# Post-Digital Learning for Rural Development: A Case Study of _Open Biotec_ MOOCs in Colombia
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Relationship between the MOOCs and the Development Strategy of Biotechnology in the Region
#### Tracking the Learning Process  
At the beginning of the biotechnology route, the learning process was monitored by a basic diagnostic test. It allows a comparative analysis of student skills before the biotechnology training. The internal consistency of diagnostic and knowledge tests were assessed using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient with five experts using the following five criteria, as suggested by [98]: Number of questions in tests (C1); Clarity in the formulation of questions (C2); Coherence between the questions and the course objectives (C3); Level of relevance of the questions in the tests (C4); Overall degree of difficulty for the tests (C5). The results are shown in Table 6.  
The Cronbach's alpha value was estimated as 0.82 indicates an acceptable level of reliability for both diagnostic and knowledge tests in the residues MOOC. Both tests are independent and allow to differentiate the performance of the students in the course in an objective way. Figure 6 shows the percentile distribution of the students' grades during the assessment. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline
**Expert** & **C1** & **C2** & **C3** & **C4** & **C5** & **Sum** \\ \hline
1 & 5 & 5 & 4 & 5 & 5 & 24 \\
2 & 4 & 5 & 4 & 4 & 4 & 21 \\
3 & 5 & 5 & 4 & 4 & 4 & 22 \\
4 & 4 & 4 & 4 & 4 & 4 & 20 \\
5 & 5 & 5 & 4 & 5 & 5 & 24 \\ \hline Variance & 0.24 & 0.16 & 0 & 0.24 & 0.24 & 2.56 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 6: Results for internal consistency of diagnostic and knowledge tests with experts. The students presented an average grade of 6.13 in a range of 0 to 10. 50% of them presented values above 7, and 10% with grades above 9. Only 10% were below 4. According to the topics evaluated, the questions related to bioprocesses presented 70.7% of correct answers (Figure 7), while bio-entrepreneur was 60.81%, 56.6% for environmental biotechnology, and 55.3% for renewable energies. Although secondary school students generally have confused or inadequate ideas about the concept of biotechnology [50], this diagnosis test shows that users have some prior knowledge about biotechnological issues due to their training in rural education. In the same way, Figure 8 shows the distribution in percentiles of the students' grades during the knowledge test after the training activity and its comparison with the grades obtained during the Diagnostic Test. The students presented an average grade of 7.59 in a range of 0 to 10. In this case, the response after the training activity was higher. While only 50% of the users presented values above 7 at the diagnostic, more than 75% achieved it during the knowledge Test. Figure 6: Percentile distribution of the students’ grades during the diagnostic test before the training in the platform. Figure 7: Percentage of success in the diagnostic test for the four main evaluated topics. Table 7 shows the statistical summary for the scores obtained in both the diagnostic test and the knowledge test for 262 students which completed the MOOC to assess whether the differences between the statistics of the two samples are statistically significant. The bias and standardized kurtosis are used to compare whether the samples come from normal distributions. Both standardized kurtoses are within the expected range between \(-2\) and \(2\). In particular, the kurtosis obtained in the knowledge test data at the end of the course is greater than that of the diagnostic test, indicating greater homogeneity in the students' results, as shown in Figure 9. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline  & **Diagnostic Test** & **Knowledge Test** \\ \hline Count & 262 & 262 \\ Average & 6.131 & 7.531 \\ Standard deviation & 1.944 & 2.013 \\ Coefficient of variation & 31.71\% & 26.72\% \\ Minimum & 0.77 & 2 \\ Maximum & 10 & 10 \\ Range & 9.23 & 8 \\ Standardized Bias & \(-0.979\) & \(-4.064\) \\ Standardized Kurtosis & \(-0.548\) & 0.163 \\ Median & 6.15 & 8.00 \\ Effect Size for both tests & & 0.72 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 7: Summary statistics for Diagnostic and Knowledge Tests.