MOOCs for Research: The Case of the Indiana University Plagiarism Tutorials and Tests

We illustrate a very recent research study that demonstrates the value of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as vehicles for research. We describe the development of the Indiana University Plagiarism Tutorials and Tests (IPTAT). Our new design has been guided by First Principles of Instruction: authentic problems, activation, demonstration, application, and integration. We further discuss our data collection mechanisms and early usage of this new mini-MOOC. In the first study, we investigated a built-in assessment feature for students to evaluate instructional quality and user experience. To do this, we adapted scales from the Teaching and Learning Quality instrument. As a follow-up study, we plan to further investigate patterns of usage of the IPTAT by students through creation of individual temporal maps. We plan to use Analysis of Patterns in Time, a method that provides learning analytics.