Structural limitations of learning in a crowd: communication vulnerability and information diffusion in MOOCs.

ABSTRACT: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) bring together a global crowd of thousands of learners for several weeks or months. In theory, the openness and scale of MOOCs can promote iterative dialogue that facilitates group cognition and knowledge construction. Using data from two successive instances of a popular business strategy MOOC, we filter observed communication patterns to arrive at the "significant" interaction networks between learners and use complex network analysis to explore the vulnerability and information diffusion potential of the discussion forums. We find that different discussion topics and pedagogical practices promote varying levels of 1) "significant" peer-to-peer engagement, 2) participant inclusiveness in dialogue, and ultimately, 3) modularity, which impacts informatio

SUBMITTER: Gillani N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5388276 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature