how do learners in moocs attempt to resolve challenges they face?

AERA 2016 Washington, DC

How do learners in MOOCs attempt to resolve challenges they face?

George Veletsianos, Justin Reich, Laura Pasquini Royal Roads University, MIT, U of North TX

Attrition and Persistence

•  Greatest attention in the MOOC literature •  We know that students stop, we know a bit

about why they stop (e.g., time), but we don’t know how they respond to challenges generally.

•  Although promising, Data Mining and Big Data methodologies have generated very few insights

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The unresolved question that we sought to answer…

How do learners attempt to resolve challenges they face? In what ways do they self-remediate? How do these strategies relate to Big Data?

The study

4 HarvardX courses 30-45 minute skype interviews 4 semi-structured interview protocols 92 individuals

•  22 – 81 yrs old (mean=45) •  63M / 29F •  N America (>50%), Europe, (>25%), S

America, Asia, Africa, Australia.

Analytic methods

Analysis

Identify passages describing how learners attempt to resolve challenges they are facing

3 researchers à Constant comparative process

Codes (62, 58, 39 unique codes)à themes

The results

Challenges Time Intellectual difficulties

How were these resolved?

3 Themes

The results

Illustra)on:NY)mes:h2p://well.blogs.ny)mes.com/2013/09/19/what-a-messy-desk-says-about-you/?_r=0

The results

Broadercontext

Broaderonlineenvironment

At their workstations

The results

Broadercontext

Within the broader online environment

At their workstations

The results

Within the broader context of their life

Within the broader online environment

At their workstations

Implications

Stopping as a self-remediation strategy “Success” is complicated

Methodological diversity Designing interventions to support learners •  Consider courses as network nodes •  Notetaking strategies

We’d love your feedback!

This presentation: www.slideshare.com/veletsianos

Thank you