Reviewer Experience vs. Expertise: Which Matters More for Good Course Reviews in Online Learning?

Zhao Du, Fang Wang and Shan Wang
Additional contact information
Zhao Du: Business School of Sport, Beijing Sport University, Beijing 100084, China
Fang Wang: Lazaridis School of Business & Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5, Canada
Shan Wang: Department of Finance and Management Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 2A5, Canada

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-17

Abstract: With a surging number of online courses on MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platforms, online learners face increasing difficulties in choosing which courses to take. Online course reviews posted by previous learners provide valuable information for prospective learners to make informed course selections. This research investigates the effects of reviewer experience and expertise on reviewer competence in contributing high-quality and helpful reviews for online courses. The empirical study of 39,114 online reviews from 3276 online courses on a leading MOOC platform in China reveals that both reviewer experience and expertise positively affect reviewer competence in contributing helpful reviews. In particular, the effect of reviewer expertise on reviewer competence in contributing helpful reviews is much more prominent than that of reviewer experience. Reviewer experience and expertise do not interact in enhancing reviewer competence. The analysis also reveals distinct groups of reviewers. Specifically, reviewers with low expertise and low experience contribute the majority of the reviews; reviewers with high expertise and high experience are rare, accounting for a small portion of the reviews; the rest of the reviews are from reviewers with high expertise, but low experience, or those with low expertise, but high experience. Our work offers a new analytical approach to online learning and online review literature by considering reviewer experience and expertise as reviewer competence dimensions. The results suggest the necessity of focusing on reviewer expertise, instead of reviewer experience, in choosing and recommending reviewers for online courses.

Keywords: online learning; MOOCs; online review; review quality; review helpfulness; helpfulness vote; reviewer experience; reviewer expertise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/12230/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/12230/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:21:p:12230-:d:672992

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().