An Evolutionary Online Framework for MOOC Performance Using EEG Data

Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) is a scalable, free or affordable online course which emerged as one of the fastest growing distance education platforms in the past decade. One of the biggest challenges that threatens distance education is abnormality in the overall level of consciousness of students while they are taking the course. In this paper, an evolutionary online framework was proposed to improve the performance of MOOCs via noninvasive electro-physiological monitoring methods such as electroencephalography (EEG). Based on the proposed platform, EEG signals can be recorded from users while they are wearing any EEG headsets. EEG measures a brain's spontaneous voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current within the neurons of the brain via multiple electrodes placed on the scalp. A total of eleven extracted features from EEG signals were employed as the inputs of the evolutionary classification algorithm to predict two classes of confused and not-confused for each individual. An accuracy of 89 % was considered significant enough to suggest that there is difference in the EEG signals of individuals with confusion versus not-confused individuals.

I. Introduction

Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) has emerged as one of the fastest growing platforms for distance education in the past five years. An MOOC is a scalable, free or affordable online course which focuses on educational communities. In 2012, the New York Times published an article, “The Year of the MOOC” to reflect the importance of this phenomenon [1]. Stanford Online, Coursera, edX, Udacity, and Khan Academy are only a few notable providers of MOOC. Unlike traditional educations, MOOCs require additional skills including video-graphy, instructional designs, and IT platforms. A typical MOOC instructor requires over 100 hours for recording online lecture videos and course preparation before class starts. The instructor also spends 8–10 hours per week on the course, including participation in discussion forums and Q & A sessions [2].