Various Aspects of the Human Factor in Online Education

Abstract

The goal of this proceeding is to summarize the current research trends in human factors of studying Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and to quantify the frequency of literature publications each of these trends. This proceeding performs quantitative analysis of 154 sources, grouped by key aspects of research: psychological, technological, and physiological, and by the main object/subject of study: learner, instructor, or teaching methodologies. Based on the results of this analysis, two suggestions can be made: a.) further research of effective human-computer interactions in online education may involve studying basic physiological and psychological processing of information received through mobile devices and computer interfaces, and b.) more attention may be devoted to instructor’s side of MOOCs: their experience, needs, and feedback.