# A Domain-Driven Framework to Analyze Learning Dynamics in MOOCs through Event Abstraction
## 5 Case Study: Successful Student Sessions in Coursera
### Case Study & Framework
Later, when reviewing the material related to Echoing, the contents of the second (Basic Python) and fifth weeks (Strings) were the most frequently repeated. Finally, Figure 8 depicts the behavior of the Retaking dynamic; in this case, it can be assumed that the user performs a session solely for the purpose of repeating assessments. This is due to the most common variant (25.9% of cases) involves repeating assessments and then immediately concluding the session. Similarly, the activity most closely associated with Retaking is Skimming, which denotes a dynamic in which students perform an assessment and then examine their results or consult their prior errors in order to improve their scores before a new attempt. Retaking to Skimming occurred in 33.6% of cases where this learning dynamic was present, while the reverse happened in 32.1% of cases. This means that one (or both) of these interactions occurred in 43.0% of cases with Retaking. When the most frequently repeated retaking-related evaluations were reviewed, one assessment in particular was shown to have a much higher number of Retaking activities than the rest (597 times out of a mean of 285). This assessment, which covered variables and input/output, contained a bug in one of the questions. The bug was later fixed after the observation date was recorded in the log. Figure 6: Fetching sessions. Figure 8: Retaking sessions. Figure 7: Echoing sessions. RQ2: Are There Differences in Terms of Learning Dynamics between the First and Final Sessions Carried Out by Students? Although analyzing the activities performed in a session is useful, it is also necessary to determine whether there are differences in the sessions of the students as they progress through the course. To do so, we grouped each session into quintiles based on the total number of sessions each student completed. As a result, the first and last quintiles were compared. This allowed us to confirm the existence of behavioral variations at the start and end of the course. Table 4 shows several statistics that characterize each quintile. The process model of the initial sessions is depicted in Figure 9, from which it can be determined that the most prevalent activities are related to the dynamics of orderly and thorough learning (Progressing 63.9% and Echoing 29.7%). Furthermore, a rather low commitment to assessment can be detected at this stage in the course, as students were seen undertaking sessions without completing an assessment in 66.3% of cases, despite the Skimming activity appearing in 36.7% of cases. This notion is reinforced by the fact that the progressing activity appears more than once in 5.78% of the cases. This implies that the students opted not to disrupt their study process by bypassing the assessments that came in between video lectures. We expected the Progressing and Exploring activities to be more frequent at the start of the course and to decrease as the course progressed because they correspond to the first time a piece of content is viewed. It is worth noting, however, that the frequency of Echoing activity was 29.7% during the initial sessions. This is relatively high given that the students have not yet completed all of the course content. Furthermore, by categorizing the sessions into quintiles, it was possible to illustrate that the sessions at the start of the course had higher changes in terms of learning dynamics. Despite accounting for only 19% of the sessions, the initial ones were shown to account for 23% of all events in the high-level log. The number of events in each quintile decreased as the process was repeated, with the last quintile accounting for only 15% of the total events in the high-level event log. Examining the process map of the course's final sessions, as shown in Figure 10, reveals that these are primarily related to assessment activities. This is because the dynamics of Skimming, Assessing, and Retaking appear more frequently than the dynamics associated with content.