Dropout: MOOC Participants’ Perspective

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) open up learning opportunities to a large number of people. A small percentage (around 10%) of the large numbers of participants enrolling in MOOCs manage to finish the course by completing all parts. The term ‘dropout’ is commonly used to refer to ‘all who failed to complete’ a course, and is used in relation to MOOCs. Due to the nature of MOOCs, with students not paying enrolment and tuition fees, there is no direct financial cost incurred by a student. Therefore it is debatable whether the traditional definition of dropout in higher education could be directly applied to MOOCs. This paper reports ongoing exploratory work on MOOC participants’ perspectives based on six qualitative interviews. The findings show that MOOC participants are challenging the widely held view of dropout, suggesting that it is more about failing to achieve their personal aims. parisons (Balch, 2013). Considering the number of students in UK higher education who leave after one year of study: full time 7.4%; part time 35.1% and open universities 44.7%, Tait (Commonwealth of Learning, 2013) suggests that it could be qualification-related. For example 45% of Open University students in the UK have one A Level qualification or less and the open universities admit mature students, students with lower qualifications, and students from rural areas. Therefore he argues that dropouts “represent risks and challenges of openness and inclusion”. There is a debate whether dropout rates and progression should be causes of concern in MOOCs (Gee 2012; Yuan, & Powell 2013). In a traditional university when a student fails to complete a course that they have enrolled in, paying high fees, it is bad for all parties involved: the student (possibly even affecting their families), the lecturers and the university. For example, the Higher Education Funding Council for England keeps a close eye on the number of full-time PhD students completing within the allowed 4 years as a benchmark (HEFCE, 2013) and a student failing to do so may reflect adversely on the university’s research profile. Yuan, & Powell (2013) argue that whether these rates matter depends on the perceived purpose. They go on to say that if the main aim of offering a MOOC is to provide the opportunity to learn from high-quality courses (offered by world class universities and world experts of subjects) without incurring a charge, these rates should not be of primary concern. MOOCs inevitably attract many more enrolments than those that would have been on a fee-paying course because it is easy and free to register on a MOOC; sometimes it may be all too easy and by a student may register for a course by accident; there may not be an un-enrol button (author’s personal experience). Some participants who enrol on a MOOC may never return. Dropout: MOOC Participants’ Perspective Tharindu Rekha Liyanagunawardena, Patrick Parslow and Shirley Ann Williams 96 Research Track | Defining dropout Tinto (1975) argues that inadequate attention given to defining dropout in higher education has led researchers “to lump together, under the rubric of dropout, forms of leaving behaviour that are very different in character” (p89). He claims that research on dropout has failed to distinguish between various forms, for example dropout resulting from academic failure and voluntary withdrawal. This often seems to be the case with MOOCs; it is not clear what dropout means apart from ‘all who failed to complete’. MOOC participants could have joined the course to follow a specific topic and completion of this may have triggered them to voluntarily withdraw from the course. Categorising these participants as dropouts in MOOCs may give rise to misleading implications. There is also a concern whether the traditional definition of dropout could be directly applied to MOOCs (Liyanagunawardena, 2013). For example, paying enrolment and tuition fees in a traditional course makes a student commit themselves to participating in the programme. In a MOOC on the other hand, because both registration and enrolment are free, there is no binding commitment from a student. A definition used in distance education and/or eLearning could be a better candidate for defining dropout in a MOOC. In the context of eLearning, Levy (2007) defines “dropout students (or non-completers) as students that voluntarily withdraw from e-learning courses while acquiring financial penalties” (p.188) for his study. However, application of this definition to MOOCs is hindered by the use of financial penalties in the definition, because MOOCs generally do not require an upfront payment from registrants. Unlike most traditional courses and/or eLearning courses that freeze registration at the start of the course, MOOCs generally allow registration while the course is being offered (1). Effectively, then, a learner can join a MOOC that was running on the final week, which would still count as a registration, but this may not provide sufficient time for completion. There is also the possibility that some learners may enrol on a course to follow only a specific topic of their interest. Some participants may enrol to ‘audit’ MOOCs (Chung, 2013) while others may be ‘lurkers’, ‘drop-ins’, active or passive participants (Hill, 2013). Koller, et. al. (2013) show that “the ease of non-completion in MOOCs can be viewed as an opportunity for risk-free exploration”, a similar analogy would be a free taster or test drive. This makes it difficult to measure the dropout rate in a MOOC by only considering the enrolled number and ‘completed’ number. Furthermore, Koller et. al. (2013) show that in general a typical Coursera MOOC (in 2012) attracted 40,000 to 60,000 enrolments but only 50-60% of these students actually returned for the first lecture. Out of these huge enrolment numbers only about 5% of students earned an official statement of accomplishment. In contrast out of the students who registered for ‘Signature Track’ scheme, paying US$30-100, with the intention of obtaining an identity verified and university-branded certification, the completion rates are much higher. This seems to suggest that learners’ intention for the course, for example whether to use it as a taster class, drop-in and drop-out for interesting topics, or to earn a verified certification has had a profound effect on their ‘engagement’ in the course (2). Due to the nature of MOOCs discussed above, it is reasonable to question whether defining ‘completion’, ‘dropout’ and ‘success’ in a similar way to their equivalent in the traditional measurement or in fact eLearning counterpart is acceptable or appropriate. In fact, Koller, et. al. (2013) show that “retention in MOOCs should be evaluated within the context of learner intent” (p62). However, the word ‘dropout’ seems to be used very loosely when referring to MOOCs. In the realm of MOOCs, theorising about dropout processes can only be possible once a proper definition for the term is identified and accepted among scholars. The researchers believe that in identifying the meaning of dropout in the context of a MOOC, it is important to understand the participants’ perspective because of the voluntary nature of participation. However there has been no research to date exploring MOOC participants’ views on what success, completion and dropout mean to them in the context of a MOOC. This paper presents an overview of an ongoing research project exploring MOOC participants’ perspectives on the issue of dropout. The research team hopes to develop this exploratory view to understand the true nature of a MOOC dropout. Research Methodology This qualitative research project is investigating MOOC participants’ perspectives using an ethnographic approach, where researchers themselves are MOOC participants and they are exploring other MOOC participants’ perspectives on ‘dropout’, ‘completion’ and ‘success. ’ Semi-structured interviews are used as the data collection instruments in this research. Structured interviews pose a pre-established set of questions in a sequence allowing little or no variation, expecting the interviewer to be neutral. In contrast, semi-structured interviews, which are guided by a set of questions but nevertheless place much interest on the participants’ views and where the overall direction of the interviews is influenced by the interviewees’ responses, was favoured in this research because of the constructivist standpoint of the researchers. Each face-to-face interview (30-35 minutes) was audio recorded with permission and later transcribed in full. The interview transcription was shared with the participant via email where clarifications were required. This respondent verification is hoped to have increased the quality of data used in the analysis. This paper presents some initial findings of an ongoing research and this paper focuses on participants’ perspectives of ‘dropout’ in a MOOC. Dropout: MOOC Participants’ Perspective Tharindu Rekha Liyanagunawardena, Patrick Parslow and Shirley Ann Williams 97 Research Track | Population The population for the research is MOOC participants, who have registered and/or participated in one or more MOOCs.