Learning transfer: does it take place?

by Chen, Guanliang and Davis, Dan and Gousios, Georgios and Hauff, Claudia and Houben, Geert-Jan

You can get a pre-print version from here.

Abstract

The rising number of MOOCs enable people to advance their knowledge and competencies in a wide range of fields. Learning though is only the first step, the transfer of the taught concepts into practice is equally important and often ne- glected in the investigation of MOOCs. In this paper, we consider the specific case of FP101x (a functional programming MOOC on EdX) and the extent to which learners alter their programming behaviour after having taken the course. We find the practical uptake six months after the course to be small: only  3% of learners that were not applying functional concepts in their programming practice before the start of FP101x, begin using them.

Bibtex record

@inproceedings{CDGHH15,
  author = {Chen, Guanliang and Davis, Dan and Gousios, Georgios and Hauff, Claudia and Houben, Geert-Jan},
  title = {Learning transfer: does it take place?},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop of Learning With MOOCs},
  year = {2015},
  month = oct,
  location = {NY, USA},
  url = {/pub/learning-transfer.pdf}
}

The paper