MOOC Leaner Motivation and Learning Pattern Discovery

The landscape of online learning has evolved in a synchronous fashion with the development of the every-growing repertoire of technologies, especially with the recent addition of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). Since MOOC platforms allow thousands of students to participate at the same time, MOOC participants can have fairly varied motivation. Meanwhile, a low course completion rate has been observed across different MOOC platforms. The first and initiated stage of the proposed research here is a preliminary attempt to study how different motivational aspects of MOOC learners correlate with course participation and completion, with motivation measured using a survey and participation measured using log analytics. The exploratory stage of the study has been conducted within the context of an educational data mining MOOC, within Coursera. In the long run, research results can be expected to inform future interventions, and the design of MOOCs, as well as increasing understanding of the emergent needs of MOOC learners as data collection extends beyond the current scope by incorporating wider disciplinary areas.