Research Using the MOOC Replication Framework and E-TRIALS

MOOCs have emerged as an important venue for educational research, but the community of researchers who can conduct research in MOOCs is limited. With a few exceptions, running a study in a MOOC is limited to researchers at universities that host MOOCs and the MOOC data sets available to the broad community of research often redact key information such as discussion forum posts. In this paper, we discuss efforts at our university to make our MOOCs and MOOC data available for research to the broader community, using the E-TRIALS platform for experimentation and the MORF platform for secondary data analysis. We provide technical details on both of these tools, discuss the researcher capacity needed to use these tools, and review the research opportunities these tools provide.