The Social Presence of Active Learners across Five Countries through MOOCs: From Single to Super Postings

Abstract

Learning in massive open online courses (MOOCs) embraces an unexpected learning outcome that educators have not fathomed, enriched learning experiences through social interactions with learners with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Active learners were studied in the MOOC, ‘Making Sense of News’, which was offered in 2015. The methodology of the study included descriptive analysis of the MOOC’s entry survey and qualitative discourse analysis of the MOOC’s forum discussions. NVivo 11 Plus was used to analyse forum postings. Global participants made 783 postings. This paper analyses how active learners from the top five countries—Canada, China, Hong Kong, India and the United States of America— participated in forum discussions. Among the superposters, those who made six or more postings, Chinese active learners had the highest percentage of super-posters among the five countries. The MOOC active learners gained insights from other global learners, particularly the super-posters.