What engagement looks like in a MOOC-based CS class

My colleague, Ashok Goel, is getting a lot of (deserved) attention for exploring the role of a cognitive assistant as a teaching assistant, known as Jill Watson. The question he’s exploring is: How do we measure the effect of this assistant?

One exploration involves engagement. I thought that these numbers were interesting, because they’re comparable to the ones I explored in my information ecology paper in CSCL many years ago. 38 or 32 notes student in a 15 week class is a couple per week. That’s not a dialogue, but it might be more engagement. What should we expect? Could those couple notes per week be suggesting greater learning elsewhere? Is it an indicator?

“We’re seeing more engagement in the course. For instance, in fall of 2015 before Jill Watson, each student averaged 32 comments during the semester. This fall it was close to 38 comments per student, on average,” Goel said. “I attribute this increased involvement partly to our AI TAs. They’re able to respond to inquiries more quickly than us.”

Source: Jill Watson, Round Three