TY - GEN
T1 - Exploring class discussions from a massive open online course (MOOC) on cartography
AU - Robinson, Anthony C.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - The rise of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has led to its application in Cartographic education. Students in these classes generate enormous amounts of text data in the form of discussion forum posts. Here we explore the topics and geographic references found in over 95,000 forum posts collected during the 2013 launch of Maps and the Geospatial Revolution, a MOOC taught on Coursera. Using Phrase Nets, topic modeling methods, and a named-entity extraction geocoding tool, we show how students describe their use of maps, what key topics drove conversations during the class, and the geography associated with placenames mentioned in posts. These results help shed light on how novices use and understand Cartography and show how places found in discussion forum text reflect the global reach of MOOCs.
AB - The rise of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has led to its application in Cartographic education. Students in these classes generate enormous amounts of text data in the form of discussion forum posts. Here we explore the topics and geographic references found in over 95,000 forum posts collected during the 2013 launch of Maps and the Geospatial Revolution, a MOOC taught on Coursera. Using Phrase Nets, topic modeling methods, and a named-entity extraction geocoding tool, we show how students describe their use of maps, what key topics drove conversations during the class, and the geography associated with placenames mentioned in posts. These results help shed light on how novices use and understand Cartography and show how places found in discussion forum text reflect the global reach of MOOCs.
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-07926-4_14
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-07926-4_14
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85007191457
SN - 9783319079257
T3 - Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography
SP - 173
EP - 182
BT - Modern Trends in Cartography - Selected Papers of CARTOCON 2014
A2 - Brus, Jan
A2 - Vondrakova, Alena
A2 - Vozenilek, Vit
PB - Springer Berlin Heidelberg
T2 - International cartographic conference, CARTOCON 2014
Y2 - 25 February 2014 through 28 February 2014
ER -