In the Interaction Equivalency Theorem (IET), Anderson proposed that students are likely to achieve different levels of satisfaction depending on the interaction intensity inside a course (student-student, student-content, or student-teacher interaction). Although higher interaction intensity could lead to a more satisfying learning experience, this may not be as cost- or time effective as less interactive learning sequences. However, the research done so far about the IET has not validated this thesis statement. Therefore, we aim to define a methodological research approach which would allow us to identify different types of interaction and its intensity inside Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), in order to confirm Anderson’s thesis. As MOOCs are by definition massive, i.e. many people enrol in them, they provide an opportunity for exploration of hypotheses that can prove to be more challenging to research in other environments, such as the IET. Furthermore, as virtually all student behaviour is recorded, measuring different types of interaction is easier and can be much more systematic, as the same approach can then be applied across myriads of online courses. Since it is challenging to determine what can be considered a high, medium or low level of interaction, we also aim to define an approach that will allow us to do that.@en

Online education can be used as a catalyst for gaining knowledge on learning and learning processes due to its generation of massive corpora of data on student behaviour. This knowledge can then be utilized to improve the quality of education. Since 2013 the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) programme has created and run over forty MOOCs, gaining more than one million enrolled students in the process. As TU Delft’s MOOC programme developed and expanded over time, an organisational structure was created in which educational processes and research activities were aligned and integrated. Through this integrated organisational structure, data is collected and analysed, which has resulted in a substantial number of evaluation reports, analyses, and academic papers. TU Delft has benefited from the insights from this combined output and has adapted to the findings both in online and on-campus course design. This way TU Delft’s MOOC programme provides a valuable environment for innovating educational design experience and developing new educational delivery strategies that can also be used to improve on-campus education.@en