Learning about Social Learning in MOOCs: From Statistical Analysis to Generative Model

Abstract

We study user behavior in the courses offered by a major Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) provider during the summer of 2013. Since social learning is a key element of scalable education in MOOCs and is done via online discussion forums, our main focus is in understanding forum activities. Two salient features of MOOC forum activities drive our research: 1. High decline rate: for all courses studied, the volume of discussions in the forum declines continuously throughout the duration of the course. 2. High-volume, noisy discussions: at least 30% of the courses produce new discussion threads at rates that are infeasible for students or teaching staff to read through. Furthermore, a substantial portion of the discussions are not directly course-related.We investigate factors that correlate with the decline of activity in the online discussion forums and find effective strategies to classify threads and rank their relevance. Specifically, we use linear regression models to analyze the time series of the count data for the forum activities and make a number of observations, e.g., the teaching staff's active participation in the discussion increases the discussion volume but does not slow down the decline rate. We then propose a unified generative model for the discussion threads, which allows us both to choose efficient thread classifiers and design an effective algorithm for ranking thread relevance. Our ranking algorithm is further compared against two baseline algorithms, using human evaluation from Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Forum Posting Habits and Attainment in a Dual-Mode MOOC

“…Course tutors use forums to provide course information, generate discussion and support learners by answering questions. Brinton et al, observed that active tutor participation increased the discussion volume but did not slow down the decline in participation [9]. However, in other studies tutor participation did not prompt increase forum activity [10].…”

Social Networks and the Building of Learning Communities: An Experimental Study of a Social MOOC

“…Social learning is a key aspect of MOOCs platforms which supports scalable peer-based learning as well as acting as the main channel of interaction between teachers and students (Brinton et al, 2014) and between learners themselves. Sol, Beers, and Wals (2013) define social learning as "an interactive and dynamic process in a multi-actor setting where knowledge is exchanged and where actors learn by interaction and co-create new knowledge in on-going interaction" (p. 37).…”

“…The use of both internal and external social networks in a MOOC is well appreciated by students (Castaño-Garrido, Maiz-Olazabalaga, & Garay-Ruiz, 2015), and their use is also very suitable for developing collaborative learning tasks (Brinton et al, 2014). On the other hand, sociograms and centrality measures are valuable tools for understanding the social network phenomena (Zhu, Watts, & Chen, 2010).…”

MOOC‟s Barriers and Enables

“…Also there is the problem of information overload because, as MOOCs were launched for a large number of students worldwide, often the forums are overloaded. Thus, it becomes impossible for anyone to navigate the discussion to find significant information [19], [20]. Instructors also consistently report that teaching online is frustrating and higher levels of preparation time and contact time with individual students via email are major issues.…”