Digital Education for All: Multi-University Study of Increasing Competent Student Admissions at Scale

Nea Pirttinen, Juho Leinonen, Annemari Auvinen, Vesa Lappalainen, Katja Tynkkynen, Henrik Hedberg, Mikko-Jussi Laakso, Kjell Lemström

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionScientificpeer-review

Abstract

An indubitable way to put learning at scale in practice is to
implement Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. When a
wide-enough portfolio of them is available, new applications arise.
For instance, university admissions in Finland, where this study
was conducted, have traditionally been based on students’ grades
in high school studies, an entrance examination, or a combination
of them. A minority of students have been accepted through an
open university admission path where students can get a study
right if they complete enough university course credits with a high
enough grade in a given time frame. In this work, we report re-
sults from a multi-university project in which the open university
admission path has been expanded. All the universities in the Dig-
ital Education For All (DEFA) project remarkably expanded their
portfolio of MOOCs that were offered both openly and for free,
and the new admission path was simultaneously actively marketed
and modified. In our analysis, we focus on examining whether the
project increased computer science enrolments in the participating
universities and how students accepted through the project perform
in their studies compared to their peers accepted through other,
traditional intake paths.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationL@S '22: Proceedings of the Ninth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale
Number of pages10
PublisherACM
Publication date1 Jun 2022
Pages72-81
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-4503-9158-0
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2022
MoE publication typeA4 Article in conference proceedings
EventACM Conference on Learning @ Scale - New York City, United States
Duration: 1 Jun 20223 Jun 2022
Conference number: 9

Fields of Science

  • 113 Computer and information sciences

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