Mind the Gap: Gender Disparity in Online Learning Platform Interactions

Abstract

Problem definition: Education technology innovations, such as massive open online course (MOOC) platforms, could potentially enable a more inclusive learning environment by delivering education to traditionally disadvantaged learners, like women. However, inclusivity does not necessarily translate into equal treatment on the platform. We investigate whether female and male learners benefit equally from forum discussions—typically the only form of interaction available—in online learning platforms. Methodology/results: Utilizing a large-scale, interaction-level data set on 174 courses on Coursera, we uncover an economically sizable and statistically significant disparity between male and female learners in receiving responses to their posts in MOOC discussion forums. On average, female learners’ questions are 3.11 percentage points less likely to receive responses from teaching staff than male learners’ questions, which equals 15.2% of the female group average. We also find significant gender disparity in staff response quality and sentiments. We investigate possible mechanisms behind the gender disparity using new techniques, including textual analysis tools. We show that the disparity is not because of content differences in male and female learners’ posts, nor is it attributable to their linguistic styles or the reputation of the posters. Instead, our results are most consistent with a male-driven gender homophily mechanism; although female staff members are gender neutral in their interactions with learners, male staff members systemically prefer responding to posts from male learners. We additionally show that receiving staff response leads to significant improvement in course passing rates, particularly for female learners. Therefore, the unequal access to information through course forums unfavorably hinders female learners’ performance. Managerial implications: Our results provide operational and organizational suggestions to platforms and content providers, including degendering user identifiers, implementing a content-focused post recommendation system, incorporating a gender-neutral user reputation system, promoting the recruiting of female teaching staff, and providing staff training that highlights the importance of gender-neutral interactions. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0426 .