ABSTRACT

Participants’ engagement in massive online open courses (MOOCs) is highly irregular and self-directed. It is well known in the field of television media that substantial parts of the audience tend to drop out at major episodic, or seasonal, closures, which makes creating cliff-hangers a crucial strategy to retain viewers (Bakker, 1993; Cazani, 2016; Thompson, 2003). Could there be an analogous pattern in MOOCs—with an elevated probability of dropout at major chapter transitions? Applying disjoint survival analysis on a sample of 12,913 students in a popular astronomy MOOC that built participants’ cultural capital (hobbyist pursuits), we found a significant increase in dropout rates at chapter closures. Moreover, the latter the chapter closure was positioned in the course sequence, the higher the dropout rate became. We found this pattern replicated in a sample of 20,134 students in a popular computer science MOOC that introduced participants to programming.

摘要

参加大型在线公开课程（MOOC）的参与者高度不规范且具有自我指导性。在电视媒体领域众所周知，大部分观众倾向于在主要的情节或季节性关闭中退学，这使得制作壁挂衣架成为挽留观众的关键策略（Bakker，1993; Cazani，2016;汤普森（Thompson），2003年）。MOOC中是否存在类似的模式-在主要章节过渡时辍学的可能性更高？对在建立参与者文化资本（爱好者追求）的流行天文学MOOC中的12,913名学生的样本进行脱节生存分析，我们发现章节关闭的辍学率显着增加。此外，章节关闭的顺序在课程顺序中位于后面，辍学率越高。