The impact of MOOCs on the performance of undergraduate students in digital signal processing

Signal Processing is a core subject in the curriculum of Electronics Engineering at Universidad Industrial de Santander. Poor student performance and low completion rates are an important concern and professors devote great efforts to devise new teaching strategies. In recent years, massive open online courses (MOOC) have emerged as a disruptive form of online learning with attractive features for higher education. However, despite the attention that they have received by the community, the role that MOOCs will play in the scope of higher education is yet to be determined. In particular, previous research has not conclusively shown whether these courses have a positive impact on the performance of students. This paper proposes a methodology in order to assess the impact of MOOCs and their potential to improve the performance of undergraduate students attending a regular class on Digital Signal Processing (DSP). This work first addresses the challenges in the design of materials for MOOCs on DSP. Subsequently, a case-control study is carried out where the study group takes a regular class simultaneously with a MOOC on the subject. The control and study groups are compared in terms of student's performance, as measured by their grades in theoretical exams. Obtained results show a statistically significant improvement on the performance of students of the study group over the control group.