Scaffolding Social Presence in MOOCs

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) often lack valuable social presences that provide learners opportunities to interact and to be feel as a real person. This subjective experience of being present with a "real"person and having access to their thoughts and emotions increase the learning experience. Although MOOCs provide forums for such interactions, they are often populated with cognitive types of presence limiting social presence. Meaningful social interactions are challenging in MOOCs due to scale and design limitations. This research presents a conceptual framework of 4 phases: Cluster, Orient, Focus and Network to scaffold better social interaction in MOOCs. The framework introduce a re-design of interactions in MOOC forums space-leverages clustered groups by creating many communities in forums spaces with a community leader facilitating the conversations leading social presence. It also provides a community structure with orientation, focus to work in the community and better networking opportunities. An initial integration of the framework to a real MOOC with 27,554 students provides preliminary results indicating effective scaffolding of social presence in MOOC communities, yet the framework poses challenges relying the social interactions centered upon community manger. However, the study opens new directions to leverage communities in MOOCs and potential to scale.