▲ Ma Lin Xiu

Abstract: With the deepening of educational informatization, new teaching concepts such as large-scale open online courses and SPOC have attracted the attention of educators. However, what is the learning effect based on large-scale open online courses and SPOC? Has online autonomous learning really happened? Starting with the teaching practice of computer public course in flip classroom mode, the research group, by collecting the first-hand data of students' learning effect on different platforms, and cooperating with the questionnaire survey and learners' learning experience, demonstrates the difference of learning effect between the two learning modes, points out the limitations of LSS and its learning mode, and affirms the advantages of SPOC LSS. Finally, combined with the research conclusion, it emphasizes the important role of LSS in paying attention to students' personality and constructing students' real-time feedback mechanism, and puts forward some suggestions on the management of online learning and the construction of LSS.

Keywords: large-scale open online course SPOC online learning learning effectiveness learning support system

Funded projects: This research is one of the series of achievements of the educational reform project of the Ministry of Education "Curriculum Group Construction for Cultivating Future Teachers' Computational Thinking Ability" (projectNo.: Ministry of Higher Education 20 12-15), and it is also the teaching mode reform of Beijing 2012 "Information Technology Public Course".

【 China Library Classification Number 】 G434 【 Document Identification Number 】 A 【 Document Number 】1672-0008 (2016) 04-0043-09

I. Research questions and their background

(A) Research background

The deepening of educational informatization provides a good material foundation and supporting platform for the reform of teaching mode. Various new teaching modes based on the Internet have mushroomed, such as large-scale open online courses (large-scale open online courses), SPOC (small private online courses, small-scale restricted courses, FCM (flipped classroom mode) and so on, which constantly impact the brains of front-line teachers, forcing them to constantly adjust their teaching methods and habits to meet the teaching reform goals [1].

Since the Ministry of Education started the national excellent course construction project in 2003, the state has invested heavily in the construction of more than 2,000 national network excellent courses. At the same time, there are countless provincial and municipal quality courses and school-level quality courses, which have covered all categories and disciplines of school education. Since the concept of large-scale open online courses appeared, large-scale open online courses of foreign famous schools such as Harvard Open Course and Yale Open Course began to enter China, and famous schools such as Tsinghua, Peking University and Beijing Normal University began to build large-scale open online courses.

Judging from the construction objectives of the top-quality courses and large-scale open online courses, the results will provide the best learning environment and educational resources for the whole people, realize the dream of "everyone can go to Harvard at home", fundamentally change the original teaching mode and greatly improve the education level of citizens. Some scholars even put forward the view that "large-scale open online courses can gradually replace school education". However, did online learning really happen as expected by scholars?

Did online learning really happen?

With the popularization of the teaching mode of large-scale open online courses, the limitations of large-scale open online courses are increasingly apparent. Compared with the vigorous construction of top-quality courses and large-scale open online courses, the effect of online learning is not ideal. From the practical application of excellent courses and large-scale open online courses, the click-through rate of many courses is very low, and a large number of classroom recorded videos are almost ignored. Even if the student status belongs to the online education college, the students majoring in online education are far from the expected number of visits to the required online courses in their educational institutions. The direct consequences of this phenomenon are: (1) students always feel that the knowledge and skills acquired based on online learning environment are not solid enough; (2) Graduates who have obtained academic qualifications and degrees through online education are often questioned when they participate in recruitment or job competition.

This has to cause researchers to think: has online autonomous learning really happened? What is the effect of online learning? What kind of online learning environment do our students need? This is a problem that teaching researchers must face squarely. In this case, foreign scholars put forward a new concept-SPOC corresponding to the teaching of large-scale open online courses, and put forward the concept of "small personalized online courses for students' personality characteristics" [2]. Can this idea solve the dilemma faced by online learning at present?

