Designing MOOC User Activity

In recent years, xMOOC, one-way knowledge transfer have been replaced by cMOOCs which allow users to co-create knowledge. Substantive discussion forums are mainly used for this purpose. However, students use forums for more than just this type of collaboration. The aim of the study was to analyze the purpose and extent to which students enrolled in 208 MOOC courses posted on the Polish “Navoica” platform use discussion forums and how MOOC authors encourage or discourage students from participating in substantive forums. Introductory and organizational forums were excluded from this study. Discussion forums user activity on substantive issues was low. Findings of this study support findings included in the research conducted in other regions of the world. 11% of studied courses did not include discussion forums; in 31% of forums there were no posts; in 15% of forums there were a few to a dozen of posts; and in 28% of MOOCs there were entries predominantly about organizational matters. In only 15% forums there were more than 25 posts. Students, including those enrolled in language learning courses, rarely posted on forums. Number of posts did not correspond to number of participants, number of certificates issued, or popularity of the course. Participants’ activity was usually triggered by question inspiring expression of their opinion, self-promotion, commenting on colleagues’ entries, and also by course coordinator’s participation in the discussion. Participation of Polish MOOCs platform users in discussion forums deserves further research to promote development off first and second key competences, i.e., Literacy competence and Multilingual competence. The main results may be generalized to the entire MOOC-user population.