Under the background that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been crossing cultural and geographical boundaries, their spread on social network is catching on. First, this research maps the path of the spread of MOOCs using Coursera’s Twitter account, and explores the characteristics of this particular social network. Further, by conducting a social network analysis over the hashtag discussion on MOOCs, this research explores how far the idea of MOOCs is reaching out. The research finds the Twitter network of Coursera to be loosely connected with a low closeness centrality and a high betweenness centrality. Because the pattern of this network shows that subjects (nodes) in the network are not clustered around the Coursera account, no obvious threshold was identified that plays the key role in the cascading of information in it. In the same time, the thematic discussion on MOOCs demonstrates a pattern where relatively few influential players dominate the discussion, and the network is centralized around these dominant players without much interactivity between ordinary users with low degrees.
Key words: MOOCs, Twitter, Coursera, Higher Education, Social Network
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