September 18, 2013
Revisit literature on interaction theory to refresh my memory. After all, it's been three years since I studied the topic as an assignment project of EDDE 801. The revisit did not bring me any new idea/finding.
Routinely, I check newsletter from OLDaily and MOOC.ca every day. An article from Phil Hill, an education technology consultant, led me to a list of articles. Hill argued that discussion forums in MOOCs (massive open online courses) are centralized discussion forums and are barriers to student engagement. As he quoted from Robert McGuire (Sept. 3, 2013):
"Most MOOC discussion forums have dozens of indistinguishable threads and offer no way to link between related topics or to other discussions outside the platform. Often, they can’t easily be sorted by topic, keyword, or author. As a result, conversations have little chance of picking up steam, and community is more often stifled than encouraged."
Hill also supported his argument with studies from MIT and Stanford University. They pointed out that lower than 3% MOOC participants posted in discussion forums unless they were credit earners.
I haven't read these article carefully but they reminded me of Rivard's report regarding MOOC dropout rate (March 8, 2013). Rivard argued that it may not make sense to compare the number who register to the number who finish because different kinds of people are signing up for the online classes and what their goals are. "Some clearly do not intend to ace or even take every test, nor want to earn a largely meaningless certificate of completion." (Rivard, 2013) MOOCs participants are diverse populations who come with various goals in mind. Some faculty members also enroll in MOOCs because they want to watch how other faculty teach their subject. It is clear that this group of MOOC participants are not likely will take the assignment and are likely will drop-out any time. They drop-out the courses because they had never intended to completed the courses from the very first beginning.
The same reason might also apply to the problem of low posting rate in MOOC discussion forums. Some participants just want to be the lurkers. By check-in the forums and view the discussions, they've got what they need. What I am trying to say is that it might be a good way for a study on MOOCs to begin with dividing the participants into several subgroups based on individual goals for enrollment in the MOOC. Then, it would be more meaningful to continue discussing learner behavior.
Su-Tuan Lulee
