“Time is the bottleneck”: a qualitative study exploring why learners drop out of MOOCs

Abstract

Why do over 90% of the learners in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) never finish the course? There is a need for further studies focusing on the learners' experiences of participating in MOOCs and factors that influence the decision to complete or drop out of the course. To deepen our understanding of why learners complete or drop out of MOOCs, we report on a qualitative case study based on in-depth interviews with 34 learners with different degrees of course completion for two MOOCs. A qualitative analysis of the interviews led to the identification of four main factors influencing dropout: (1) the learner's perception of the course content, (2) the learner's perception of the course design, (3) the learner's social situation and characteristics, and (4) the learner's ability to find and manage time effectively. How the learners conceptualized a MOOC had a strong impact on how they engaged with the contents. We discuss the implications of our results for MOOC practice in terms of time, openness and accessibility and provide recommendations for future research.

The Changes in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Studies between 2012 and 2017- A Review of Literature

“…Some scholars measured students' and instructors' views of MOOCs to identify their experience using MOOCs with different settings (Bruff et al, 2013;Asiri, 2014;Saadatmand & Kumpulainen, 2014;Waite et al, 2013;Patil et al, 2016;Leito et al, 2015;Leito et al, 2015;Eriksson et al, 2017;Salvador & Rodriguez-Hoyos, 2016), perception (Abeera & Miri, 2014;El Turk, 2015;Loizzo, 2015;Saadatmand & Kumpulainen, 2014;Dal Magro et al, 2017;Firmansyah & Timmis, 2016;Mamgain et al, 2014), motivation (Wen et al, 2014;Pickering & Swinnerton, 2017;Atrey et al, 2016;Sooryanarayan & Gupta, 2015), performance (Masanet et al, 2014;Nkuyubwatsi, 2013;Yousef, et al, 2015;Gamage et al, 2015), engagement (Milligan et al, 2013;Pickering & Swinnerton, 2017;Mulumba, 2016), preference (Abeera & Miri, 2014;Mamgain et al, 2014;Atrey et al, 2016), satisfaction (Fidalgo-Blanco et al, 2016;Khalil & Ebner, 2013), interaction (Khalil & Ebner, 2013), behavior (Campbell et al, 2014;Leach & Hadi, 2017), awareness (Bucovetchi et al, 2015), and intent (Campbell et al, 2014). This variation can help the researchers evaluate the MOOC and know more about how MOOCs could become an official method of education in the world.…”

Editorial for the special issue on advancing research on open education

“…The results showed that a k-means clustering approach is beneficial when comparing combined data from analytics and survey data to differentiate engagement clusters in MOOCs. Eriksson et al (2017) report on their qualitative study exploring the reasons that learners stop engaging with MOOCs. Based in interviews with 34 learners with different degrees of course completion, the results showed that the non-formal character of MOOCs and the unclear outcomes can easily lead to non-committal behavior.…”

Challenges of Identifying Second Language English Speakers in MOOCs

“…Eriksson et al [4] put forward in their qualitative study investigating the reason of learners' dropouts that some learners had struggled with understanding the spoken language in the video and occasionally the instructors' accent. The MOOC participants also stated that subtitles in English were helpful.…”

“…For example, EMMA, a European MOOC platform, provides MOOCs in multiple European languages 3 . Japanese MOOC platform (JMOOC) stated on their website that since many Japanese are struggling with studying in English, they launched JMOOC to serve the Japanese speaking communities 4 . Nevertheless, ESL speakers continue to pay attention to MOOCs that are offered in English.…”