Longitudinal engagement, performance, and social connectivity: a MOOC case study using exponential random graph models

This paper explores a longitudinal approach to combining engagement, performance and social connectivity data from a MOOC using the framework of exponential random graph models (ERGMs). The idea is to model the social network in the discussion forum in a given week not only using performance (assignment scores) and overall engagement (lecture and discussion views) covariates within that week, but also on the same person-level covariates from adjacent previous and subsequent weeks. We find that over all eight weekly sessions, the social networks constructed from the forum interactions are relatively sparse and lack the tendency for preferential attachment. By analyzing data from the second week, we also find that individuals with higher performance scores from current, previous, and future weeks tend to be more connected in the social network. Engagement with lectures had significant but sometimes puzzling effects on social connectivity. However, the relationships between social connectivity, performance, and engagement weakened over time, and results were not stable across weeks.