A Netnography study of MOOC community
- 1. A Netnography Study of MOOC Community Autthors: Robab Saadatdoost, Alex Sim, Nitish Mittal, Hosein Jafarkarimi and Jee Mei Hee
- 2. The Online Revolution: Education for Everyone
- 6. • about scale – Relies on increased chance of interaction from a critical mass of participants. – Massive allows knowledge to derive more from participants, and less from top down. • not just free, but – Open access. – Open syllabus, flexibly allows participants to drive their own learning. • this is essential – Internet introduces abundance. – Completely different playing field from one based on scarcity. – Has structure. – Cohesion based in experience of facilitators. (Stevens, 2013)
- 7. There some MOOCs such as: Coursera, Udacity, edX. In our project we study Coursera Massive Open Online Courses. Coursera is a educational company founded by computer science professors from Stanford university.
- 8. • Each characteristic of MOOC indicates that it is to be considered a community. • What is the structure of an emergent type of community within Coursera as representative of a common MOOC ? • There has been little discussion about MOOC as a community of practice. • Knowing the structure of the community help to recognize and cultivate community of practice.
- 9. Theoretical Lens (Social Theory of Learning - community of Practice) CoP is defined as “a group of people who share an interest in a domain of human endeavor and engage in a process of collective learning that creates bonds between them” (Etienne Wenger, 2001). Four different forces : (Silva, Goel, & Mousavidin, 2009) Identity Knowledge sharing, Warrant mechanisms and Legitimate peripheral participation(LPP) A community of people who are interested in the domain, a certain domain of knowledge that illustrates a set of issues, the shared practice which is developing to be useful in their domain (Etienne, et al., 2002)
- 10. Research Methodology Netnography/ virtual ethnography/ online ethnography research planning data collection interpretation ensuring ethical standards research representation steps of ethnography are followed by Netnography (Kozinets, 2010a) Entrée ethnography study which is done over the internet; it is a method to study cultures and communities online (Bowler Jr, 2010).
- 11. How Netnography is different? • It looks online communications as social interaction not as content; it pays very more attention to context (Kozinets, 2010b). • Netnography looks differently to social interactions; it considers not only the words but also forum elements, member characteristics, the language, the history, the meaning, and the type of interaction (Kozinets, 2010b). It observes fonts, symbols, texts, images, photos, and videos (Kozinets, 2010b).
- 12. Site choice and entrée Based on Kozinets guidelines for site choice and entrée, a site should be relevant to our research focus, and it should be active, interactive, substantial, heterogeneous and data-rich (Kozinets, 2010). Matching these criteria, we chose Coursera as our targeted community.
- 13. Ethics Kozinets pointed to some procedures to address ethics in Netnography (Kozinets, 2010) : to identify yourself and inform about your research, to ask permission, to gain consent, to cite and credit culture members.
- 14. We began our data collection process by entering “Learn to Program: The Fundamentals” course in https://www.coursera.org/Online education community. The author had enrolled in this course and had participated in classes from 19 August 2013.
- 15. Data Collection Archived Data Elicited data Field note data consists of 336 posts of “Beginners Study Group” in this course. This thread is in English and the common study group gained the most points from learners. consists of online interview via Google Forums which is shared via Facebook page and one post in discussion forum our observations of the community, its members, interactions and meanings, and the researcher’s own participation and sense of membership.
- 16. Data analysis and interpretation In order to code our data, we drew on the three components of our theoretical framework – identity, warrants, and LPP and three main elements of CoP– domain, community and practice.
- 17. Results I. elicited data (or interview data) in relation to three elements of structure of CoP, II. archived and elicited data related to theoretical lens from the CoPs studies. – findings (elicited data) related to domain, community and practice – findings (elicited data)- theoretical framework components: identity, warrants and LPP – findings (archived data)- theoretical framework components: identity, warrants and LPP
- 18. A sample of findings (elicited data) related to domain, community and practice . . .
- 19. findings (elicited data)- theoretical framework components: identity, warrants and LPP . . .
- 20. findings (archived data)- theoretical framework components: identity, warrants and LPP . . .
