Discussion Forums in MOOCs

Afsaneh Sharif, Barry Magrill

Abstract


Discussion forums in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) represent a unique opportunity for insight into the formation of learning communities. Discussions are the locus of a MOOC’s social experience and the forum space a testing ground of instructor presence. In MOOCs, the global scale of peer-to-peer contact represents a network of cross-cultural sharing and collaborative problem-solving, a relationship that generates the opportunity for experts to scaffold a novice’s learning (Anderson, A. (Ed.) (2008). Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton, AB. Athabasca Press). How learners acquire and build upon prior knowledge sets, sharing them with others in discussion forums, contributes to the robustness of learning communities. As extant literature suggests, collaborative learning accelerates content acquisition, providing a diverse approach to intellectual inquiry based upon the social construction of meaning. This paper outlines a framework for diagnosing a scaffolding of knowledge based on the social and contextual patterning in MOOC discussion forums.


Keywords


Scaffolding, Peer Support, Learning Communities, Collaborative Learning

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References


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