MOOC participants really do come from all over the world (2), however the majority of these courses are developed in Western countries and are predominantly provided in English. What does this mean for non-native English speakers? Can they benefit from these courses as much as native speakers? If not, how can we reduce potential language barriers? This is the topic of a study I recently ran.

Availability versus accessibility

While online courses are available to anyone with a stable internet connection, they are not equally accessible to everyone. Language barriers are an important contributor to accessibility issues, as MOOCs are predominantly offered in English while most MOOC participants are not native English speakers. In our study (3), we had 125 non-native English speakers watch multiple educational videos in English. After each video, the students received a quiz for which they could score up to 10 points. By measuring the English language proficiency of the students, we were able to estimate the impact of having a low(er) level of English proficiency on quiz performance. For every scale point different on the 6-point language proficiency test, students scored on average 0.55 points lower on the quizzes. That means that if the most proficient students get a good grade (7 out of 10), other students are likely to score much lower (4 out of 10) due to their English proficiency.

To sub or not to sub

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/) prescribe that every audio medium should be accompanied by visual information, such as subtitles, to increase the level of accessibility. For educational videos (which are often the core content of online courses) this seems to make a lot of sense, as subtitles will help anyone to better understand the content. Right? Maybe not! Whether subtitles have a positive, or possibly even a detrimental effect on learning is a contested issue; While there is convincing evidence that subtitles are helpful when watching a language learning video (4), they appear to hinder learning from content videos where the goal is not to learn a language but to learn about a specific topic (5).

To test the effects of subtitles specifically for MOOC videos, half of the videos in this study had English subtitles enabled, while the other half did not. However, students did not score better when subtitles were enabled. Surprisingly, even the students with a low level English proficiency did not benefit from the subtitles. So, how can we improve how much students learn from videos?

Instructional design quality

We need to be very careful about how we design educational materials like videos, as they should be consistent with human learning mechanisms. For example, it is important to not to provide too much visual or textual information at the same time (6), because we can only process a limited amount of information simultaneously (7). If it is important content, you are better off segmenting it by slowly increasing the amount of information that is shown on the screen (8). In addition, it pays off to use visual cues such as arrows or color coding to guide students’ attention – this might free valuable limited resources which are required for learning (9). Another factor that contributes to (unnecessary) visual complexity is the physical distance between related information. For example, if you are showing a diagram with various labels, it is easier for students to process and understand it if the labels are in or near the points of interests. In the two images below you can see an example of an overly complex design, followed by a much simpler design.