(3) Research status at home and abroad

Large-scale open online courses are based on online courses, absorbing learners from different regions, different types and different knowledge levels to participate in online learning environment, and organizing these learners into a common learning community, so that students from different regions can realize social knowledge construction in different time and space through the Internet [3]. Large-scale open online courses provide a glimmer of light for the sharing of educational resources and educational equity. Therefore, once the large-scale open online courses appeared, they attracted the attention of many educators. The concept of large-scale open online courses began to appear in 2009 and became a hot word on 20 12. By searching domestic academic papers through China HowNet, more than 2,000 articles related to large-scale open online courses were found, ranging from 2 articles in 20 10 to 1300 articles in 20 15. The total number of papers has increased year by year, reflecting the popularity of large-scale open online courses in the field of education. Judging from the published papers, the research on exploring large-scale open online courses to support subject teaching accounts for a relatively large proportion, accounting for about 40%; About 20% of the research discussed the influence of large-scale open online courses on the current education reform, and some researches analyzed the application technology of large-scale open online courses, accounting for about 1%. Some scholars have analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of large-scale open online courses in learning support from the perspective of their characteristics [4]. In a word, most scholars have affirmed the value of large-scale open online courses in teaching and conducted systematic research from different angles.

SPOC is a new concept in recent two years, which is an online learning form based on large-scale open online courses and aimed at the shortcomings of large-scale open online courses. SPOC emphasizes that teaching should be based on students' individual characteristics and provide students with a small-scale and private online learning environment. It is an online course form that meets students' personalized characteristics and manages and controls students in a targeted manner. The exploration of SPOC mode began from 20 14. In the two years since 20 14, only more than 60 articles have been published, most of which are closely combined with the concept of large-scale open online courses. Among them, Kang Yeqin's article "Post-OCW Era of Online Education —— Analysis of SPOC [5]" published on 20 15 and Wei Xu's "From OCW to SPOC—— Academic Dialogue Based on the Practice of OCW Courses in University of California, Berkeley and Tsinghua University" [6] published on 20 15 both produced great results. He Bin and Cao Yang's paper "SPOC: Teaching Process Innovation Based on Large-scale Open Online Courses" elaborated the new features of large-scale open online courses [7].

Second, research design and implementation.

(A) the design of the research process

This speculative way can't prove the influence degree of large-scale open online courses and SPOC on online learning effect. Only based on the individual experience of front-line students and the objective data such as the quality and frequency of their real participation in learning activities with the help of learning resources, can we scientifically demonstrate "Did students really learn deeply with the help of learning platforms?" "In what way do learning platforms (OCW and SPOC) support students to realize knowledge construction?" "Will the type of learning platform have a greater impact on students' final learning effect? "Waiting for questions.

To this end, this study has formulated the following research flow: First, according to the large-scale open online courses and SPOC specifications, a learning support platform is built, and two groups of teaching classes with no significant difference in knowledge level and learning style are arranged, and learning is started based on these two platforms respectively. Then, according to the above two groups of teaching practice, first-hand information is obtained from three different channels. Secondly, through data analysis, explore the key factors that affect the learning effect. Finally, based on the above research conclusions, the existing problems and doubts are summarized, and the second round of teaching practice is carried out to verify the research conclusions and ensure the rigor and scientificity of the research.

In this process, data collection is very important, and its coverage and objectivity have an important impact on the research conclusion. The data collected in this study mainly includes three aspects: (1) data from questionnaires and interviews to obtain students' subjective experience of the two teaching platforms; (2) Collect two-year completion rate data and make a summative evaluation of learning effect: use the platform to track students' use of teaching videos and self-test exercises to obtain objective data, so as to make a process evaluation of learning effect; (3) Collect students' test scores and academic works as the final objective data to evaluate the learning effect.

(2) Definition of related concepts

The concept of 1 Light Spot Scanner

LSS is a learning support system, also known as learning management system, which refers to a network platform that can provide support for learning activities. This platform is usually a "browser-server" mode, which at least includes the functions of learning resource management, student management and homework management. Both large-scale open online course teaching and SPOC teaching need to be rooted in LSS platform. In this study, LSS based on the concept of large-scale open network course is called large-scale open network course LSS, while LSS based on the concept of SPOC is called SPOC·LSS for short.

