The Impact of Instructor Interaction in Massive Open Online Course Discussion Forums

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Online Teaching and Learning SIG Roundtable Session 2

Abstract

Do meaningful exchanges with instructors impact students’ experiences in MOOCs? We conducted randomized controlled experiments in four MOOCs in which instructors responded to randomly selected students’ discussion forum posts. In the first three experiments (n=181, n=197, and n=138), there was no significant effect of experimental condition on students’ forum activity or grades. However, in a fourth experiment (n=778), students to whom teachers responded in the discussion forum earned higher grades (97% versus 93% median grade; p=0.0032) and contributed more to the forum (51 versus 44 median # posts; p<0.0001) than students to whom staff did not respond. This suggests that MOOC students can, at least in some contexts, benefit from increased interaction with instructors.

Authors

• Tiffany Wong, Harvard University

• Drew Lichtenstein, Harvard University

• Jacob Whitehill, Harvard University

• Glenn Lopez

• Isaac Chuang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Andrew Dean Ho, Harvard University