I need this information for my pilot study on designing a new MOOC interface. I will be grateful, if you could take a few seconds and help me out. Many thanks.
I have both finished MOOC courses and dropped out of other courses. The dropping out is so very much easier if you haven’t paid, haven’t told anybody about starting the course and not yet communicated so much within the course. It does not feel as I am betraying or abandoning anybody. This is about lacking social investment. But it is also a freedom to abandon a course that does not appear so promising. At occasions, I just wanted to look into the course as a researcher, so I never planned to finish it.
I have made some experiments with recruiting 8-10 people to a run of a special MOOC, and arrange a weekly 1-hour learner meeting, a classic Swedish study circle Without a teacher. And organised in this way, about 90% finish the course. I have published about this way of using MOOC courses, see below.
Article Using MOOCs at Learning Centers in Northern Sweden
Anders Norberg Thank you so much for your time in answering my question sir. What you said was almost the reasons why I would abandon a course too but I am looking forward to find a most common denominator (reason) for several drop-out cases.. I have a few things on my mind but wanna see what reasons others have.
I think the most common denominator is absence of social investment in a course. If a person joins in front of his screen because of finding a cool course that also is potentally free or not expensive, he or she must have a lot of personal motivation and discipline to follow all the way. Usually other things come up, and there is more time needed or the course was more demanding than perhaps expected. If the person has not told anybody, not even a partner, that he/she studies a course at MIT - the easiest is to just ignore the course and think ”perhaps another time”. But observe that research shows that if students get engaged with other individuals in forums in the course etc - the probability of staying in the course becomes higher. But of course there are the students that always engage in interaction, and those who se all education more as a spectator sport. So ”social investment” I think is a very important factor, at least when monetary investment is lacking or rather small..
I have dropped out, because of time consuming, less motivation because of course lengthy. Moreover,any one don't know that i follow the course. Thus, it was very easy dropped out without any blame.
Hola buenos días... sí me he inscrito en varios cursos Mooc y los he dejado porque las actividades de entrega requieren mayor tiempo de lo que se indica en el curso como tal, ejemplo, para realizar un curso de inglés me piden que realice un video, la verdad es que en ese momento no me interesa aprender el uso de herramientas digitales, sino el vocabulario del idioma. Otra razón es el tiempo en el que se cierra y ay no puedo finalizarlo. Un abrazo!
Usually if I have paid for a course I will finish it, but my motivation for enrolling in a MOOC is probably a major factor also, as is the quality of the instruction.