Emotive Vocabulary in MOOCs: Context & Participant Retention

DEWAARD, I, APOSTOLOS KOUTROPOULOS, NILGÜN ÖZDAMAR KESKIN, SEAN C. ABAJIAN, REBECCA HOGUE, C. OSVALDO RODRIGUEZ, MICHAEL SEAN GALLAGHER

EURODL

EDEN

Año: 2011

1027-5207

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have been growing in popularity with educational researchers, instructors, and learners in online environments. Online discussions are as important in MOOCs as in other online courses. Online discussions that occur in MOOCs are influenced by additional factors resulting from their volatile and voluntary participation structure. This article aims to examine discussions that took place in MobiMOOC in the spring of 2011 , a MOOC structured around mobile learning:. This examination focused on language from the discussions that contained emotive vocabulary in the MobiMOOC discussion forums.Emotive vocabulary is words or phrases that are implicitly emotional (happy, sad, frustrated) or relate to emotional contexts. This emotive vocabulary, when present, was examined to determine whether it could serve as a mechanism for predicting future and continued participation in the MOOC. In this research, narrative inquiry approach was used in order to predictive qualities in both participants who withdrew from the course as well as moderately or moderately active participants. The results indicated that emotive vocabulary did not significantly predict or impact participation retention in MobiMOOC.