Gaurav Tomar

Positive Impact of Collaborative Chat Participation in an edX MOOC

A major limitation of the current generation of MOOCs is a lack of opportunity for students to make use of each other as resources. Analyses of attrition and learning in MOOCs both point to the importance of social engagement for motivational support and overcoming difficulties with material and course procedures. In this paper we evaluate an intervention that makes synchronous collaboration opportunities available to students in an edX MOOC. We have implemented a Lobby program that students can access via a live link at any time. Upon entering the Lobby, they are matched with other students that are logged in to it. Once matched, they are provided with a link to a chat room where they can work with their partner students on a synchronous collaboration activity, supported by a conversational computer agent. Results of a survival model in which we control for level of effort suggest that having experienced a collaborative chat is associated with a slow down in the rate of attrition over time by a factor of two. We discuss implications for design, limitations of the current study, and directions for future research.

Pipeline for expediting learning analytics and student support from data in social learning

An important research problem in learning analytics is to expedite the cycle of data leading to the analysis of student progress and the improvement of student support. For this goal in the context of social learning, we propose a pipeline that includes data infrastructure, learning analytics, and intervention, along with computational models for individual components. Next, we describe an example of applying this pipeline to real data in a case study, whose goal is to investigate the positive effects that goal-setting students have on their peers, which suggests ways in which we might foster these social benefits through intervention.

Alleviating the Negative Effect of Up and Downvoting on Help Seeking in MOOC Discussion Forums

Through the lens of Expectancy Value Theory, we examine the effect of help giver badges, information about helper expertise, and up- and downvoting on help seeking in a MOOC discussion forum. Results show that badges alleviated the negative impact on help seeking introduced by up- and downvoting.

Reputation Systems Impact on Help Seeking in MOOC Discussion Forums

Many interactional archetypes from outside of learning contexts are being adapted and widely used for online learning environments without consideration for some of the side effects relevant to learner outcomes. Of particular concern is the effectiveness of help exchange in these learning environments. To address this need, this article explores how the reputation system features of up/downvoting, badges, and displayed expertise impact student helper selection in a peer help exchange system within a MOOC discussion forum. We draw from Expectancy Value Theory for Help Sources as a theoretical framework for positioning the work. Results from our field experiment show that up/downvoting has a negative impact on help seeking which is mitigated by the positive effect of Help Giver badges. The mechanism behind these results are then explored in a survey experiment investigating reputation systems’ impact on students’ expectancies, values, and costs for a help source.