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Identifying course characteristics associated with sociodemographic variation in enrollments across 159 online courses from 20 institutions.

ABSTRACT: Millions of people worldwide use online learning for post-secondary education and professional development, but participation from historically underrepresented groups remains low. Their choices to enroll in online courses can be influenced by course features that signal anticipated success and belonging, which motivates research to identify features associated with sociodemographic variation in enrollments. This pre-registered field study of 1.4 million enrollments in 159 online courses across 20 institutions identifies features that predict enrollment patterns in terms of age, gender, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status. Among forty visual and verbal features, course discipline, stated requirements, and presence of gender cues emerge as significant predictors of enrollment, while instructor skin color, linguistic style of course descriptions, prestige markers, and references to diversity do not predict who enrolls. This suggests strategic changes to how courses are presented to improve diversity and inclusion in online education.

SUBMITTER: Kizilcec RF

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7556443 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Identifying course characteristics associated with sociodemographic variation in enrollments across 159 online courses from 20 institutions.

Kizilcec René F RF Kambhampaty Anna A

PloS one 20201014 10

Millions of people worldwide use online learning for post-secondary education and professional development, but participation from historically underrepresented groups remains low. Their choices to enroll in online courses can be influenced by course features that signal anticipated success and belonging, which motivates research to identify features associated with sociodemographic variation in enrollments. This pre-registered field study of 1.4 million enrollments in 159 online courses across ...[more]

PMID: 33052947

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Project description:This paper aims to survey language teaching MOOCs that promote intercultural competence (IC). Specifically, the survey aims to identify the keywords most relevant to MOOCs with IC components, the languages taught, the offering countries, and the embedded soft skills. The selection of keywords is important because they can indicate connection between different disciplines. After trialing a broader set of keywords in several rounds of initial search, we identified five keywords that are the most relevant to language education with IC components on MOOCs: culture, intercultural, cross culture, multi culture, and society. Then courses with these five keywords on language learning are selected for further analysis. The results are summarized as follows: (1) Most language teaching MOOCs are found under the keyword “culture,” indicating a strong connection between language education and intercultural communication; (2) In terms of the target languages and the offering countries, it is found that English, Chinese, and Spanish are the major languages widely taught in the context of intercultural competence; China, United States, and Ireland are the three countries which offer the highest numbers of MOOCs in this respect; United States, United Kingdom, and Australia are the three countries which offer the highest numbers of MOOCs of different languages. The results indicate that a limited number of languages and offering countries dominate the language learning MOOCs. The study calls for a plurality of languages and cultures to be taught through MOOCs, making more diversified knowledge systems accessible to global audiences. (3) The language teaching MOOCs not only focus on language but also aim to foster five types of soft skills (language learning skills, communication skills, business and entrepreneurship skills, career development skills, and cultural development skills), suggesting that intercultural competence and its related soft skills are usually important components embedded in such MOOCs courses.

Dataset Information

Identifying course characteristics associated with sociodemographic variation in enrollments across 159 online courses from 20 institutions.

Publications

Identifying course characteristics associated with sociodemographic variation in enrollments across 159 online courses from 20 institutions.

Similar Datasets

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