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arXiv · 2107.07385

Together we learn better: leveraging communities of practice for MOOC learners

Dilrukshi Gamage·Mark E Whiting
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Abstract

MOOC participants often feel isolated and disconnected from their peers. Navigating meaningful peer interactions, generating a sense of belonging, and achieving social presence are all major challenges for MOOC platforms. MOOC users often rely on external social platforms for such connection and peer interaction, however, off-platform networking often distracts participants from their learning. With the intention of resolving this issue, we introduce PeerCollab, a web-based platform that provides affordances to create communities and supports meaningful peer interactions, building close-knit groups of learners. We present an initial evaluation through a field study (n=56) over 6 weeks and a controlled experiment (n=22). The result indicates insights on how learners build a sense of belonging and develop peer interactions leading to close-knit learning circles. We find that PeerCollab can provide more meaningful interactions and create a community to bring a culture of social learning to decentralized, and isolated MOOC learners.

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Dilrukshi Gamage, Mark E Whiting. 2021-07-07. Together we learn better: leveraging communities of practice for MOOC learners. https://doi.org/10.1145/3429360.3468176

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