Does Social Interaction Improve Learning Outcomes? Evidence from Field Experiments on Massive Open Online Courses

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Forthcoming

36 Pages Posted: 23 Sep 2015 Last revised: 11 Apr 2017

See all articles by Dennis Zhang

Dennis Zhang

Washington University in St. Louis - John M. Olin Business School

Gad Allon

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School

Jan A. Van Mieghem

Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management

Date Written: April 4, 2017

Abstract

This paper studies how service providers can design social interaction among participants and quantify the causal impact of that interaction on service quality. We focus on education and analyze whether encouraging social interaction among students improves learning outcomes in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which are a new service delivery channel with universal access at reduced, if not zero, cost.

We analyze three randomized experiments in a MOOC with more than 30, 317 students from 183 countries. Two experiments study large-group interaction by encouraging a random subset of students to visit the course discussion board. The majority of students treated in these experiments had higher social engagement, higher quiz completion rates, and higher course grades. Using these treatments as instrumental variables, we estimate that one additional board visit causally increases the probability that a student finishes the quiz in the subsequent week by up to 4.3%. The third experiment studies small-group interaction by encouraging a random subset of students to conduct one-on-one synchronous discussions. Students who followed through and actually conducted pairwise discussions increased their quiz completion rates and quiz scores by 10% in the subsequent week. Combining results from these three experiments, we provide recommendations for designing social interaction mechanisms to improve service quality

Keywords: Service Operations, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Social Interaction, Education, Field Experiments

JEL Classification: C93, I21, I23

Suggested Citation

Zhang, Dennis and Allon, Gad and Van Mieghem, Jan Albert, Does Social Interaction Improve Learning Outcomes? Evidence from Field Experiments on Massive Open Online Courses (April 4, 2017). Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2663647 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2663647

Dennis Zhang (Contact Author)

Washington University in St. Louis - John M. Olin Business School ( email )

One Brookings Drive
Campus Box 1133
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
United States

Gad Allon

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School ( email )

3641 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6365
United States

Jan Albert Van Mieghem

Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management ( email )

2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
United States

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