Motivation as Basis for Building Infrastructure for Hardware MOOCs

With advancements in technological tools, e-learning/distance methods such as MOOCs are now mainstream and no longer just trends [1]. For a “hardware MOOC,” i.e. a MOOC that requires hardware infrastructure apart from minimal tools required to access web technologies, various factors are key to participation in a MOOC. This work studies “marketing” factors in a hardware MOOC. Our work is for any agency attempting to engage with colleges in India and such developing countries, where it is needed to set up infrastructure for distance education. It is important for us to identify at the outset colleges likely and not so likely to setup infrastructure. This helps us maximize the return on our effort, in reaching out to colleges. e-Yantra is a robotics outreach project based out of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the e-Yantra Lab Setup Initiative builds the basis for imparting effective engineering education by creating standardized infrastructure and by training teachers in colleges. Principal Component Analysis and Logistic Regression are used to study success factors at the college and process levels in college participation in a hardware MOOC.