Presentation delivered to OER17 Conference in London, The Politics of Open - initial findings of MOOC influencers within a #MOOC Twitter dataset

1. Dr. Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl, Professor Mark Brown,
Dr Eamon Costello, Binesh Nair, & Professor Theo Lynn
#MOOC, Movers and Shakers:
Who is Setting the Agenda?
London, England
06th April 2017

2. DUBLIN CITY
UNIVERSITY…

3. A simple question?
Who is using #MOOC to set
agenda(s) using Twitter?
“You can’t just have slogans, you can’t just have
catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda”
Colin Powell

4. 1. Context
2. Conceptual Framework
3. The Study
4. Initial Findings
Social Media #MOOC Mentions:
Initial Findings from Analysis of
Twitter Data Sep-Dec 2015

5. Context
• In traditional media – multiple analyses now
• Attempting to influence the discourse is a political process of
persuading, setting or establishing a particular agenda

8. Selwyn, N., & Bulfin, S. (2014). The discursive construction of MOOCs as educational opportunity and educational
threat. Monash University.

12. UK Research Paper – Department of Business,
Innovation and Skills (2013)
Source: (http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/18325/7/13-1173-maturing-of-the-
mooc_Redacted.pdf)

13. MOOCs in Social Media
• Several studies looking at this
• Some from a learning perspective
• Contrast between # MOOC V #OER (Abeywardena
2014)
• #MOOC Zhang et al. (2015) focused on data in
Chinese
• Not all teachers or learners are au fait with the term
MOOC (Dalhstrom et al., 2015), (Horrigan, 2016)

14. Horrigan, J. (2016). Lifelong learning and technology. Pew Research Center. Available from
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/03/22/lifelong-learning-and-technology/

15. Conceptual Framework & Context
• Drawn from ideographic notions of policy and politics v
static concept
• Agenda setting is part of the policy process
• Process denotes a fluid and fluctuating concept
• Influenced by Contextualist (Pettigrew, 1984) and
Processualism (Dawson, 2003)
• Implementation is complex and mediated by agentic
implementers influenced by their situated contexts

16. • Twitter provides such a techno-mediated situated
contexts and hence public(s)
• Networked Publics (boyd, 2010): Publics restructured
by networked technologies – an imagined collective
that emerges as a result of the intersection of people,
technology and practice…
• Twitter’s structure shapes the engagement that
people have with their context /public
Conceptual Framework & Context

17. Conceptual Framework & Context
• Agentic practice the use of the hashtag as a label or meta-
data, created by users to identify the “aboutness” or
subject of Tweets (Zappavigna 2014).
• Hashtagging a feature of participatory culture in Twitter
(Page, 2012) – this notion has influenced the methodology
network constructed on replies
– @replies may not use the hashtag
– Noting that not all Tweets use a hashta
– Network constructed based on Follows - Thinking about what
Bruns et al . (2011) hashtags used to emphasise similar to use of
italics and bolding

18. The Study
• GNIP API Sep – Dec 2015 - > #MOOC
• 32,309 tweets (17,910 original ) with circa 14k
retweets
• Multiple forms of analysis conducted including
Descriptive, sentiment and network analytics (Chae,
2015; Lynn et. al., 2015)

19. Top 25 Words in Dataset
Word Frequency Word Frequency Word Frequency
mooc 21,199 education 1,126 onlinelearn 501
course 2,733 join 1,113 science 492
learn 2,686 start 1,055 marketing 478
online 2,442 register 954 Data 471
elearn 2,079 onlinecourse 736 Life 447
free 1,911 highered 667
coursera 1,410 digital 562
edxonline 1,332 university 556
edtech 1,259 open 520
business 1,165 students 518

20. Sentiment Analysis

21. Sample Tweets – Sentiment Score
Exemplar Tweet Sentiment
Score
@thesiswhisperer I think the #MOOC is providing wonderful supportive pillow of
trust & honesty- glad I'm taking part- thank u #survivephd15
6
STUNNING #mathed animations from .@robertghrist in his calculus #MOOC.
Beautiful and effective. Kudos. http://t.co/GgdN2KHFZf
4
Just discovered a great free #Social Innovation online course, on this cool learning
platform - #iVersity #MOOC ~ http://t.co/kGPzmqONFq
4
#ememitalia Teixeira: focusing on dropout as a problem to criticize #MOOC
education is a conceptual mistake
- 4
CloudComputingApplications - definitely the worst @coursera #MOOC I've ever
taken. Irrelevant videos & useless tuts #unenrolled
- 3

22. Trying to work the who in the #MOOC Dataset
Network Analytics
• Graph theory
• Created the networks (2) and used the open
visualisation tool Gephi for analytics and
visualisations
– Identify influencers and hubs based on an analysis of
– Nodes within networks = user screen names) and edges =
relationships represented by either follows or replies
– Informational versus social network was larger –
indicative of greater passivity and presence of larger
institutions

