Carolyn Penstein Rosé Language Technologies Institute Human-Computer Interaction Institute School of Computer Science With funding from the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research

Social Support Reduces Attrition in Online Communities

Having many significant acquaintances Losing many acquaintances this week Losing many acquaintances last week The Importance of Connectedness in MOOCs (Yang et al., 2014)

Technology for globally optimizing match between support needs and support provision while not over-taxing highly skilled students (Yang et al., in press)

 Students can benefit from working with another student, even in the absence of scaffolding (Gweon et al., 2006)  Alternative perspectives stimulate reflection (de Lisi & Golbeck, 1999)  Students gain as much from a human partner as from a carefully crafted tutor agent (Kumar et al., 2007a)  Tutor agents participating in collaborative chat significantly improve learning by enriching interaction between students (Adamson et al., 2014; Kumar et al., 2007a,b)

We have an LTI-Compatible API for linking small group synchronous collaborative activities into MOOCs using real time assignment of students to small groups.

Student TA ….. Instructor Team Spreading Mentoring Model Student

Th e students themselves are a key resource Technology plays a supporting role in helping students help each other Language technologies enable dynamic support through automatic monitoring and interactive capabilities Positive effect on student learning in small groups and in the whole class environment We have technology to offer for deployment!!! Let’s Work Together to Make MOOCs more Socially Engaging!! Carolyn Penstein Rose