Leveraging MOOC Forums for Thorough and Engaging Discussions

Jane Lee, Chi-Un Lei, Xiangyu Hou, Tyrone Kwok, Emily Leung, Ruby Leung

With Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) becoming more popular, teachers are not only expected to provide a quality course, but are also expected to bring together the minds of learners from different backgrounds. Through facilitating the online forums, the course team can encourage learners to participate in thought provoking discussions so that learners can achieve a greater understanding of the course material. Thus, MOOC instructors are instrumental in the active participation of learners.

Previous studies on forum-type discussion dynamics have included tutor interventions in small-scale discussion groups (Marijke et al., 2008), the use of MOOC social tools from a tool perspective (Alario-Hoyos et al., 2013) and differences in performance between active and passive participants in a MOOC forum (Mustafaraj et al., 2015). Nonetheless, there is a lack of direct studies on tutor interventions in regards to MOOC forums. Therefore, this study attempts to explore ways for leveraging MOOC forums for thorough and engaging discussions.

In this exploratory study, we dissected the course forums of two MOOCs (HKU01x: Epidemics and HKU02.1x: The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia, Part I). Through content analysis of the MOOC forums and interviews by teaching assistants (TAs), we discuss how a course team might approach forum management. Three TAs were interviewed to gain a better understanding of course team duties and their forum management tactics in the MOOCs. Using the “unit of meaning” as a unit of analysis to break down the interview transcripts (Chi, 1997), we were able to match individual ideas with TA actions in the forums recorded in the log data.

As course instructors in both MOOCs had expressed a desire to help students build up reasoning skills through forum discussions, we looked at the response techniques in the forums. In HKU02.1x, instructors tried to encourage deep thinking through Socratic Questioning techniques (i.e., asking for clarifications, reasons, implications and assumptions through dialogues). This stimulated learners to think about what they were trying to communicate. The course team also recruited community TAs within the cohort of learners to provide an alternative, yet experienced perspective to build a greater sense of community while maintaining intimacy. Meanwhile, in HKU01x, rather than spoon-feeding learners in regards to fact-based questions, the course team encouraged learners to interact with peer learners and develop information search skills.

We also found that various scenarios can stimulate discussions in the forum. During the first run of HKU01x (September 2014), the course team used the Ebola outbreak at that time to tie in the concepts being taught throughout the course. The lengthy threads pertaining to Ebola outbreak suggest that learners showed enthusiasm and actively participated in applying what they had learnt to a real world setting. Similarly, while HKU02.1x was running (April 2015), the Nepal earthquake had occurred. There was also an increase in in-depth discussions and sharing of personal experiences in the forum. In particular, we observed how the course content and forum discussions significantly influenced learners and their communities.

References

Alario-Hoyos, C., Pérez-Sanagustın, M., Kloos, C. D., G., H. A. P., Organero, M. M., and de-las Heras, A. R. (2013). Analysing the impact of built-in and external social tools in a MOOC on educational technologies. In Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (pp. 5-18). EC-TEL.

Chi, M.T.H. (1997). Quatifying qualitative analysis of verbal data: A practical guide.  The Journal of Learning Sciences, 6, 271-315.

De Smet, M., Van Keer, Hilde., Valcke, M. (2008, January). Blending asynchronous discussion groups and peer tutoring in higher education: An exploratory study of online peer tutoring behavior. Computers & Education, 50(1), 207-223.

Mustafaraj, E and Bu, J. (2015). The Visible and Invisible in a MOOC Discussion Forum. In Proceedings of the Second ACM Conference on Learning@ Scale, (pp. 351-354). ACM.