Fostering and Understanding Diverse Interpersonal Connections in a Massive Online CS1 Course

Forming social relationships is critical to student success and well-being, but is one of the first aspects to be neglected in the design of massive online courses. We present our experience deploying an in-course networking tool that enabled 1,600+ learners and teachers in a massive online CS1 course to form 2,000+ connections with other individuals. We discuss how social preferences and networking goals vary by demographics, economic factors, course goals, and course role. Contrary to usual online social behavior, users in our network sent more out-group requests than a random baseline by role (2.04x), gender (1.1x), and developing vs. developed country (1.07x). We highlight differences between developing vs. developed country users: developing country users send 2.5x requests and make, on average, 1.78x as many connections as those from developed countries. From a randomized control trial we find that random recommendations increase the volume of sent requests by 44.48% and promote cross-group requests across developing vs. developed countries (+28.9%), age (+15.1%), and gender (+8.6%). Ultimately we show that integrating socialization as a core feature of online CS1 classrooms can help support people from all backgrounds in achieving their diverse educational goals, which often extend well beyond improving coding proficiency.