An Examination Of Peer Support Behaviours enacted in Stanford’s Principles of Economics Massive Open Online Course

The primary aim of the researcher in this study is to examine the interactions of participants in a massive open online course (MOOC) from a new perspective, specifically focused on social interactions and peer support. So far, most studies on participants’ interactions in MOOCs have utilised surveys and computational statistics procedures across several MOOCs with results highlighting broad interaction patterns. In this study, the researcher shifts the focus to a single MOOC utilising the elements of Teaching and Social Presence from the Community of Inquiry framework to examine the online text-based discussion forum of a MOOC where participants in the course interacted with each other. This led to the development of a typology characterising the social interactions and peer support observed. MOOCs enable students all over the world to access learning resources from various institutions across the globe. MOOCs, by their nature, attract thousands of participants with a broad spectrum of experiences and interests. This presents its own set of challenges and opportunities. One such challenge in MOOCs is the very low instructor-participant interaction due to the handful of available facilitators to cater to the large number of participants. MOOC literature suggests that participants have varied levels of knowledge, with some being professionals taking the course out of interest. Opportunity hence exists for participants to support each other with their learning. However, the literature also suggests that the development of interpersonal relationships may be stifled due to the large number of participants. The results of this study show that participants do provide support to their fellow. However, only a small subset of teaching presence was actively carried out, with the most predominant being Direct Instruction, which captures the provision of resources and illustrative examples to answer questions or provide feedback. The social environment was also observed to be open and relaxed, allowing participants to express their ideas freely. However, the results also show that the interactions were not towards community building. This research constitutes an original contribution to knowledge because of its use of content analysis to assess peer exchanges in a discussion forum of a MOOC to develop a typology of participants’ social and peer support interactions. This provides valuable insight that can inform future research directions as well as pedagogical strategies course designers and facilitators can employ in their courses

Return of the man-machine interface: violent interactions

This paper presents the design and evaluation of “the man-machine interface” a punchable interface designed to criticise and react against the values inherent in modern systems that tacitly favour one type of user (linguistically and technically gifted) and alienate another (physically gifted). We report a user study, where participants used the device to express their opinions before engaging in a group discussion about the implications of strength-based interactions. We draw connections between our own work and that of evolutionary biologists whose recent findings indicate the shape of the human hand is likely to have been partly evolved for the purpose of punching, and conclude by examining violent force as an appropriate means for expressing thoughts and feelings

A Typology of Peer Support Behaviours in a MOOC

This chapter builds upon a body of previous research that has used content analysis to assess the messages exchanged between participants enrolled on a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). In particular, it focuses on uncovering the nature of the peer support that the participants provide for each other, and the social environment that they establish through their interactions. The findings of this research have led to the construction of a Typology of Peer Support Behaviours which is presented here. It is proposed that this typology can be applied across a range of contexts to assess the nature of peer support behaviours enacted by participants in those MOOCs. It is proposed that the typology could help identify any unique differences in expression of behaviours among groups of students and it could be used to assess if there is a preference towards a particular approach to, or type of, peer support

PEER support in MOOCs: The role of social presence

MOOCs by their design are able to reach several thousands of participants with very few instructors creating, delivering and facilitating the content. Participants interact with each other usually with text based asynchronous discussion forums built into the MOOC platform. The purpose of this research is to explore the role of social presence in facilitating peer support among a large community of learners