The concept of 2.2. MOOC (massive open online course)

Massive Open Online Course is the abbreviation of massive open online course, which means massive open online course. Large-scale open online courses are online courses based on the Internet. With the openness of the Internet, we can provide students with learning resources, thus providing them with a learning environment that is not limited by time and region. Because large-scale open online courses spread through the Internet, there are no restrictions on students who participate in learning, so large-scale open online courses are an open form of education. In addition, most students of large-scale open online courses adopt asynchronous learning mode, students choose their own learning resources and decide their own learning progress, so it is also a typical "learning-centered" learning mode based on e-Learning theory [8]. In the specific teaching practice, both the learning resources and the teaching activities of large-scale open online courses must be organized with the help of LSS platform, referred to as large-scale open online course teaching platform or large-scale open online course LSS.

Openness is the biggest advantage of large-scale open online courses. The emergence of large-scale open online courses can organize students from all over the world who want to learn a certain content into a common learning community, thus prompting them to transcend geographical barriers and realize social knowledge construction in different time and space through the Internet [9]. In the learning community based on large-scale open online courses, although the participants' identities, learning habits and cognitive styles are very different, they are all organized into this virtual community based on their interest in the same course content.

The concept of 3.3. SPOC

With the popularization of teaching practice of large-scale open online courses, the limitations of large-scale open online courses are becoming increasingly obvious. For large-scale open online courses, the openness characterized by "no preconditions" and "no scale restrictions" is both its advantages and its limitations. Professor Peter ESidorko of the University of Hong Kong analyzed the shortcomings of large-scale open online courses. He pointed out that because there are no preconditions, students' knowledge base is uneven in large-scale open online courses. If too many students with weak knowledge base take part in OCW courses, the completion rate of OCW courses will be very low, which will not only damage students' self-confidence, but also affect teachers' teaching enthusiasm [10].

Based on the problems existing in large-scale open online courses, educators are urged to further rethink the organizational model and management form of online learning, and "necessary knowledge base", "scale limitation" and "personalized support" have become the problems that online course developers must rethink. Based on this, Professor Fox put forward the concept of SPOC. SPOC(Small Private Online Course) is the abbreviation of small private online course, which is put forward relative to the concept of large-scale open online course. Compared with large-scale open online course, "small" limits the size of students and requires not too many participants in each learning community, which is beneficial to teacher management. Private and open, on the other hand, refers to the matching and pertinence between the course content and students, that is, setting necessary access conditions for students, and only applicants with basic knowledge can be included in the SPOC course [1 1].

Combing the successful teaching cases of SPOC, it is found that most SPOC courses are mainly for college students, and only a few SPOC courses are for off-campus online learners. For college students, the SPOC course mainly adopts the combination of classroom teaching and online learning, usually in the form of lecture video or micro-video, supplemented by real-name online interaction and online evaluation; However, for the SPOC course facing the society, it is necessary to clearly set the application conditions in advance and select students from the applicants according to the application conditions. In this process, we also need to pay attention to control the number of participants not to exceed the preset scale. No matter which mode is adopted, the SPOC course strengthens the management and encouragement of the selected students, and requires the selected students to actively participate in online discussions, ensure the study time, carefully complete various exercises and tests, and take the prescribed examinations [12]. Therefore, SPOC teaching emphasizes the individualization and minority of learning support, and pays attention to the management and encouragement of learners [13].

Comparison between 4.4. SPOC and large-scale open online courses

Although there is not much difference between SPOC and large-scale open online courses in terms of technical platform, learning resource type and course system organization structure, SPOC has undergone great changes in teaching design, teaching management concept, teaching process organization and teaching operation mode [14]. Therefore, some scholars believe that SPOC is the inheritance, perfection and transcendence of large-scale open online courses. Comparing the characteristics of SPOC and large-scale open online courses, it is found that the differences between them are mainly reflected in the following aspects, as shown in table 1.