23. Hubs in the Informational Network
• Those users who are the connectors they link
Between-centrality (BC) measures
• Top five in the information network
Screen Name BC
mooc24 66,620
NutritionMOOCs 52,116.67
EUmoocs 24,171
Tleerwerk 14,182.17
Juandoming 4,141.67

24. Influencers in the Informational Network
• In- Degree which is a measure of the number of
connections into a node (followers)
• Page Rank – considers two elements link propensity
of the linkers & centrality of the linkers
Screen name In-Degree PageRank
edXOnline 1,088 0.0304 (1)
Coursera 243 0.0053(4)
Wharton 235 0.0062 (2)
Iversity 207 0.0054 (3)
Classcentral 207 0.0047 (6)

25. Main Influencers in Networks
• Variation on basis by which network modelled i.e.
follows versus replies
• Institutional and platform based … as we would
expect
• Top 5 influencers in Informational Network
Screen name
edXOnline
Coursera
Wharton
Iversity
Classcentral

26. Top 5 Individual Influencers out of 25 – Based on
Reply Network (non -platform, -aggregator, -
institutional)
@ignatia
(Inge de Waard )
e-learning consultant
Senior instructional designer at InnoEnergy, Europe and affiliated
researcher at The Open University (LinkedIn, 2017
@RandyHlavac
(Randy Hlavac)
Director of the Medill IMC / IBM Omni Channel Initiative at
Northwestern University
(LinkedIn, 2017)
@kiwirp
(Peter Mellon)
Learning Design Coordinator at the University of Melbourne
(LinkedIn, 2017)
@AleksejHeinze
(Aleksej Heinze)
Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, Co-Director Centre for Digital
Business, Head of Advisory Board at SEMTA, University of Salford
(LinkedIn, 2017)
@mkalz
(Marco Kalz)
Full Professor of Open Education at Open Universiteit UNESCO Chair
of Open Education at Open Universiteit
(LinkedIn, 2017)

27. You are going to learn about a number of great tools in this
#SocialMediaMarketing #MOOC Enjoy learning new things
https://t.co/WwskKQXmxv
2015-10-
02
05:00:05
UTC
Be sure to follow @steve_dodd @sredmore @RussBuzzed
@CGOutLoad in #MOOC 2 @NUsocialmktg #SocialMktg They are
the experts youneed to know!
2015-10-
17
13:44:14
UTC
Glad you are finding it useful. All #socialmktg #MOOC designed
to get you hands on to develop markets to succeed
https://t.co/C3tYgjqZA5
2015-12-16
15:26:22
UTC
49 Posts

28. 223 Posts Stanford Researchers: MOOCs Need to Mature More
Before Becoming a Valuable Educational Tool. |
#MOOC | @scoopit https://t.co/ovsCQHEAJK
2015-10-19
21:50:30
UTC
Robust debate boosts the MOOCs agenda in development - University
World News | #MOOC #edtech #highered - @scoopit
https://t.co/SYsbWAa09i
2015-10-22
21:07:49
UTC
@LearnKotch Con, we should talk! Agree that K-13 &
#highered are prime users for #MOOC model, but we've had
success with our BNY partnership
2015-12-17
04:15:24 UTC

29. #MOOC: no disruption, no real assessment & adults aren't
dropouts! #grumpyWoman #blogphilosophy
https://t.co/AAbMmtYp6D 2015-09-21 09:57:42
UTC
outcomes my research results in connecting different theories
(indiv/social learning, tech, motivation, context selection) #PhD #MOOC 2015-12-30
10:37:04 UTC
free webinar on Learning to Learn Online: A #MOOC with a difference
for novice… http://t.co/yYKBGMMwXr @gavinclinch 2015-10-06
10:50:56 UTC

30. Where to Next??
• EMOOCs
• Complete findings from this dataset
• Content analysis of Tweets

31. Go raibh
maith
agaibh!

32. Critical References
boyd, d. (2010). Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications. Networked Self:
Identity, community, and Culture on Sicual Network Sites Z. Papacharissi. New York, Routledge: 39-5
Chae, B. K. (2015). Insights from hashtag# supplychain and Twitter Analytics: Considering Twitter and Twitter data for
supply chain practice and research. International Journal of Production Economics, 165, 247-259.
Dahlstrom E, Brooks C, Grajek S, Reeves J (2015) ECAR study of undergraduate students and information technology
Horrigan, J. (2016). Lifelong learning and technology. Pew Research Center. Available from
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/03/22/lifelong-learning-and-technology/
Lynn, T., Kilroy, S., van der Werff, L., Healy, P., Hunt, G., Venkatagiri, S., & Morrison, J.( 2015). Towards a general
research framework for social media research using big data. Professional Communication Conference (IPCC), 2015
IEEE International (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
Page, R. (2012). "The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags." Discourse &
Communication 6(2): 181-201
Selwyn, N., & Bulfin, S. (2014). The discursive construction of MOOCs as educational opportunity and educational
threat. Monash University.
Zappavigna, M. (2014). "Enacting identity in microblogging through ambient affiliation." Discourse & Communication
8(2): 209-228