Course-created forum threads in these MOOCs showed balanced ideological contribution, with only small conservative-leaning exceptions¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Almost all substantive course threads in both classes had balanced ideological contribution relative to the poster distribution. → Yeomans 2018

Evidence¶

Yeomans 2018¶

Yeomans, M., Stewart, B. M., Mavon, K., Kindel, A., Tingley, D., & Reich, J. (2018). The Civic Mission of MOOCs: Engagement across Political Differences in Online Forums. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 28, 553–589. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-017-0161-0

q2 · i? · associational · r2

Descriptive analysis plotting average poster ideology per substantive course thread against effective sample size (Fig. 3). "almost all the threads in both classes had a balanced ideological contribution"; conservative-leaning threads existed but were small (under fifty posts) and few.

"The results show that almost all the threads in both classes had a balanced ideological contribution, relative to the distribution of individual posters. There are some conservative-leaning threads, but they are small (under fifty posts) and limited to a small number of partisan topics."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Political ideology shows essentially no relationship with total forum activity in politically-themed MOOCs — related
• Forum comments show little evidence of ideology-based sorting, indicating engagement across political difference — related
• Politically-themed MOOCs attract U.S. students representing a diverse range of political beliefs across the ideological spectrum — related
• Upvote assortativity by ideology appeared in American Government but not Saving Schools, with sorting stronger among conservatives — related
• Structural topic models show partisan differences in topic use amount to less than 2% of all MOOC forum posts — related
• Partisan language is only weakly predictive of ideology in MOOC forum posts, suggesting linguistic convergence — related