Pixel International Conferences

In this paper, we first describe various synchronous and asynchronous methods for enhancing student engagement in big online courses. We showcase the implementation of these methods in the “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI)” course at Luleå University of Technology, which has attracted around 500 students in each of its iterations (twice yearly, since 2019). We also show that these methods can be applied efficiently, in terms of the teaching hours required. With the increase in digitization and student mobility, the demand for improved and personalized content delivery for distance education has also increased. This applies not only in the context of traditional undergraduate education, but also in the context of adult education and lifelong learning. This higher level of demand, however, introduces a challenge, especially as it is typically combined with a shortage of staff and needs for efficient education. This challenge is further amplified by the current pandemic situation, which led to an even bigger risk of student-dropout. To mitigate this risk, as well as to meet the increased demand, we applied various methods for creating engaging interaction in our pedagogy based on Moor’s framework: learner-to-learner, learner-to-instructor, and learner-to-content engagement strategies. The main methods of this pedagogy are as follows: short, and interactive videos, active discussions in topic-based forums, regular live sessions with group discussions, and the introduction of optional content at many points in the course, to address different target groups. In this paper, we show how we originally designed and continuously improved the course, without requiring more than 500 teaching hours per iteration (one hour per enrolled student), while we also managed to increase the successful completion rate of the participants by 10%, and improved student engagement and feedback for the course by 50%. We intend to share a set of best-practices applicable to many other e-learning courses in ICT.

Keywords:  Distance Education