The MOOClet Framework: Unifying Experimentation, Dynamic Improvement & Personalization in Online Courses

How can educational platforms be instrumented to accelerate the use of research to improve students' experiences? We show how modular components of any educational interface — e.g., explanations, homework problems, even emails — can be implemented using the novel MOOClet software architecture. Researchers and instructors can use these augmented MOOClet components for: (1) Iterative Cycles of Randomized Experiments that test alternative versions of course content; (2) Data-Driven Improvement using adaptive experiments that rapidly use data to give better versions of content to future students, on the order of days rather than months. A MOOClet supports both manual and automated improvement using reinforcement learning; (3) Personalization by delivering alternative versions as a function of data about a student's characteristics or subgroup, using both expert-authored rules and data mining algorithms. We provide an open-source web service for implementing MOOClets (www.mooclet.org) that has been used with thousands of students. The MOOClet framework provides an ecosystem that transforms online course components into collaborative micro-laboratories, where instructors, experimental researchers, and data mining/machine learning researchers can engage in perpetual cycles of experimentation, improvement, and personalization.