Assessment that matters: Balancing reliability and learner-centered pedagogy in MOOC assessment

Learner-centered pedagogy highlights active learning and forma-tive feedback. Instructors often incentivize learners to engage insuch formative assessment activities by crediting their completionand score in the final grade, a pedagogical practice that is veryrelevant to MOOCs as well. However, previous studies have shownthat too many MOOC learners exploit the anonymity to abuse theformative feedback, which is critical in the learning process, to earnpoints without effort. Unfortunately, limiting feedback and accessto decrease cheating is counter-pedagogic and reduces the opennessof MOOCs. We aimed to identify and analyze a MOOC assessmentstrategy that balances this tension between learner-centered ped-agogy, incentive design, and reliability of the assessment. In thisstudy, we evaluated an assessment model that MITx Biology in-troduced in a MOOC to reduce cheating with respect to its effecton two aspects of learner behavior – the amount of cheating andlearners’ engagement in formative course activities. The contribu-tion of the paper is twofold. First, this work provides MOOC de-signers with an ‘analytically-verified’ MOOC assessment model toreduce cheating without compromising learner engagement in for-mative assessments. Second, this study provides a learning analyticsmethodology to approximate the effect of such an intervention.