An Analysis of MOOC Discussion Forum Interactions from the Most Active Users

Abstract

Abstract.Many massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer mainly videobased lectures, which limits the opportunity for interactions and communications among students and instructors. Thus, the discussion forums of MOOC become indispensable in providing a platform for facilitating interactions and communications. In this research, discussion forum users who continually and actively participate in the forum discussions throughout the course are identified. We then employ different measures for evaluating whether those active users have more influence on overall forum activities. We further analyze forum votes, both positive and negative, on posts and comments to verify if active users make positive contributions to the course conversations. Based the result of analysis, users who constantly participate in forum discussions are identified as statistically more influential users, and these users also produce a positive effect on the discussions. Implications for MOOC student engagement and retention are discussed.

Factors influencing peer learning and performance in MOOC asynchronous online discussion forum

“…One of the issues we need to address is that MOOCs lack a physical environment that allows real-time interaction between learners and instructors (Ezen-Can, Boyer, Kellogg, & Booth, 2015;Moon et al, 2014;Wong, Pursel, Divinsky, & Jansen, 2015), and hence online discussion forums in MOOCs play an important role in trying to bridge this gap (Moon et al, 2014). Researchers have also begun to examine the effects of forum participation on student learning.…”

Types of Participant Behavior in a Massive Open Online Course

“…The discussion forums provide a platform for asynchronous communication that facilitates interactions among students and instructors (Wong, Pursel, Divinsky, & Jansen, 2015). The forums support the integration of social-constructivist pedagogies by enabling collaborative and social learning (Anders, 2015;Brinton et al, 2013) and help to create a learning community through which learners generate knowledge (Li, 2004).…”

A Far Cry from School History: Massive Online Open Courses as a Generative Source for Historical Research

“…As part of the FutureLearn terms and conditions, individuals who register for the platform accept that their comments may be used for research purposes. The majority of MOOC studies have used a quantitative or mixed method methodological approach (Gasevic, Kovanovic, Joksimovic, & Siemens, 2014;Raffaghelli & Persico, 2014), and recent studies investigating MOOC community comments have commonly used quantitative methodologies (Rossi & Gnawali, 2014;Wong, Pursel, Divinsky, & Jansen, 2015). However, qualitative analysis can bring about a more detailed and nuanced understanding of learners that can be absent with a purely quantitative analysis.…”