Artificial Intelligence Powered MOOCs: A Brief Survey

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained tremendous popularity in the last few years. Thanks to MOOCs, millions of learners from all over the world have taken thousands of high-quality courses for free. Artificial intelligence (AI) has played an important role in making MOOCs what they are today. By exploiting the vast amount of data generated by learners engaging in MOOCs, AI techniques have been proposed to improve our understanding of MOOC participants and enable MOOC practitioners to deliver better courses. These approaches have also greatly improved student experience and learning outcomes through constructing intelligent and personalized learning trajectories. In this paper, we first review the state-of-the-art AI research making an impact on MOOCs education, emphasizing on works which aim to enhance our understanding of student learning behaviours, improve student engagement, and improve learning outcomes. We then offer an overview of important future research to carry out in sub-fields of AI to enable MOOCs to reach their full potential.