Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) afford the opportunity for free foundational college-level learning in a variety of disciplines. Goal setting is an important component in successful teaching and learning, but relatively little is known about its impact on course persistence and achievement in MOOCs. Using an experimental design and employing a variety of data including student writings, content-related assignment attempts, and quantitative achievement in the course, we compared the outcomes of two groups of students given different early term writing assignments in an international introductory chemistry course that has been translated into ten languages. While no overall effects of writing prompt type on the dependent variables were observed, highly statistically significant differences were found when goal writings were more closely examined and compared via qualitative coding. When learners’ written responses to prompts contained either learning or performance goals, those participants both achieved more and engaged in learning longer than participants whose written responses did not fall into either of these categories.

Goal-oriented writing in globalized online introductory chemistry

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.