Houston, we’ve addressed a problem: a layer design for MOOC forums to improve navigation, participation, and interactions
(2025) Journal of Computing in Higher Education — Vol. 37, n° 2, p. 1-22 (2025)
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- Abstract
- As collaborative learning environments, forums in massive open online courses (MOOCs) seek to facilitate knowledge construction though meaningful discussions. Such discussions, however, rarely occur Problems such as difficult navigation, non-interactive participation, and brief interactions hinder discussions in MOOC forums. While pedagogical design holds promise for addressing these issues, few studies have implemented interventions to explore their impact. This paper presents findings from an intervention redesigning the forums in two MOOCs. Using a layered approach, we redesigned 12 forums to improve navigation, promote interactive participation, and increase the length of learners’ interactions. Results show that our intervention significantly reduced forum posts with uninformative titles, thereby improving navigation. Our intervention also helped learners both start and reply to threads, improving the quality of their forum interaction. Lastly, our intervention helped to increase the number of interactions, though interactions were not necessarily longer. These findings highlight the importance of pedagogical design in fostering meaningful discussions in MOOC forums.
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Citations
Rivera Villa, D., Frenay, M., Charlier, B., & Swaen, V. (2025). Houston, we’ve addressed a problem: a layer design for MOOC forums to improve navigation, participation, and interactions. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 37(2), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-025-09436-6 (Original work published 2025)