Introducing Context-Awareness to MOOC Systems

Massive open online courses (MOOC) are shaping the future of education, moving studies outside class rooms, and changing the way people attain knowledge. It provide options to both universities and students. It enables students to have access to high quality courses offered by prestigious universities and top ranked professors for free or for affordable prices. At the same time, it enables universities to widen their scope and get access to worldwide prospect students. This brings in challenges to both universities and students. Universities need to address a full range of students, from different backgrounds, education levels, and specializations. Also, due to competition and variety of other MOOC service providers, universities need to establish effective techniques to persuade students to join and get engaged in its provided courses. On the other hand, students are faced with various options of universities and courses. This paper aims to tackle the challenges of 1) marketing courses for massive target audience, and 2) engaging students into the depth of the provided courses to attain effective, high quality education. We apply context-awareness techniques and principles to address these challenges. Context-Aware systems are becoming ubiquitous. These systems comprise mechanisms to acquire knowledge about the surrounding environment and adapt its behavior and service provision accordingly. Context defines the characteristics and settings of an object or event. It provides insight about the surrounding environment. In this paper, we provide a software architecture for MOOC systems which comprises context-awareness. The architecture includes two context models: one for marketing and the second for effective student engagement in the educational process. Adding context-awareness to MOOC systems helps regulate and restrict service provision to ensure effective wider reach (marketing) and better quality of education (student engagement)..