Language independent analysis and classification of discussion threads in Coursera MOOC forums

In this work, we analyze the discussion threads from the forums of 60 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by Coursera and taught in 4 different languages. The types of interactions in such threads vary: there are discussions on close ended problems (e.g. solutions to assignments), open ended topics, course logistics, or just small talk among fellow students. We first study the evolution of the forum activities with respect to the...