Beyond positive and negative emotions: Looking into the role of achievement emotions in discussion forums of MOOCs

Abstract

Abstract Millions of students register for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to look for opportunities for learning and self-development. However, the learning process usually involves emotional experience, which may affect students participation in the course, eventually resulting in dropping out along the way. In this study, we quantify this effect. Particularly, this research goes beyond focusing on only the single dimension of positive or negative emotions as many prior studies do. Instead, informed by the control-value theory, a more integrated framework of achievement emotions is applied in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the role of emotions in MOOC students learning experiences. Specifically, we first built and validated a machine learning model to automatically detect the achievement emotions in the forum posts. Then survival analysis was used to quantify the influence of achievement emotions on student dropout. The results show a different influencing mechanism for expressed and exposed achievement emotions on student survival in the MOOC course. Implications of the results are then discussed in terms of intervention design to improve student retention in MOOCs.