Superposter behavior in MOOC forums

Abstract

Discussion forums, employed by MOOC providers as the primary mode of interaction among instructors and students, have emerged as one of the important components of online courses. We empirically study contribution behavior in these online collaborative learning forums using data from 44 MOOCs hosted on Coursera, focusing primarily on the highest-volume contributors---"superposters"---in a forum. We explore who these superposters are and study their engagement patterns across the MOOC platform, with a focus on the following question---to what extent is superposting a positive phenomenon for the forum? Specifically, while superposters clearly contribute heavily to the forum in terms of quantity, how do these contributions rate in terms of quality, and does this prolific posting behavior negatively impact contribution from the large remainder of students in the class?