Comparative study of MOOC forums: Does course subject matter?

Abstract

Discussion forums are considered important tools for promoting learning in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). They involve learner to learner and learner to instructor discussions. An interesting research question is related to the effect of the subject matter on the characteristics of social networks of MOOCs’ discussion forums. Being motivated by Social Centrality Theory, this study aims at further enhancing our understanding of how social centrality is associated with the learners’ course achievement within courses in different subjects (e.g. technology vs. humanities). To achieve this, we performed analysis of the discussion forums of two MOOCs of similar size and educational context, one on Programming and the other on History. The study revealed that centrality of learners played more important role in the technology course than the humanities course in relation to course achievement.