Investigating Responsible Factors for Interaction between Learners and Instructors in the Discussion Forum of MOOC

An interactive educational tool is a necessity for the dialogical learning process in online learning. Numerous studies have been conducted to develop an effective interactive educational tool for online learning. However, almost all of them were limited in calculating performance analysis of learning and enhancing interaction on the discussion forum. The responsible factors for interaction are one of the tasks in designing the interactive discussion forum in massive open online courses. In this study, we analyzed the queries for identifying the responsible factors for interactions between learners and instructors to suggest a designing method of discussion forum. We conducted a comparative study on the interactions between learners and instructors in a theoretical as well as a practical course. In this research, we found a couple of key responsible factors such as the structure of the discussion forum based on the analysis of queries and responses generated by learners and instructors.