To MOOC or Not To MOOC: A Review of Strategies to Manage High Attrition in MOOC Participation

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are one of the education trends brought about by the advent in technology in the last ten to fifteen years. Since then, MOOCs have evolved and are currently available through various commercial platforms such as Udacity, Edx and Coursera, and are offered by several leading educational institutions, including the National University of Singapore (NUS). Although MOOCs have generally been successful because of their easy accessibility, relevance, flexibility and low cost (if not free), one common criticism is their low completion rates. In this article, we aim to not only consolidate and categorise the different reasons accounting for high MOOC attrition rates, but also propose and discuss strategies and “STEP’s” that policymakers and educators may consider when they develop their MOOCs with the intention of stemming MOOC dropout. Our strategies comprises of four discrete steps; namely, ‘Support’, ‘Trend’, ‘Expenses’ and ‘Pay-Out’, summarised as ‘STEP’. We hope that by implementing these strategies, policymakers and educators can better distinguish between participants who fall out of MOOCs for different reasons.