The Authoring of Pedagogical Decisions Informed by Data, on the Perspective of a MOOC

Abstract

Improvements in digital information and communication technologies (DICT) brought a renewed global interest in distance learning. However, there is no equivalent increase in support for the instructors responsible for maintaining such courses, which is evidenced by the large number of dropouts and failures in such courses. In order to provide this support, instructors would have to: (1) to discover situations of pedagogical interest occurring in their courses; (2) understand these situations; (3) make decisions to address them; (4) monitor and evaluate the impact of the decision made. However, instructors do not master these abilities, nor is it practical or appropriate to ask them to do so. We propose a process, and an authoring solution (T-Partner) that implements it, to guide instructors through these 4 steps, promoting cooperation between artificial intelligence and human intelligence. We conducted experiments to evaluate the process and the authoring solution. The results indicate that the process helped instructors make better pedagogical decisions and the authoring solution was positively perceived by the instructors.