Dive Summary:
- Jennifer Cowley of The Ohio State University and Thomas W. Sanchez of Virginia Tech University taught the urban planning and technology MOOC "TechCity" on Coursera, but Cowley explains that she didn't find Coursera's discussion options to be adequate, so they turned to MindMixer, a platform often used by municipalities for virtual town hall meetings.
- She primarily selected MindMixer for its ability to direct conversation agendas, fielding suggestions for topics from students and explaining why certain issues would be addressed in the order that she established—and Cowley claims students were more engaged and on-topic as a result.
- MindMixer's team worked with Coursera engineers to achieve a single sign-on option for students, even though the software wasn't fully integrated to replace traditional Coursera discussion options.
From the article:
... This different format caused some confusion at first because people had other topics they wanted to raise, and she did establish a message thread for suggesting new discussion topics. "In some cases, I would tell people, 'That's really aligned with what we'll be talking about in week three, but we're going to talk about week one right now.' Once people understood that, they were okay with it," she said. ...