TY - JOUR
T1 - How do gender, learning goals, and forum participation predict persistence in a computer science MOOC?
AU - Crues, R. Wes
AU - Henricks, Genevieve M.
AU - Perry, Michelle
AU - Bhat, Suma
AU - Anderson, Carolyn J.
AU - Shaik, Najmuddin
AU - Angrave, Lawrence
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded in part by a grant to the third author from the Illinois Learning Science Design Initiative (ILSDI). Authors’ addresses: R. W. Crues, G. M. Henricks, M. Perry, and C. J. Anderson, 1310 South 6th Street, Champaign, IL, 61820; emails: {crues2, henrick2, mperry, cja}@illinois.edu; S. Bhat, 1308 W. Main Street, Urbana, IL 61801; email: spbhat2@ illinois.edu; N. Shaik, Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning (CITL), 901 W. University Ave., Suite 201, Urbana, IL 61802-2777; email: shaik@illinois.edu; L. Angrave, Siebel Center for Computer Science, 201 North Goodwin, Urbana, IL, 61801; email: angrave@illinois.edu. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. © 2018 ACM 1946-6226/2018/09-ART18 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3152892
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 ACM.
PY - 2018/9
Y1 - 2018/9
N2 - Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)-in part, because of their free, flexible, and relatively anonymous nature—may provide a means for helping overcome the large gender gap in Computer Science (CS). This study examines why women and men chose to enroll in a CS MOOC and how this is related to successful behavior in the course by (a) using k-means clustering to explore the reasons why women and men enrolled in this MOOC and then (b) analyzing if these reasons are related to forum participation and, ultimately, persistence in the course. Findings suggest that women and men have different reasons for taking this CS MOOC, and they persist at different rates, an outcome that is moderated by forum participation.
AB - Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)-in part, because of their free, flexible, and relatively anonymous nature—may provide a means for helping overcome the large gender gap in Computer Science (CS). This study examines why women and men chose to enroll in a CS MOOC and how this is related to successful behavior in the course by (a) using k-means clustering to explore the reasons why women and men enrolled in this MOOC and then (b) analyzing if these reasons are related to forum participation and, ultimately, persistence in the course. Findings suggest that women and men have different reasons for taking this CS MOOC, and they persist at different rates, an outcome that is moderated by forum participation.
KW - Android app development
KW - Forum participation
KW - Gender gap
KW - Learning goals
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85051488362&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85051488362&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3152892
DO - 10.1145/3152892
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85051488362
VL - 18
JO - ACM Transactions on Computing Education
JF - ACM Transactions on Computing Education
SN - 1946-6226
IS - 4
M1 - 18
ER -