In recent years, online learning platforms (e.g., Coursera, edX) have experienced massive growth and have reached over 180 million learners. Although their reach is quite large, the impact of these platforms is constrained by a low level of learner engagement. In traditional face-to-face classrooms, educators seek to engage learners by asking them to participate in class discussions and share information about their identity and ideas. However, the effectiveness of these strategies in online learning platforms is uncertain. The authors examine this issue by assessing the impact of the types of content sharing on learner engagement. The authors conduct a textual analysis of over 12,000 text postings during an 18-month period (Study 1) and a field experiment among over 2,000 learners (Study 2) in a popular Coursera offering by a large U.S. university. The results indicate that asking learners to share ideas related to the course (vs. their identity) has a stronger effect on their video consumption and assessment completion. The authors explain this “idea advantage” by suggesting that learners who share ideas (vs. identity) exhibit a greater degree of elaboration in their postings. This idea advantage is strongest for learners from English-speaking countries and those new to online learning.

近年来，在线学习平台（例如Coursera，edX）经历了巨大的增长，并吸引了超过1.8亿的学习者。尽管它们的影响力很大，但是这些平台的影响力受到学习者参与度低的限制。在传统的面对面教室中，教育者试图通过要求学习者参加课堂讨论并分享有关其身份和想法的信息来吸引学习者。但是，这些策略在在线学习平台上的有效性尚不确定。作者通过评估内容共享类型对学习者参与度的影响来研究此问题。作者对18个月内的12,000多个文本发布进行了文本分析（研究1），并在美国一家受欢迎的Coursera产品中对2,000多名学习者进行了实地实验（研究2）。大学。结果表明，要求学习者分享与课程相关的想法（相对于他们的身份）对他们的视频消费和评估完成有更大的影响。作者通过建议分享想法（相对于身份）的学习者在其帖子中表现出更高的阐述度来解释这种“理想优势”。对于来自英语国家和在线学习新手的学习者来说，这种想法优势最为明显。