Your click decides your fate: Inferring Information Processing and Attrition Behavior from MOOC Video Clickstream Interactions

Abstract

In this work, we explore video lecture interaction in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which is central to student learning experience on these educational platforms. As a research contribution, we operationalize video lecture clickstreams of students into cognitively plausible higher level behaviors, and construct a quantitative information processing index, which can aid instructors to better understand MOOC hurdles and reason about unsatisfactory learning outcomes. Our results illustrate how such a metric inspired by cognitive psychology can help answer critical questions regarding students' engagement, their future click interactions and participation trajectories that lead to in-video & course dropouts. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

MOOC Video Interaction Patterns: What Do They Tell Us?

“…Research on MOOC video interactions are usually centered on analyzing lecture-to-lecture navigation strategies [5], predicting dropout [6,15] and in-video dropouts [7]. Among these work, only [15,7] contain click-level video analysis. [7] emphasizes on the video interaction peaks while ignoring other silent interactions such as speed changing.…”

“…When scrubbing interactions occur, the logging system automatically generates a number of intermediate seeking events. Following the approach in [15], the seek events that are within 1 second interval are grouped as a single seeking event.…”

“…[7] emphasizes on the video interaction peaks while ignoring other silent interactions such as speed changing. [15] analyzed the video interactions sequences with n-gram analysis, which aimed at predicting dropouts. As an intermediate result, the information processing index computed from the click sequences serve for identifying and interpreting different video behaviors.…”

Open Praxis vol. 9 issue 4

“…They are used for a variety of purposes including content development, tutorials and demonstrations, lectures, guides for assignment completion, etc. (Sinha et al, 2014). Videos also contribute to engagement in discussion forums by providing input for topics to be discussed later by participants.…”

“…A drawback of these two intrinsic characteristics is that MOOCs are also known for a high occurrence of participant drop out Ho et al, 2014;Coetzee, Fox, Hearst & Hartmann, 2014;Yang, Sinha, Adamson & Rosé, 2013). This high level of dropout has drawn the attention of researchers for better understanding of to what extent participants' engagement with the MOOC contributes to their achievement or conclusion (e.g., Onah, Sinclair & Boyatt, 2014;Sinha, Jermann, Li & Dillenbourg, 2014).…”