How to foster forum discussions within MOOCs: A case study

Discussion forums are an essential part to foster interaction among teachers and students, as well as students and students, in virtual learning settings. If interaction can be enhanced, this has a positive influence on motivation and finally also on dropout rates. These days, a special form of online courses, so-called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), are popping up massively. Those courses are characterized by a high number of students. In this paper, we would like to examine discussion forums and their role concerning interaction. Therefore, Gilly Salmon’s well-known Five stage model is taken and adapted to MOOCs based on a case study. As a method, we tracked learners’ data through learning analytics applications and concluded that there is a positive correlation between reading from one side and writing in forums from the other side.