Grouping Scenario - Concurrency separation/time-bound groups
- Matthew Harrington
Analytics
A single course is self-paced, but runs all year around. To ensure learners are part of a concurrent group of active learners, those groups of learners are created and separated according to their date of enrollment or first activity, and given the same relative due dates.
User Stories
Needs
As a course administrator, I need to be able to configure automatic learner group creation and assignment by enrollment date in order to automatically group learners who start studying around the same time
As a learner in a course with time-bound groups, I need the option of moving to a currently active group at any time, in order to come back to courses I enrolled in previously but did not study, or had to stop part way through studying.
Wants
As a learner, I want the option of moving myself to a more current group at any time in order to come back to courses I enrolled in previously but did not study, or had to stop part way through studying.
As a learner, I do not want to be assigned to a group until I actually start studying, in order to avoid being assigned to a group I am not studying alongside.
As a course administrator, I want to be able to make announcements to all current time-bound groups of learners, while not affecting past or future learners.
As a course administrator, I want to be able to schedule announcements and posts to different groups of time-bound learners in order to provide reminders and information to learners in time-bound cohorts at the relevant points in their learning experience, such as posting a reminder to submit an assignment during week 3 (whenever their relative week 3 is).
As a course administrator, I want to be able to merge time-bound cohorts automatically or manually if a particular automatic cohort is too small to complete group activities or facilitate discussions.
Platform Implementations
Open edX
Open edX has no functionality for this use-case, as cohorts are not created by dates. Open edX does support individual relative due dates for self-paced courses, but not learner groups.
Moodle
Moodle has no functionality for this use-case
Canvas
Canvas has no functionality for this use-case.
Coursera
Coursera is the inspiration for this use-case, as this is how their platform functions and ensures learners always find themselves in a new batch of learners instead of a massive discussion forum or peer review group from years previous with no active learners. They call these automatic rolling cohorts “sessions”.
A full overview of this functionality is available in this presentation:Overview of Automated Cohorts (Sessions) on Coursera's New Platform
Highlights:
60% higher course completion rates
33% faster grading for peer assessments
90% of on-time submissions receive peer reviews within 3 days of submission
When learners fall behind, they are given the option to move themselves to the next cohort of learners while maintaining their current progress
Learners who enrol before the session start date get full access to Week 1 content (including assignments) only, to prevent them from getting too far ahead
Learners who enrol after the session start date (but within 5 days of the session starting) get full access to all content
Learners who enrol in the next cohort (5 days after session starts): full access to Week 1 content (including assignments)