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The Role of Social Media in MOOCs: How to Use Social Media to Enhance Student Retention

Published: 25 April 2016 Publication History

Abstract

The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) have experienced rapid development. However, high dropout rate has become a salient issue. Many studies have attempted to understand this phenomenon; other have explored mechanisms for enhancing retention. For instance, social media has been used to improve student engagement and retention. However there is a lack of (1) empirical studies of social media use and engagement compared to embedded MOOC forums; and (2) rationales for social media use from both instructors' and students' perspectives. We addressed these open issues through the collection and analysis of real usage data from three MOOC forums and their associated social media (i.e., Facebook) groups as well as conducting interviews of instructors and students. We found that students show higher engagement and retention in social media than in MOOC forums, and identified both instructors' and students' perspectives that lead to the results. We discuss design implications for future MOOC platforms.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Exploring the role of learning goal orientation, instructor reputation, parasocial interaction, and tutor intervention in university students’ MOOC retention: A TAM-TRA based examinationPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.029901419:9(e0299014)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2024
  • (2023)Using WeChat as an educational tool in MOOC-based flipped classroom: What can we learn from students’ learning experience?Frontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2022.109858513Online publication date: 17-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Responding to Trends in Digital-Based Classroom Learning: Efforts to Improve Learning Outcomes of Indonesian Millennial Students at Bengkulu UniversityJurnal Iqra' : Kajian Ilmu Pendidikan10.25217/ji.v8i1.29318:1(24-36)Online publication date: 9-May-2023
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cover image ACM Conferences
L@S '16: Proceedings of the Third (2016) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale
April 2016
446 pages
ISBN:9781450337267
DOI:10.1145/2876034
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 25 April 2016

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Author Tags

  1. coursera
  2. facebook
  3. massive open online course
  4. mixed method
  5. moocs
  6. social media

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L@S 2016
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L@S 2016: Third (2016) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale
April 25 - 26, 2016
Scotland, Edinburgh, UK

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L@S '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 18 of 79 submissions, 23%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 117 of 440 submissions, 27%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Exploring the role of learning goal orientation, instructor reputation, parasocial interaction, and tutor intervention in university students’ MOOC retention: A TAM-TRA based examinationPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.029901419:9(e0299014)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2024
  • (2023)Using WeChat as an educational tool in MOOC-based flipped classroom: What can we learn from students’ learning experience?Frontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2022.109858513Online publication date: 17-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Responding to Trends in Digital-Based Classroom Learning: Efforts to Improve Learning Outcomes of Indonesian Millennial Students at Bengkulu UniversityJurnal Iqra' : Kajian Ilmu Pendidikan10.25217/ji.v8i1.29318:1(24-36)Online publication date: 9-May-2023
  • (2023)Incompletion Rate Factors in MOOC: A Systematic Literature Review2023 International Conference on University Teaching and Learning (InCULT)10.1109/InCULT59088.2023.10482740(1-6)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Qualitative Assessment of Tangible-Intangible Outcomes and Challenges of Massive Open Online Courses2023 Advances in Science and Engineering Technology International Conferences (ASET)10.1109/ASET56582.2023.10180609(1-6)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2023
  • (2022)Comparing Undergraduate Student Participation in Online Discussion Boards Hosted on Reddit and CanvasTeaching of Psychology10.1177/0098628321105607450:4(356-362)Online publication date: 30-May-2022
  • (2022)Predicting Preferences in Online Courses2022 International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT)10.1109/ICALT55010.2022.00057(169-171)Online publication date: Jul-2022
  • (2022)Education for Sustainability through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)Nachhaltigkeit und Social Media10.1007/978-3-658-35660-6_12(241-257)Online publication date: 7-Feb-2022
  • (2021)Are Learners Satisfied with Their MOOC Experiences? Assessing and Improving Online Learners’ InteractionsProceedings of the Asian CHI Symposium 202110.1145/3429360.3468223(215-220)Online publication date: 8-May-2021
  • (2021)Together we learn better: leveraging communities of practice for MOOC learnersProceedings of the Asian CHI Symposium 202110.1145/3429360.3468176(28-33)Online publication date: 8-May-2021
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