MOOC appraisal: a quality perspective

Abstract

The research analyzes the quality of the norms of five MOOC courses of the EDX platform through the EduTool® instrument, a brand registered in the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (3,087,298, in effect). This tool was the result of a doctoral thesis in the research line of work “2.0 ICT teaching innovation in the European Higher Education Area” of the University Pablo de Olavide of Seville (Spain). This work was developed following the UNE 66181: 2012 norm, where the weights of the sub-factors of each of the dimensions of this standard for quality management of virtual training for MOOCs were analyzed using fuzzy logic. To that end, the quality of a given platform was evaluated by intentional non-probabilistic sampling of the most relevant courses that were available there, in the second quarter of 2014. For the data collection necessary for this procedure, two encoders (a computer engineer and a teacher and educator, both inspectors of education), evaluated the quality of the courses using that instrument. The analytical results show that, in general, the quality of the average MOOC analyzed in the platform is above the score that describes the minimum required by the tool (50%). Thus, the average quality of the platform was 62.62%. Nearly all the courses had a minimum value of the first dimension of 6.66%. As for the second dimension, a quality value of 32.77% was observed. Finally, in the third dimension, all courses exceeded the acceptable quality with 23.19%.

Keywords

• MOOC
• normas UNE
• formación virtual
• calidad de la enseñanza
• valoración
• innovación