The Real-Time Learning Tracker

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer the opportunity to a large amount of learners worldwide having access to quality education, reaching also the most disadvantaged learners overcoming any obstacles of time and space. Nevertheless, the low completion rates which are often below 15%, is the main challenge that MOOCs face nowadays. In a MOOC environment, learners have a high degree of autonomy with limited or no pressure from teachers, highlighting the need for learners to self-regulate their learning. However, according to literature, the limited self-regulated learning skills of learners is one of the major reasons that lead them to dropout MOOCs. Besides, the vast majority of the current tools intended to help learners in the online learning environment neglect to give the help expected to the advancement of such skills. The present work aims to investigate how self-regulated learning skills can be enhanced by encouraging metacognition and reflection in MOOC learners by means of real-time personalized learner feedback through social comparison. To this end, we have developed three versions of an interactive widget, the RealTime Learning Tracker , which allows learners to visualize in real-time changes in their learning behaviour and compare it to that of previous graduates of the same MOOC. The three versions of the Real-Time Learning Tracker differ in the degree of complexity of the presented feedback so as to investigate how learners interpret varying visualizations of their learning behaviour and which one of them leads to more changes on their behaviour during the course. The Real-Time Learning Tracker was evaluated in a live TU Delft MOOC running on the edX platform while engaging nearly 2000 MOOC learners over the course of 10 weeks. Based on our results, we argue that learners with access to one of our Real-Time Learning Tracker versions have higher likelihood of graduation from the MOOC, compared to learners with no access to our Real-Time Learning Tracker . In addition, we observed that the widget has a positive impact on learners’ self-regulation whereas, we have little evidence that learners developed their engagement with the course content by the end of our experiment. Moreover, based on our findings we argue that the real-time attribute of our Real-Time Learning Tracker in combination with its easy access, led to a high degree of learners’ widget interactions throughout the course units. In addition, our results conform with prior research proving that the provision of feedback to learners on a specific number of behavioural indicators can lead to improvements in their overall learning performance. Finally, our results reveal that the exposure of learners to the most detailed version of the widget engaged more learners and this type of feedback affected positively the learning performance and behaviour of highly educated learners. This research highlights the significant effect of real-time feedback and self-reflection on learners’ learning performance and behaviour. We suggest that future research should explore learners’ intentions, goals and definitions of success and customize future iterations of the widget based on their individual needs and personalities.