- 21. Field note data willingness to help someone who asked for help vote for someone who is eager to help is a kind of thanks and this type of vote can improve the identity of the individual. show agreement on issues Statements like "thanks" to a group creation can increase warrant of group study. encouragement
- 22. We think answering others' questions increases our identity in community and we can move from the periphery to the center of the community Misunderstanding between people causes conflict between them
- 25. Community Individual • Global education • Free and online courses • Great materials, top professors with a great way of teaching • Mass participation between active and willing users from around the world • Certificates from top universities eagerness to help and providing material links and helping others Identity
- 26. Useful post : • if a post gives ideas and helps to solve problem, • if it is among the top posts or has high votes, • if it is accepted by teacher, teacher assistant and other learners. Learners up vote some posts which are : • Correct • Useful • provide interesting answers and insights to learners, • express their agreement or thankfulness and to encourage good posts and make them important. The learners who receive votes feel wonderful for receiving these votes, and they are eager to know who voted them up. Indeed, voting system can be an incentive for learners. Voting on posts by learners shows the voting system is a major warrant to distinguishing valuable and invaluable posts. The other factor is that a warrant is created when one group is started by teacher assistant. Warrant
- 27. Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) Learners can distinguish right and wrong answers by : • Checking the answer against their judgment and comparing it with their knowledge • Can use and check the answer • Voting system is another option to distinguish between wrong and right answers • Some people in community who are known for their posts thus they are known as old timers in the community. Newcomers can move from the margin to the core of community by : • Reading discussions and contributing to them • Spending more time in discussions • Learning from others’ experiences • Using the internet to help others • Their positive manner helps them The newcomers show their willing and thankfulness in their posts. They state their progress in learning and ask of others progress. They state their problems and try to answer others to some extent. In addition, they are eager to help and work together. The posts by old timers show their willingness to provide help, encourage other learners, their care for others and to follow honor codes.
- 28. Implications for practitioners Importance of voting system in MOOC, thus adding some features to this system such as who votes for who and providing some profile features in regard to this system. Examples include how many votes each learner has to enforce identity and show warrant. Social networks or some facility to chat and private message. If the MOOC providers can consider this facility the connections between people can stand for a long time. The current two major findings are:
Editor's Notes
- #9: Each characteristic of MOOC indicates that it is to be considered a community. So far, however, there has been little discussion about MOOC as a community of practice. In addition, forums have been identified as a major avenue connecting MOOC learners with each other. This paper will give an account of the structure of an emergent type of community within Coursera as representative of a common MOOC. Knowing the structure of the community help to recognize and cultivate community of practice.
- #10: CoP is defined as “a group of people who share an interest in a domain of human endeavor and engage in a process of collective learning that creates bonds between them” (Etienne Wenger, 2001). A CoP is a unique set of three main elements including (Etienne, et al., 2002): A community of people who are interested in the domain, a certain domain of knowledge that illustrates a set of issues, and the shared practice which is developing to be useful in their domain Based on literature, CoP can define phenomena of “how communities learn, how identities are negotiated and how new comers become old timers” as the result of four different forces which can be conceptualized as : (Silva, Goel, & Mousavidin, 2009) Identity Knowledge sharing, Warrant mechanisms and Legitimate peripheral participation(LPP)
- #12: The traditional ethnographic study is extended to ethnographies of online communities, from the close observation, face-to-face interactions to technologically mediated and online interactions (Kozinets, 2010a).
- #15: In regard to “To identify yourself and inform about your research” we completed a profile in Coursera based on real name, affiliation and a little about our research. In this research we prepared a personal web page to provide a more detailed description of our research which will be completed during the course of the research. The next step is to gain consent. In this concern Kozinets indicated Netnographer is like other site members and interacts like other members but with the difference that he takes field notes of his experiences (Kozinets, 2010) . This interaction does not require consent but for synchronous interactions, researcher should gain consent. For this purpose consent form can be sent electronically (Kozinets, 2010). We will use this technique if we have such interaction in our research. The next step is to define the extent of cloak: uncloaked, minimum cloaked, medium cloaked and maximum cloaked(Kozinets, 2010). We choose minimum cloaked situation in which the community name is given but personal names are changed, resulting in a minimal probability of harm (Kozinets, 2010).
- #18: There are two types of data analysis in Netnography: analytic coding and hermeneutic interpretation(Kozinets, 2010). Hermeneutic interpretation consists of deeper meaning of posts and explanation not description. Our codes are based on middle-range coding. We used both Top-down coding in which codes from literature are applied to data and bottom-up coding in which codes are suggested by data(Urquhart, 2013).
- #19: Results include analysis of elicited data (or interview data) in relation to three elements of structure of CoP, and analysis of archived and elicited data related to theoretical lens from the CoPs studies. To organize our analysis we correlate them in structural model of CoP: domain, community, practice and theoretical framework components: identity, knowledge sharing, warrants and LPP.