(3) the implementation process of the study

1. Preliminary preparation

First of all, in the teaching service platform of basic computer courses of Beijing Normal University (-LSS for short), a complete online course is developed for the course of Dynamic Website Design and Development. In this online course, in addition to providing students with three kinds of high-quality video resources (micro-video, classroom video and similar videos of peer teachers), students are also provided with auxiliary resources such as self-test and self-diagnosis questions and operation materials. At the same time, Bunsen -LSS provides students with public modules such as communication forum, homework release and management. In addition, in order to monitor students' learning effect, Bunsen -LSS has specially developed a learning monitoring module, which uses the platform to automatically record the length of time students watch video resources each time, so as to grasp the actual learning time of students.

Secondly, under the guidance of relevant literature and theories, a questionnaire for students is designed. The questionnaire is mainly multiple-choice and presented in the form of five-level scale. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire are ensured by small-scale investigation and Delphi method. Obtain students' self-evaluation of their own learning through questionnaire survey.

2. Specific implementation process

20 13 When we started the course of Dynamic Website Design and Development, we basically followed the teaching philosophy of large-scale open network courses and organized the whole teaching process. Take the mode of "free registration, anonymous use of teaching platform and open courses for all students" to organize teaching. The teaching of 20 14 is basically organized according to the idea of SPOC. First of all, there are restrictions on the majors and grades of elective students, and only sophomores in science (with the foundation of C language design) are allowed to take this course; Secondly, eligible students must register with their real names in Bunsen -LSS. Only real-name users can access the relevant learning resources of the course "Dynamic Website Design and Development", and they must conduct self-diagnosis or participate in various discussions with Bunsen -LSS.

Comparing the teaching modes of the two grades, the differences are mainly reflected in three aspects: (1) the differences in guiding concepts. The teaching of 20 13 emphasizes openness and "open door teaching", without any restrictions on the knowledge and professional conditions of registered members; The teaching of 20 14 emphasizes the "applicability" of the content, and pays attention to the applicability level of the course content to registered students in the course selection stage. Students who do not apply the course content will not be passed. (2) The pertinence of learning resources is different. The teaching activities of 20 13 are guided by the concept of large-scale open network courses, with classroom video as the main part and micro-video organization teaching. There are abundant learning resources, which can adapt to different types and levels of students. 20 14 teaching activities are guided by the idea of SPOC, and based on the currently selected students, the learning resources are screened, and the low-difficulty and high-difficulty resources are eliminated, so that the resources are more adaptable and targeted. (3) The management mode in the teaching process is different. 20 13 in the teaching process, there is no constraint on the learning process of registered members, emphasizing students' autonomy, encouraging students to learn independently and freely combining to carry out cooperative learning. Therefore, these students' use of LSS platform is "anonymous"; 20 14 in the teaching process, students are required to use LSS platform with their real names, and teachers also participate in LSS forums and discussions [16].

Third, data analysis and conclusion.

Completion rate of different types of learning modes

In the course of 20 13, a total of 329 students applied for registration on the teaching platform, and all the applications were approved by the teachers. By the third week, 192 people had dropped out of school (mainly students in liberal arts departments such as Chinese, history and philosophy), and 137 people were selected; By the ninth week (mid-term), another 60 students had dropped out of school. At the end of the term, 39 students took the final exam, except for 1 student, 38 students finished the class. The final completion rate is only 1 1.5%.

In the course of 20 14, it was stipulated in advance that "only sophomores of science are allowed to take this course", so a total of 64 students applied to register for this course, and 59 students were approved by the teacher (5 students from the Institute of Physical Education were not approved because they did not have the knowledge of elective courses). By the end of the course selection week (the third week), 52 students decided to take this course. At the end of the term, 5 1 students took the final exam, and 5 1 students all passed, that is, 5 1 students finished their classes. Therefore, among the students directly elected, the completion rate reached 98%.

