Topic Modeling in MOOCs: What Was to Be Discussed, What the Instructor Discussed, and What the Learners Discussed

Instructors create a course outline to serve as a guide for content delivery throughout the course. While contents can be adjusted based on learner feedback and performance in instructor-paced courses, but the same may not said for massive open online courses (MOOCs) that run continuously for months or years. For example, instructors cannot make drastic changes to self-paced MOOC content until the course is closed, revised, and re-released. Topic modeling was done on a microbiology MOOC to see if it can be a viable means of assessing how well the MOOC content was able to capture the course outline concepts. The same approach was applied to discussion board posts to identify which topics resonated with the learners. Topic modeling can be useful in achieving the said goals. This can be impactful in introducing improvements to the online course even before the course is revised and re-released.