Abstract Facilitation of social interactions in Massive Open Online Courses can benefit from conceptualizing forum sub-populations through a networked lens. Such a lens implies that forum interactions represent a network of learners with heterogeneous levels of commitment to forum activity. A networked lens helps capture forum communities, so-called forum residents, as well as the rest of the crowd, also known as forum visitors. The current study empirically demonstrates the differences between these forum sub-populations. Building on a large dataset of manually labelled discussion threads in four edX MOOCs, our findings uncover two distinct patterns in the communication of posters with different length of forum commitment. As the courses progressed, all types of communication decreased for forum visitors, but both socio-cognitive and informational queries increased for forum residents. We find that the communication dynamics of committed forum posters cannot be observed when the entire forum population is examined in its entirety. Further, the study profiles learners around discussion type sequences. We show that communication topics of forum visitors appear narrow and topical when compared to the diversity of topics by resident posters. This paper offers a foundation towards the scaling of social teaching practices for personalised learning of both residents and visitors as well as community development in massive open online courses.

中文翻译：

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MOOCS居民与访客论坛交流的差异

摘要 大规模开放在线课程中的社交互动可以从通过网络镜头概念化论坛子群体中受益。这样的镜头意味着论坛互动代表了一个学习者网络，他们对论坛活动的承诺水平各不相同。联网镜头有助于捕捉论坛社区（即所谓的论坛居民）以及其他人群（也称为论坛访问者）。当前的研究凭经验证明了这些论坛亚群之间的差异。基于四个 edX MOOC 中手动标记的讨论线程的大型数据集，我们的发现揭示了具有不同论坛承诺长度的海报交流中的两种不同模式。随着课程的进行，论坛访问者的所有类型的交流都减少了，但论坛居民的社会认知和信息查询都增加了。我们发现，当对整个论坛人群进行整体检查时，无法观察到忠实论坛发帖人的交流动态。此外，该研究围绕讨论类型序列对学习者进行了描述。我们表明，与常驻海报的主题多样性相比，论坛访问者的交流主题显得狭隘和热门。本文为大规模开放在线课程中居民和访客的个性化学习以及社区发展的社会教学实践的扩展提供了基础。该研究围绕讨论类型序列对学习者进行了描述。我们表明，与常驻海报的主题多样性相比，论坛访问者的交流主题显得狭隘和热门。本文为大规模开放在线课程中居民和访客的个性化学习以及社区发展的社会教学实践的扩展提供了基础。该研究围绕讨论类型序列对学习者进行了描述。我们表明，与常驻海报的主题多样性相比，论坛访问者的交流主题显得狭隘和热门。本文为大规模开放在线课程中居民和访客的个性化学习以及社区发展的社会教学实践的扩展提供了基础。