# 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
Figure 8: Percentile distribution of the students’ grades during the knowledge test, after the training activity. A review of these frequency histograms shows that the distribution of scores in the knowledge test exhibits a negative asymmetry, which suggests that students have improved in their knowledge of the MOOC studied. The box-and-whisker diagram for the students' grades in the Diagnostic and Knowledge Tests is shown in Figure 10. There is evidence of a greater dispersion of the grades in the diagnostic test than in the knowledge test. The \(t\)-test was performed to compare the means of the two test grades. Confidence intervals were estimated for each mean and the difference between them. The confidence intervals for the mean of the diagnostic test grades were 6.13171 \(\pm\) 0.257165, and for the mean of the knowledge test, it was 7.53153 \(\pm\) 0.26622. The confidence intervals for the  
Figure 10: Box-and-whisker diagram for the students’ grades in the Diagnostic and Knowledge Tests. Figure 9: Frequency distribution of grades in the Diagnostic and Knowledge Tests. mean difference, assuming equal variances, were \(-1.39982\)\(\pm\)\(0.369128\). The confidence interval for the difference between the means extends from \(-1.76895\) to \(-1.03069\) and does not contain the value \(0\), which demonstrates there is a statistically significant difference between the scores of both tests with a confidence level of \(95\%\). The calculated \(p\)-value was \(0.00001\) which is less than \(0.05\), confirming statistical significance. The effect size for the diagnostic and knowledge tests was \(0.72\) which is considered between medium and large according to [PERSON]'s index [99]. The results for the one-way ANOVA are shown in Table 8.  
A one-way ANOVA was performed to evaluate whether there is any evidence that the means of the populations differ before and after the learning experience offered by _Open Biotec._ The Tukey multiple comparison test, like both the \(t\)-test and ANOVA, assumes that the data from the different groups come from populations where the observations have a normal distribution. According to Table 6, one-way ANOVA revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between at least two groups (F(1, 442) = 55.54819, \(p\) = 0.00001). [PERSON]'s HSD Test for multiple comparisons found that the mean value of the student grades was significantly different between diagnostic and knowledge tests  
The Mann-Whitney W test was performed to compare the medians of the grades. It obtained a \(p\)-value of \(0.00001\), a statistically significant difference between the medians at the \(95.0\%\) confidence level. According to the previous statistical analysis, the learning experience designed in the _Open Biotec_ MOOC increases the degree of knowledge of students in this field of biotechnology. It is important to specify that the topics addressed in the knowledge test are much deeper than those corresponding to the diagnostic. The results indicate that one out of every two students who participated in the exercise evidenced good assimilation of the topics. The students showed improvement relative to their baseline state and noted significant improvement in knowledge, understanding, and higher-order thinking levels. They got the fundamentals to achieve the adequate identification, characterization, and selection of the residues present on their farms and their visualization as a potential substrate for subsequent transformations. The knowledge acquired through the platform and then evidenced through the knowledge test allowed students to visualize the importance of biotechnology as a tool to solve the problems of their region.