresh her memory and test her problem solving skills and wants to know if an online course would suit her needs better than a textbook.

• Joey is a full time college student who uses MOOCs to learn more about topics he’s interested in. He signed up on Coursera for a class called “Algorithms, Part I” - taught by a professor at Princeton. He didn’t really have any information about the course before he signed up other than the syllabus on Coursera, but thought it might be interesting. He admitted that Princeton was a big part of the reason he joined that course over others, but says he would have changed her mind if he knew the professor wasn’t a great teacher beforehand. Joey said that he felt overwhelmed because he didn’t know where to look for a review of the prerequisites.

• Professor Danny has just released an online course at some massively open online course. He’d like to know what his students struggle with and how they find the course. He tried asking his students to fill in surveys throughout the course, but most students didn’t respond. He wants to know how he did as an online professor, and how he can improve his course and course content in the future.

4. User Classes

1. Job Professionals
2. Current Full-Time Students
3. Interested Older Learners (Stay home moms, dads taking refresher courses)
4. Course Instructors

Our research on demographics released by participating MOOC providers show that about 45% of users are Job Professionals. The next largest user group (32%) comprises of full-time students with diverse educational backgrounds (Middle school and high school students, Undergraduates, Graduates, PhDs). The other 23%  are users taking the course in their leisure time and are interested in the course content.  One statistic we found interesting was that 8% of users are  mothers (both stay-home and working moms). Additionally, one thing to keep in mind while designing the interface is that most of the MOOC user population comes from outside the United States (72%).

5. Observations

Through our interviews, we decided on the most important factors that contributed to a user’s decision in signing up for a MOOC were:

• Time Commitment
• Prerequisites
• University affiliation and quality of teaching staff
• Course content
• Number of required assignments/exams

All user groups are concerned with the time commitment required by the course and it’s content. Job professionals and interested old learners are not inclined towards classes that have too many deadlines and required assignments and prefer a self-paced course. Students, on the other hand, care more about the university affiliation. Course instructors are a different user class that we identified, which we will not cater to in the beginning.

6. Obstacles

• Large User Base: Designing for such a large user base is difficult because each user has different motivations to take the course.
• Difficulty in measuring variables: Users are interested in learning about what previous course members felt about the difficulty level of the course, time commitment required, prerequisites, number of required assignments. Not all of these variables are easily quantifiable and are subjective to the user in question. For example, an experienced job professional way find the course relatively easy compared to a high school student also enrolled in it.
• Personalization: Users want personalized recommendations. This is hard given the large user base and subjective variables.k
• Crowdsourced feedback: As our interface should depend on reviews by MOOC users, a potential challenge we will face is attracting enough users to the interface to gain momentum.

7. Goals

Our interface should allow users to obtain information about the factors they are concerned with through:

• Crowdsourced Feedback: Interviews indicated that users are most interested in knowing what past course participants felt about the course.
• Overall rating: Users want an overall score for courses. This can help them put other review data in perspective.
• Comprehensive Review: Users also want a detailed review of the course with information about commitment, teaching staff, quality of forums, content, prerequisites, and difficulty.
• Comparisons of similar/upcoming courses: Our interview with Marky (the web designer) revealed a need for course comparisons. Most users are not time-bound and can choose to take courses later. The interface should allow users to compare existing courses and give them information about relevant upcoming courses.