After the interview, I found that many liberal arts students are very interested in web design and dynamic web pages, and they have the internal motivation to learn the course "Dynamic Web Design and Development", so they are very enthusiastic about choosing courses. However, after registering for this course, you will find that you can't be competent for the course content because you didn't take the course first, so you have to drop out. In addition, some students are very interested and enthusiastic at the beginning of the course selection, but due to poor time management ability, they have insufficient investment in this course in the early stage, so they can only "cram for the Buddha's feet" before the final exam. The final dropout rate of these students is also very high.

(B) Video-on-demand rate under different learning modes

In view of the fact that 20 13 courses are organized by the idea of large-scale open network courses, its characteristics are: (1) "rich resources, respect for students' personalized learning habits" and "anonymous use of learning platforms by students"; (2) In terms of student management, teachers only ask students to order micro-videos or record videos in class by way of announcements, without linking the quality and quantity of students' on-demand videos with the final comprehensive evaluation.

Because the teaching effect of 20 13 is not good, 20 14 changed the teaching mode of this study, and made the following adjustments: (1) The resources that are too difficult and too easy were eliminated from the teaching resources, and the long videos recorded in class were removed, only the case-oriented micro videos were retained; (2) Limited selection and qualification examination were conducted for the students, who were required to use LSS under their real names, and it was clearly pointed out that the length of time students watched videos and the quality and quantity of students' participation in teaching forums were automatically recorded by LSS, which served as sub-indicators of the final comprehensive evaluation. From 20 13 to 20 14, the students' demand for micro-video is shown in Table 2.

As can be seen from Table 2, in the teaching of 20 13, the on-demand rate of recorded videos in the classroom is very low, and the number of students requesting videos is less than once (the total number of recorded videos in each classroom once requested by each student should be greater than 2 192 times), and the total number of times that the entire 45-minute video is fully requested is actually zero, that is, it is taught in 16. 10 1 In the case-oriented micro-video, 137 students watched it completely for 2 times152 times, and the number of times of on-demand over 50% of the playing time was 6 times192 times. In the teaching of 20 14, the situation has been greatly improved compared with 20 13. Although the number of students directly selected is less than half of 20 13, the number of "full broadcast" and "broadcast with more than 50% duration" has been greatly improved compared with 20 13. This shows that the quality of 20 14 students' on-demand has been greatly improved when the total number of on-demand is not much different.

In order to better compare the video-on-demand situation in these two years, this study "averaged" the video-on-demand times in Table 2 and obtained the data shown in Table 3. The average algorithm is as follows: For the total number of people on demand in Table 2, divide it by the number of videos and the number of selected students in turn, and you will get the average number of people on demand, as shown in Table 3.

From the "average" data in Table 3, it can be seen that the quality and total number of students on demand of 20 14 have been greatly improved compared with that of 20 13, especially in the micro-video "complete viewing times", which is nearly five times higher than that of 20 13. When the viewing times exceed 50%, This shows that under the better management and monitoring mechanism, students' learning enthusiasm and learning quality will be greatly improved if they are supported by targeted resources.

(C) the proportion of effective interaction under different learning modes

Collaboration, communication and sharing are important means of online learning, which is of great significance for students to realize social knowledge construction. Comparing the posting and reply of students in Bunsen -LSS on 20 13 and 20 14, we can reflect the level and depth of students' participation in collaborative knowledge construction.

If the topic posts and reply posts related to the course content are defined as "valid posts" and other types of posts are called "invalid posts", then. According to the students' participation in online discussion on 20 13 and 20 14. The data in Table 4 and Table 5 are mainly obtained.

As can be seen from Table 4, the number of student posts in 20 13 is quite large, but the proportion of effective posts is low, only 6.63%. The number of effective posts in 20 14 years accounts for 93.96% of the total number of posts, which means that most of the posts in the forum are effective posts related to the course content. In addition, the number of theme posts in 20 13 is relatively large, and the content of discussion is also very scattered. However, 20 14 posts are highly concerned, and the number of replies to each topic post is relatively high.

