Watching MOOCs Together: Investigating Co-located MOOC Study Groups

Current MOOCs emphasize offering individualistic learning experiences, and most MOOC research is centered on this context. Recent research also suggests that MOOC students may prefer to study in groups. Social facilitation within the study groups may render the learning of difficult concepts a pleasing experience. We report a longitudinal study that investigates how co-located study groups watch and study MOOC videos together. The study was conducted with on-campus flipped classroom students. Our subjects reported an overall high satisfaction with the study group style. The research reveals that students like to stay synchronized in the group while watching MOOC videos. However, they have to find a balance between synchronization, video interaction and the amount of conversation. Watching MOOCs on a shared display addresses the need of synchronicity, and the distribution of control can increase the video interactivities.