Comparing MOOC-based platforms: Reflection on pedagogical support, framework and learning analytics

The rapidly expanding, highly evolving online course market (Massive Open Online Course or MOOC) is influential in academia. Many well-known MOOC platforms have emerged over the last decade. There is a need to compare the support level offered by these platforms so that educators can deliver materials and students are able to learn better. Additionally, there is a need to explore what kinds of data are gathered from these platforms to exploit big data analytics opportunities. This paper evaluates three major online MOOC course providers namely Coursera, EdX, and Udacity. We first compare these platforms in terms of pedagogical support and implemented technologies. We then look at the literature and compare learning analytics support among these tools that are currently offered. We also suggest a set of analytics concepts that can aid instructors to mine student´s interaction data and generate guidance for effective teaching.