Public Opinion on OER and MOOC - A Sentiment Analysis of Twitter Data

Public Opinion on OER and MOOC

A Sentiment Analysis of Twitter Data

Ishan Abeywardena

International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2014)

Hong Kong SAR, China

17th January 2014

“The large scale of the community, from several hundred to several thousand participants, maximizes the possibility that the “long tail” effect will enable someone with even the most esoteric interests within the overall focus of the MOOC to find people with whom to share and collaborate” McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, & Cormier (2010)

McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., & Cormier, D. (2010). The MOOC Model for Digital Practice. Retrieved 12 15, 2013, from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf

“...what MOOCs will not do is address the challenge of expanding higher education in the developing world. It may encourage universities there, both public and private, to develop online learning more deliberately, and OER from MOOC courses may find their way, alongside OER from other sources, into the teaching of local institutions”. Daniel (2012)

Daniel, J. (2012). Making sense of MOOCs: Musings in a maze of myth, paradox and possibility. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 3.

Sentiment Analysis

What does the public think??

Paris OER Declaration 2012

https://about.twitter.com/company (15/01/2014)

• 230+ million monthly active users• 500 million Tweets are sent per day• 76% of Twitter active users are on

mobile• 77% of accounts are outside the U.S.• Twitter supports 35+ languages• Vine: More than 40 million users

The Twitter dataset used in the study consisting of tweets which include the terms ‘OER’ and ‘MOOC’.

Search Query Tweet History Timespan No. of Distinct Tweets

OER 1/11/2012 – 31/10/2013 12 months 1209

MOOC 1/05/2013 – 31/10/2013 6 months 2823

Change in public opinion on ‘OER’ vs. ‘MOOC’ for a 6 month timespan between May to October 2013

• there is an increasing amount of interest on MOOC;

• the public still hasn’t formed strong opinions regarding MOOC due to the novelty of the ideology;

• the positivity towards OER is growing.

Trends

I acknowledge the support provided by

Dr K S Yuen, Chair of the conference organising committee; Dr K C Li, Vice-chair of the conference organising committee; and Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK)

by extending full sponsorship for may participation at the Inaugural International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2014).

Acknowledgements

About…

Ishan AbeywardenaDeputy Dean and Senior Lecturer, School of Science and Technology, Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia

• MSc in Wireless Enterprise Business Systems, Brunel University, UK.• MSc in Engineering Management, Brunel University, UK.• BSc in Computer Science, Bangalore University, India.• PhD Candidate in Computer Science, University Malaya, Malaysia. Areas of specialisation: text mining,

metadata, faceted search

Professional Member of– Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (MIEEE)– British Computer Society (MBCS)– Institution of Engineering and Technology (MIET)– Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA)

Official Profile: http://www.wou.edu.my/IshanAbeywardena.htmlProfessional Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ishansaResearch Profile: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ishan_Abeywardena/Tech Blog: http://www.ishantalks.comE-mail: [email protected]

Sources• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MOOC_-_

Massive_Open_Online_Course_logo.svg• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OER_Logo.svg • https://

encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQVXsalV-9g0cot3DPIe2-qb6HO0yJVH7H3k-lcd5CNUMDbLQua

• http://blogs.curtin.edu.au/odvce/files/2013/02/MOOCs-Daigram12.jpg• https://

encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSNtuzsEBKI9lshOI0sceRrZvbmK5eslRHZkdljCIUa3Ebuvoy7Zw