Examining the Progress of the Participants in the Course “About Programming”
Name
Nora Anete Müller
Abstract
The University of Tartu offers MOOC courses. Many people with different backgrounds and skills take part in these e-courses. For this reason, it is important to know how to support learners with different backgrounds. The bachelor’s thesis is based on the University of Tartu’s pilot course “About Programming”, which was conducted among teachers of computer science and other fields. The aim of this research was to find ways to better support the participants in that course. In order to achieve this goal, research questions were proposed based on the results of previous research about Moodle and learning analytics. The Moodle log files were analysed, the learning habits of different participants and their progress in the course were compared. The results concluded that the structure of the course “About Programming” favours the successful completion of the course. It is important to ensure that everyone can learn at a faster pace and solve tasks in a free order. In addition, learners should be supported in the completing of the first mandatory task, as the accuracy and detail of automatic testing is difficult for first-time programmers. The analysis shows that based on the log files, it is possible to accurately predict the success of the participants in the course. Therefore, feedback on participants’ activity should be obtained during the course to encourage learners to work more with materials and tasks.
Graduation Thesis language
Estonian
Graduation Thesis type
Bachelor - Computer Science
Supervisor(s)
Tauno Palts
Defence year
2022