In order to further grasp the depth and quality of students' online interaction under the two teaching modes, the author tracked Bunsen -LSS's deep posts (posts with high response times) and extracted three posts with the highest response volume under the two teaching modes, and the data obtained are shown in Table 5.

As can be seen from Table 5, in 20 13 years, most of the top three topic posts have little to do with the course content, and most of the respondents are tourists (non-students of this course), and the reply content has little to do with the course content. In the teaching of 20 14, the top three posts are closely related to the course content, and the theme posts published by teachers become the posts with the highest response, which reflects the leading role of teachers in the discussion [17].

(4) Information obtained through questionnaires and interviews.

In view of the low completion rate and poor teaching effect of students in Grade 20 13, the author grasped the students' views on flipping classroom teaching based on large-scale open online course platform through two rounds of large-scale questionnaire surveys, and then selected 10 students who dropped out before the final exam and invited them to participate in interviews to understand their views on the teaching mode of large-scale open online courses and the reasons for dropping out.

1. Questionnaire survey and its conclusion

Through questionnaire survey, collect students' views on the teaching platform of large-scale open online courses. After data analysis, three dimensions with the lowest scores were found, as shown in Table 6.

2. Based on the information obtained from the interview

Student A: I study Chinese and am very interested in web design. I just want to learn how to make "tall, big and elegant" web pages, but I don't know how to program them. I haven't learned C before, but when it comes to programming, the pressure is getting bigger and bigger, and I have to give up at last.

Student B: I finally dropped out of school because I was afraid of failing the exam. When I was taking classes, I saw various videos on the teacher's website, which made me very confident. After the class started, I always felt that there was a video to watch anyway, so don't worry too much, and you didn't rush me. Therefore, every time I practice class, I am busy with something else first. Suddenly it was the end of the term, so I couldn't catch up and had to give up.

Student C: Without pressure, there is no motivation. I was delayed by myself, but if the teacher urges me again, it may be over.

Student D: I used to have a weak computer foundation, so I want to take this course to make up for it. But in learning, I think the biggest difficulty is that I can't find what I need in the learning platform. When making web pages in the computer room, it is often because of a small detail that there is an error in the web page, but it is difficult to find a way to correct the error. Although there are many resources in the platform, I don't know which one is symptomatic. If I search one by one, I have no patience. Slowly, I lost confidence.

3. Subjective conclusions based on questionnaires and interviews.

Through questionnaires and interviews, the author found that the reasons why a large number of students in grade 20 13 failed to finish their classes were mainly concentrated in five aspects: (1) In the large-scale open online course LSS, there are too many resources and the organization of resources is not targeted. In the process of learning, it is difficult for learners to obtain effective learning support; (2) Because LSS, a large open online course, adopts anonymous system, it ignores the supervision and encouragement of students. However, most students who lack the supervision and encouragement of teachers can't keep a high level of learning motivation. (3) Some students are weak in self-management and time management. In the anonymous large-scale open online course LSS without the teacher's supervision and reminder, it can't keep up with the normal learning progress over time because it often delays learning; (4) In the large-scale open online course LSS, where students are anonymous and teachers are "implicitly dominant", students' sense of class belonging is not strong, their enthusiasm for participating in interaction and discussion is not high, and the quality and quantity of interaction are poor; (5) Some students choose courses only because they don't understand the nature and knowledge requirements of the courses, but they will drop out of school because they can't meet the basic requirements of the courses for transcendental knowledge [18].

Four. Research conclusions and suggestions

(A) the shortcomings and limitations of large-scale open online course teaching

Since the concept of large-scale open online courses appeared in 2009, it has attracted the attention of many scholars and educational administrators. However, with the application and promotion of large-scale open network course teaching, its shortcomings have gradually emerged.