Korea Academic Institute of Science and Technology

An earlier study of a collaborative chat intervention in a Massive OpenOnline Course (MOOC) identified negative effects on attrition stemming from arequirement for students to be matched with exactly one partner prior tobeginning the activity. That study raised questions about how to orchestrate acollaborative chat intervention in a MOOC context in order to provide thebenefit of synchronous social engagement without the coordination difficulties.In this paper we present a careful analysis of an intervention designed toovercome coordination difficulties by welcoming students into the chat on arolling basis as they arrive rather than requiring them to be matched with apartner before beginning. The results suggest the most positive impact whenexperiencing a chat with exactly one partner rather than more or less. Aqualitative analysis of the chat data reveals differential experiences betweenthese configurations that suggests a potential explanation for the effect andraises questions for future research.