The forum community, the connectivist element of a marketing xMOOC

Abstract

The marketing education community is well suited to be a leader in online education and the internet has proven a powerful tool in teaching a variety of marketing courses. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are one of the fastest growing approaches to teaching and learning in the new digital paradigm. They are categorized either as cMOOCs following a connectivist approach, or as xMOOCs based on behaviorist principles. In xMOOC environments, forums, if they function as a community, may however play a real connectivist role. This paper builds on the criteria of Herring (2004) in order to determine the existence and dynamics of a community in a Marketing MOOC. In a connectivist approach, forum participants request help, answer questions, discuss concepts and techniques and suggest application and additional learning material, thus co-creating knowledge. In today’s online teaching methods, users are included in multi-way processes which are not well accounted for in the literature often describing one-way processes. These dynamics may be key in ensuring a strong and well-functioning learning community. This research questions the existence of a clear distinction between cMOOCs and xMOOCs. It also observes that equal gender roles in marketing classes don’t seem to be replicated in MOOC environments, i.e. female participants appear to adopt lower profiles in MOOC forums