The Coursera project realization on the educational program “Physical education and sport”

Abstract

Coursera has positively impacted modern educational trends and transformed the way learners approach learning. The goal of the study is to describe the realization process of the Coursera project at the university and define its effect on future physical education teachers’ academic performance. The authors utilized theoretical methods, including a review of literature and sources, content analysis of Coursera online courses, documentary analysis, and empirical methods, such as a pedagogical experiment and scientific observation. Furthermore, statistical methods, including the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test, and SPSS Statistics 27.0 software were used to compare the intervention and comparison groups. Eighty-six students of the 1st and 2nd years of study of the educational program “Physical Education and Sport” at Alkey Margulan Pavlodar Pedagogical University participated in this research. Data were analyzed based on the learning outcomes of 6 online courses. As a result, students of the intervention group became more receptive in acquiring soft skills, demonstrated increased adaptability, and exhibited an interest in online educational activities. Following the pedagogical experiment, the academic performance of the intervention group showed an improvement of 9,3 %.