The document summarizes research on interaction patterns in MOOCs. It analyzed discussion forums from a Coursera MOOC with over 90,000 registrants. The researchers developed profiles of different types of forum participants based on location, education, scores, and interaction patterns. Most forum activity occurred early in the course and in specific sub-forums. Network analysis showed forums consisted mostly of weak ties between participants rather than strong communities. Interviews revealed forums provided information but not real-time interaction for many learners. The researchers aim to further develop qualitative profiles of participants and link them to outcomes.

1. Conceptualizing Interaction &
Learning in MOOCs
Rebecca Eynon & Nabeel Gillani
January 13, 2014

2. Overall goal

Focus on interaction

Communication via discussion forums
1.
The development of profiles that reflect the different ways and
reasons that people interact with one another in MOOCs
2.
How these interaction profiles are related to learner
characteristics and course outcomes

3. Research approach

Case study of one MOOC from Coursera with strong emphasis
on encouraging interactions between learners

Use data from this MOOC to develop typology, then use data
from future versions of the MOOC

Mixed methodology
Visualisation of posts and views, social network analysis, in-depth
interviews, pre and post surveys and qualitative observations
 Moving between the quant and qual methods to keep refining the
model


4. Towards an understanding of interaction

Trends in interaction patterns


Who? When? What?
Exploring the network
What “counts” as interaction?
 Crowds or communities?


Towards a typology

Next steps

5. The course



6 week course, March to May 2013
4-6 hours per week
Assignments
Required: Weekly quizzes, final strategic analysis assignment
(evaluated via peer-assessment)
 Optional: Discuss business cases in the discussion forums


Multiple sub-forums:

Final project, cases, lectures, readings, study groups, questions for
professor, technical feedback, course material feedback

6. Participation





Over 90,000 registered
49,682 used the lecture videos at least once
20,082 submitted at least one quiz
4,445 posted at least once in discussion forums
2,208 received >= 70%
6

7. Forum & course participation: location
Continent
% Course
participants
% Forum
participants
North America
32%
32%
South America
7%
10%
Europe
28%
25%
Asia
26%
24%
Africa
5%
6%
Oceania
2%
2%

8. Forum & course participation: education
Highest attainment
% Course
participants
% Forum
participants
Some high school
1%
1%
Completed high school
3%
4%
Some college
10%
11%
Bachelors
43%
42%
Masters
40%
39%
Doctorate
3%
4%
N=7337

9. Forum & course participation: score
Final Score
% Course
participants
% Forum
participants
< 50%
97%
72%
50% <= score < 60%
0.1%
1%
60% <= score < 70%
0.1%
1%
70% <= score < 80%
0.14%
2%
80% <= score < 90%
0.21%
3%
90% <= score
2.2%
21%

10. Patterns of interaction

A framework for forum analysis

Analyse communication trends and interactions according to subforums – justified by low participation overlaps between sub-forums

Forum activity is “bursty”, with most activity occurring earlier in
the course

Different sub-forums encourage different patterns of
information access and contribution

11. Study Groups
Days since course began
Readings

12. Cases
Final Projects

13. Different sub-forums encourage different patterns of
information access and contribution

14. Exploring the network: what counts?

Two questions:
What do we consider as a "tie" between two learners?
 Do we trust the observed ties as meaningful?


Let's assume the observed network is a noise-corrupted
version of the true underlying network (Psorakis et al. 2011)
Draw N samples of possible networks, based on thread coparticipation
 Determine the significance of a particular tie in the observed learnerto-learner network based on the sampled ones


This formulation helps us disregard ties that we attribute to
chance (e.g., one-off interactions in a sea of other interactions)
)

15. Significant networks
Sub-forum (# nodes)
# Edges in full
network
# Edges in significant
network
% Decline
Lectures (617)
12,644
3,988
68%
Readings (1,108)
35,728
11,259
68%
Cases (1,114)
102,171
57,490
44%
Final Projects (1,019)
23,244
12,557
46%
Study Groups (1,359)
41,819
11,609
72%
Qtns for Prof(284)
2,758
896
68%
Course Material
Feedback (252)
2,752
729
74%
Tech Feedback (231)
3,087
339
89%

16. Study groups sub-forum
Study Groups - Full
Study Groups - Significant

17. Crowds versus communities?

Forums mostly harbour crowds, not communities, of learners
characterized by weak ties

How do people experience the forums?

18. Contribute to learning

“I like the forums, you learn a lot (…) people teach you –
without necessarily telling you what the solution is – but they
guide you.”
(Emengo, 40s, bachelor degree, Nigeria)

19. Not fit for purpose

“I personally dislike the forum dynamics. I don’t like it ……
because it’s not in real-time. It’s not just about real-time, it’s
also about feedback. In forums, most people, say, enter, say
something, stay for maybe half an hour or so, and then they
leave. And they tend not to come back to the same forum ever
again. So, I really dislike that.” (Lucas, Spain, Masters, mid
20s)

20. Not for interaction but for information

“Very little. I mean (…) I really enjoy collaborating with people
in my job (...) but I found it was easier to just read the materials
on my own; I didn’t feel the need to leverage the community in
order to complete the work.” (Oliver, Canada, early 30s,
graduate )

“Having done a science degree, I’m very comfortable with
researching (…) for me, I think for me to just be asking a question
into the forum universe, you don’t really know if the person
answering know what they’re talking about” (Julia, UK, 20s
graduate)

21. Sub-forums are generally “vulnerable”, and some are more
vulnerable than others

22. Forum disaggregation

Video link

23. Next steps

Continue to develop a qualitative set of learner profiles that
incorporates a number of dimensions to explain if, how and
why people use the forums

Helps to inform the development of the quantitative set of
learner profiles that reflect the different ways and reasons that
people interact with one another in MOOC

Link these profiles to learner characteristics and course
outcomes

Test on a wider set of data
)

24. Acknowledgements

Project team

Chris Davies, Isis Hjorth, Taha Yasseri

Professor Michael Lenox and Kristin Palmer, UVA

Coursera

Project site
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=121