Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2014

Internet Learning and 4 hours of work a week. At mid-course, 66% thought course load was manageable. At the end of the course, 80% felt the course length was appropriate. Furthermore, 90% of the students gave the course a 4- or 5-star rating, which included comments such as: • “I would like to have more of everything.” • “Great and very informative.” • “I thoroughly enjoyed this course.... It has provided me with some amazing resources to consult and dig deeper into. I am very motivated to continue to study this issue further and start seeking out opportunities to get involved in organizations focused on improving healthcare through educating others in IP collaboration.” • “The case studies give examples of real life scenarios which make me think critically. The follow up discussion opens my mind to other people’s opinions.” The case studies (using Team STEPPS videos from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) and discussion, “From My Perspective” videos, and the lecture videos were favorites (see Figure 2). While Twitter Chat was in the course design as an engagement strategy, there was virtually no engagement with these activities. On reflection, this is perhaps not unexpected given a target audience that includes a large number of nurses who had limited experience with online education. The other interactive activities were found to be very engaging. Figure 2. Favorite part of the course. �� Course completion �� An interesting challenge appeared when new learners continued to enroll in the course up through the last week. This was challenging, as the group had built engagement activities into the course with the assumption that the active cohort of learners would stay reasonably constant. How best to design the MOOC to deal with new learners who join while the course is in session is something the group will be addressing in future iterations of the course. Understanding completion rates is one of the major challenges with MOOCs and UTACON is currently considering what approach to take when reporting completion rates. For example, should one measure success by using the total number of individuals who enroll at any point in the MOOC as the denominator, only the ones who had some level of instructional activity, or only those who expressed in an interest in achieving the goals for the course? There is much debate in the literature right now about this issue. Based on our experience, there is a critical need for more robust subgroup analysis so as to understand how to define and quantify success. Of twenty-nine registered nurses who responded to a participant survey within the MOOC, twenty-eight expressed interest in applying to UTACON’s RN- 62

Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2014 | Page 63